BACKPACKER BISCUITS

These delicious biscuits are a family tradition around every campfire. Here’s the backstory…

Many years ago, our family was camping at Refugio when a family in the adjacent campsite invited us over to make backpacker biscuits. Sounds good, we said—though we had no idea what they were.  We brought our camp chairs over to their fire and proceeded to get schooled on the fine (but simple) art of crafting the perfect backpacker biscuit. And the rest is part of our family history…

What you need:

            3/4” diameter wood dowels, 3’ long—one for each person (hardware store)

            paper towels

            vegetable oil

            refrigerated biscuits (like Grands Originals)

            squeeze bottle of honey

            a good wood fire burned down to coals and low flame

Take a paper towel and pour a little oil on it. Rub it on one end of the dowel, all the way around and down about 6”.  Take one Grands biscuit in your open hand (or two if you’re using smaller biscuits like Pillsbury) and lay the dowel on it. Then press and twist the dough to cover the dowel tip and down the dowel 6”, making sure you’ve sealed all the seams and making it as even as possible.

The idea is that the biscuits will bake over the hot coals and low fire, so you can see that a thick clumpy biscuit isn’t going to cook as well as a smoothed thinner one. You’ll get the hang of it.

Once you’re satisfied that your biscuit is fire-worthy, pull up a camp chair, sit down, hold your dowel over the fire and fairly close to the coals. Remember, the biscuits need to bake. It will take about ten minutes, so relax and chat with whoever is cooking their biscuit next to you.

When you think it’s done, carefully slide the biscuit off the dowel, and squirt honey down the hole. Eat while hot! But be careful of honey escaping out those cracks you didn’t seal. Honey dripping down arms is allowed. The only requirement is a nice, genuine mmmmmmm. Then pick up another raw biscuit and repeat!