25 Easy Camping Meals for Kids: Kid-Friendly Campfire Recipes

Campfire cooking can be a lot of fun, but when you’ve got kids who are picky eaters, this throws a whole new consideration into your camping meal planning. These camping meals for kids are the perfect kid-friendly campfire recipes and ideas to make sure the whole family is well-fed, with minimal whinging!

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Kid-Friendly Campfire Meals 101

Before we jump into the recipes and meal ideas, here are a few tips to ensure your camping meals get the kid-approval:

• Kid-Friendly: This one is a given, but what exactly makes a meal kid-friendly? Well, that can depend on your kids. Sometimes this means simple flavours (unless your kids love spice). It also means easy to eat.
• Adaptable: If your kids love bland food, having meals you can ‘spice up’ with extra flavour to suit the adults in your camping group is a great bonus!
• Reasonably healthy: It doesn’t have to have a 5-star health rating, because comfort food is one of the perks of camping, but it should tick off most of the food groups!
• Easy to prep: You don’t want anything that will take a really long time to prepare and cook because tired kids are hangry kids. Plus you need to be able to supervise them while you cook.

Bonus: If they are simple camping meals that you can get the kids involved in, that’s even better! Teach them some camp cooking basics and have fun doing it.

Now, without further ado, here are the kids’ camping meals to add to your next camping trip meal plan:

Easy Camping Meals For Kids

These easy camping meals are easy camping dinner ideas for kids and families with plenty of fun foods the kids will love. Best of all, most of these are really quick camping dinner ideas too:

1. Campfire Tacos

With a little preparation, you can turn a campfire into a taco bar! Cook up some ground beef in a skillet and set out your favourite toppings – think shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes, cheese, and salsa. Wrap it all up in soft tortillas for a meal that’s always a winner! Most kids love tacos and one-pot camping meals are a quick and easy option!

2. Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

Who can resist the ooey-gooey goodness of a classic grilled cheese? Coat the outside of bread slices with butter, add cheese in the middle, then grill in a skillet. It’s a staple that’s quick and easy to make over an open flame. If you’ve got a camping pie iron, even better!

3. Foil Packet Chicken and Veggies

Prepare individual aluminium foil packets with chicken breast, potatoes, and your kids’ favourite veggies. Season with a little salt, pepper, and butter, then seal the packets. Cook the packets directly on hot coals or BBQ plate for a simple and hearty meal.

Check out these honey garlic chicken and potato foil packets for a delicious make-ahead meal for family camping trips.

4. Campfire Nachos

This is a classic camping meal that both kids and adults will love. Simply layer tortilla chips, cheese, beans, and any toppings of your choice in a foil tray or in a skillet and place it on the campfire to heat up. Serve your colourful with some salsa, sour cream, guacamole or hot sauce for an extra kick.

5. Skillet Pizza

Our kids love pizza, so being able to cook pizza while camping is a pretty exciting thing for them! Pizza is definitely up there on the list of favourite foods for most kids. You can make your own skillet pizza in around 30 minutes. This skillet pizza can be cooked over a campfire or on a BBQ grill.

6. Campfire Quesadillas

Yet another simple Mexican-inspired camping meal. Quesadillas are really quick and easy to make and they are also a favourite for us when we are doing motorhome trips too! Top a tortilla with cheese and your kids’ favourite toppings, fold it over, and cook in a cast-iron skillet until both sides are golden, your tortilla is a little crunchy and the cheese is melted.

7. Campfire Spaghetti Bake

Another favourite meal for many kids is spaghetti and meatballs. But that’s a 2 pot meal, so why not turn it into a make-ahead camping dinner with this campfire spaghetti bake? All your favourite ingredients in a foil tray for a quick and easy heat and eat dinner.

Make it even easier by using spiral or other smaller variations of pasta so it’s easier to eat without spaghetti slapping you in the chin. Although, that’s part of the fun!

8. One-Pot Pasta

Kids love pasta, and parents love easy cleanup. Boil pasta in a pot with water. Once it’s cooked, drain the water and stir through your favourite pasta sauce or your bring own sauce you made at home, for a simple, one-pot meal.

9. Meat And Veggie Skewers

Making sure your kids get their veggies has never been easier. Thread fresh veggies such as bell peppers, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, and zucchini onto skewers, then grill over the campfire for colourful kabobs. You can also add pre-diced meat to your skewers too, such as chicken strips.

Try these grilled chicken kabobs with sliced veggies or these chicken and pineapple kabobs bring some yummy, sweet summer flavours for something a little different too.

10. Campfire Pizza Pockets

Unroll chilled pizza dough and cut it into squares. Add sauce, cheese, and your kids’ favourite toppings, fold over and crimp the edges. Cook in foil over the fire for pizza pockets the kids will absolutely love.

For an easier alternative, use bread, wraps or pita bread instead and cook your pizza pockets using a pie iron over the campfire.

11. Hot Dogs

The quintessential camping experience! Roast hotdogs on sticks over the fire and serve them on hot dog buns with cooked onion, sauce and shredded cheese. Kids will love the experience of cooking their own sausages over the fire. Just make sure you bring enough spares in case you lose a couple to the fire.

Or just cook your hot dog sausages on your BBQ plate or in a skillet on your camp stove instead if you prefer.

12. Hobo Dinner Hamburger Foil Packets

If you love hamburgers but want to make them even easier, these hobo dinner hamburger foil packets bring those same flavours and can easily be cooked on the grill or campfire.

13. Grilled Chicken Wraps

Grill up some chicken tenders or chicken strips, and add them to tortilla wraps or pita bread with lettuce, ranch dressing, and cheese for a yummy meal that’s easy to eat on the go.

Turn this into a no-cook camping meal by using cooked chicken you prepared at home and serving your chicken wraps cold.

Food Safety Tip: Make sure you allow your chicken to cool before adding it to your camping cooler, don’t allow your raw and cooked foods to be stored together, and eat this meal early in your trip. When you’re married to someone in the food safety industry, these are rules to live by.

14. Dutch Oven Lasagne

Lasagne is another kid-friendly camping meal that the whole family will enjoy. This lasagne recipe is made in a Dutch oven and takes around an hour total from start to finish, so it’s a little longer than some of the other easy camping recipes on this list but still a good one for your next camping trip!

Ground beef, lasagne sheets, sauce, shredded cheese and all your typical flavours in a camp-friendly dutch oven variation.

15. Grazing Platter

If you’ve got an especially big day of adventures planned during your family camping trip, sometimes you just need a really easy camping meal! We always have a grazing platter at least once during a camping or RV trip and you can make it however you like to suit what you and your kids like to eat.

A few ideas for things to include are lunch meats, crackers, dips, cheeses, chips, olives, sundried tomatoes, jalapenos, pickles, trail mix, nuts, dried fruit, grapes, fresh veggies, and tortillas.

16. Baked Potatoes

Campfire baked potatoes are one of the ultimate comfort foods, with those smokey flavours that make baked potatoes so much better! Why not make it more fun by setting up your own baked potato bar at your campsite with all the toppings you like?

Shredded cheese, sour cream, precooked bacon, onion, sauces, etc. This is a fun dinner idea that is super easy with a little meal prep before you leave home.

17. Walking Tacos

Walking tacos are a fun twist on the classic taco night and an easy dinner for your next camping trip. The best part about walking tacos is that they’re portable and can be eaten right out of a chip bag, making it easy to clean up afterwards.

To make walking tacos, simply cook up some ground beef or chicken with your favourite taco seasoning and veggies before you leave home. Then all you do is add some of your taco mix and pre-chopped salad and cheese into a fun-size packet of chips such as Doritos or similar.

18. Hamburgers

While hobo hamburgers are quick and easy camping food, just making your hamburgers the standard way isn’t such a big effort either! Grill some meat patties, toast your hamburger buns if you like, add a slice of cheese, some lettuce and sauce of your choice. Who doesn’t love a burger?

19. English Muffin Pizzas

Split English muffins, top with pizza sauce, cheese, and any other toppings your kids fancy, then cook in foil or a skillet for a personalized pizza experience.

Easy Camping Breakfast Ideas For Kids

What about the first meal of the day? Having a great breakfast is essential to keep the family energised for a day of activities such as hiking, fishing and swimming, so having some kid-friendly camping breakfasts is a must too.

20. Pancakes

Start the day with what could be a favourite breakfast for many kids. Bring a pancake batter that just needs you to add water to cook them on the skillet or grill plate, or pre-make some fluffy pancakes at home for an almost instant breakfast! Don’t forget your maple syrup!

21. Breakfast Burritos

Scramble some scrambled eggs, add cheese and breakfast sausage or meat patty, then wrap in a tortilla. Wrap them in foil and heat them in the campfire coals. Breakfast burritos are easy to prepare ahead of time too and can be cooked and frozen as well so you just need to reheat them.

22. Foil Packet Breakfast Bake

This one is easy to make for any size family and simple to prep ahead of time, making this great camping food to make ahead. This hearty breakfast bake is a good one for camping in winter when you want to start the day with a hot breakfast. It has ground Italian sausage, eggs, hash browns, vegetables and cheese.

Kid-Friendly Camping Desserts

When it comes to camping, having an indulgent camping dessert each night is a bit of a family tradition. Shh! But even if you have just one special treat for the whole trip, you want to make sure it’s something the kids will love too. Here are some yummy family camping desserts to try:

23. Banana Boats

This sweet treat is a must-try. Cut a slit in a banana, fill it with chocolate chips and marshmallows, wrap them in foil, and heat over the campfire until meltingly delicious. Nutella, peanut butter and other types of nut butter go great in these too! These banana boats are a little bit healthy, right?

24. S’mores Dip

Skip the roasting and create a gooey s’mores dip by layering chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers in a cast-iron skillet. Melt it over the fire and use extra graham crackers for dipping. This is an easier option for younger kiddos who might not be ready to use the roasting sticks themselves.

25. S’mores Cones

Forget the mess of traditional s’mores and try these s’mores cones instead! Stuff waffle cones with chocolate chips, marshmallows, and crumbled graham crackers, wrap them in foil, and heat over the fire. These are perfect for a quick and easy camping dessert that everyone will love and another alternative to trying to roast over the fire.

Camp Cooking Essentials

No camp cooking is complete without the right tools. Here are a few essentials you might need for these recipes:

• Good Quality Skillet: Look for a durable, non-stick skillet that can be used over an open flame.
• Camping Stove or Portable Grill: For dishes that require more precise heat.
• Heavy Duty Foil: Perfect for wrapping up food and cooking over the fire.
• Foil Trays: For mess-free cooking, make ahead meals and easy cleanup.
• Roasting Sticks: A must-have for roasting marshmallows and hot dogs over the fire.

With a little preparation and a lot of creativity, these camping meals for kids will make mealtime easier for all of you with camping foods you will all enjoy eating together.