Next Time You Go Camping, Roast Your Eggs With An Ancient Technique

There are many ways to prepare eggs, but the options slim down when cooking in the woods. Innovative campers are always coming up with ways to MacGyver meals out of thin air, but plenty of trusted cooking methods were developed centuries ago, ash-roasted eggs included. One would assume cooking eggs in the great outdoors classifies as open-fire cooking, but there aren't actually any roaring flames involved. Cradled in smoky ashes, the eggs gently cook from the heat of embers.

Any recipe or method that doesn't require cooking equipment is a camper's dream. This technique only calls for hot ash and eggs, and since a fire is probably already part of the evening plans, there are hardly any extra steps involved. The biggest issue with using camp fire ash as your oven is controlling the temperature, but this technique is practically made for foods that can cook low and slow. There's no way to fully regulate the temperature, but there are creative ways to manipulate the heat. With heated ash surrounding the burrowed eggs, they're able to cook evenly.

Food writer and "Top Chef Canada" judge, Chris Nuttall-Smith, included the unique egg recipe in his outdoor-focused cookbook "Cook It Wild," piling the roasted eggs on grilled toast and finishing with gooey honey. Nuttall-Smith recommends that you tuck the eggs about two-thirds of the way into the fiery ashes, allowing a bit of the shell to peek out. According to him, the perfect egg should take under 10 minutes, surprisingly not much longer than it would on the stove. The texture is similar to that of a soft or hard-boiled egg, depending on cooking time, but there is a smoked earthy taste unlike anything else. As Nuttall-Smith shared in the recipe introduction, "Ash-roasted eggs, done right, are rich, soft, and just the slightest bit campfire-smoky." 

Food historians have explored how far back this technique goes, with some anecdotes dating back to Roman times. Chances are, eggs were prepared this way long before the days of documentation, but other than Shakespeare's plays, historical records on the cooking method haven't been recovered before the 19th century. There are records of roasted eggs throughout the 1800s, including some about celebrating Passover, and documents of food eaten in desperate times during the Peninsular War. With how easy and hands off the egg-roasting technique is, it's shocking it fizzled out for so long. Eggs are small and high in protein, making them the perfect camping companion and ideal accompaniment to other campfire meals. Just be sure to wrap them up carefully to avoid a yolk-soaked backpack.