Three Square

Bell Pepper Egg Sandwiches

Egg sandwiches are a great handheld breakfast option to make while camping, but they can be a challenge: If you’re just frying one egg at a time, it’s hard to keep up with demand, but if you put too many eggs in the pan at once they’ll blend into one another. That’s where this bell pepper trick comes into play.

By using bell pepper rings, you can keep your eggs separated and maximize the surface area of your pan. If you’re using large or jumbo eggs, we recommend you cut your pepper slices about 1-inch thick to prevent the eggs from overflowing.

We like to break the yolk with a fork just as the whites are starting to set around the outside of the egg. (Without a big runny yolk in the middle, we get a more consistent texture as we eat the sandwich.) Then we flip to cook the other side.

After flipping, place a slice of cheese on top to melt, which will bind to the bell pepper ring so when you take a bite the ring doesn’t fall out of the back of your sandwich.

We like to serve these on grilled English muffins with a Sriracha mayo spread and top them with either green onions or chives. Using this method, you can crank out a bunch of these little gourmet breakfast sandwiches for your entire group.

Campfire Grilled Caprese Sandwiches

Few things capture the essence of summer quite like grilled tomatoes. Bright, sweet, and slightly smoky, they’re the taste of a sunny afternoon BBQ. Why would you settle for a regular caprese sandwich when you could have a grilled tomato caprese instead?

There are a few tricks to grilling tomatoes at a campground. First, clean the grill grate to the best of your ability with a wire brush and then remove the excess soot with a damp rag. Once everything is clean, brush the grill with some oil to keep things from sticking. (Some grill grates clean up nicely, but others can be so weathered and rusted that they’re beyond redemption. In that case, using a cast-iron skillet over the fire might be your best alternative.) Finally, you’ll want to cut your tomatoes nice and thick to help them retain their structure.

As for the cooking temperature, you should try to cook them fast and hot. The goal is to grill them quickly, not slow-roast them. If you go too slow, they’ll get soft and fall apart. While the tomatoes are cooking you can also toast your baguette.

Finally, piece it all together with your grilled tomatoes, slices of mozzarella, and either fresh basil or a pesto spread. With so many fresh seasonal flavors, this sandwich is everything we love about summertime.

Banh Mi Tacos

We love a Banh Mi and we love tacos, so we decided to combine the two. Now we can enjoy all the sweet and spicy Vietnamese flavors of a Banh Mi in the convenient form of a taco.

While this recipe is definitely an ensemble piece, if we had to pick a star ingredient it would have to be the grilled marinated pork. A mix of honey, soy sauce, and fish sauce is fairly easy to make ahead of time and really takes the flavor to the next level. Obviously, the longer you marinate it the better, but we’ve done a quick marinade of only a few hours and it came out great.

Another standout ingredient is the quick-pickled daikon radishes and carrots. We used a mandoline to cut the vegetables into thin strips and placed them inside a Mason jar (or durable ziplock) with rice wine vinegar, water, and sugar before we left. When we got to our campsite, they were good to go.

As for the tortillas, we typically favor corn for tacos but for this flavor combination we think wheat tortillas are more appropriate. As we were finishing up the pork over the fire, we threw a few of them on the grill to get some nice charred bites.

Serving Banh Mi as a taco is great because it calls for people to build each one themselves. This allows them to dial in the heat to exactly what they want. Lay on the Sriracha and spicy chiles or leave them out completely.

Quick-Pickled Vegetables