There is a quiet sort of triumph in pulling a hot foil parcel out of the coals, peeling back the foil and finding pork snags glistening in pan juices with sticky brown onion and apple slices that have gone almost translucent. It is the laziest dinner you can do at camp, costs about twelve dollars to feed four, and the only thing you have to wash up is a pair of tongs.
This is autumn camp food at its best. As the nights start dropping into single digits across most of the country, the foil parcel earns its place — there is no awkward camp oven to lift on and off, no skillet to scrub in cold creek water, just a small fire reduced to a bed of red embers and twenty minutes to wait while you crack a beer.
Quick answer
Layer thick pork and apple sausages, sliced brown onion, sliced Granny Smith apple, butter, thyme, salt and pepper into a heavy-duty foil parcel, double-wrap it and sit it directly on a bed of glowing red coals (no flames). Cook 20 to 25 minutes, turning once at the halfway point. Open carefully, eat straight from the foil with crusty bread to mop the juices.
What you need
Ingredients (serves 4)
- 8 thick pork and apple sausages (about 800 g — Coles and Woolies both stock them; the deli butcher version is better if you have one)
- 2 large brown onions, peeled and cut into thick rings about 8 mm
- 2 Granny Smith apples, cored and sliced into 5 mm rings (skin on)
- 50 g butter, cut into small cubes
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 4 sprigs fresh thyme (or 1 teaspoon dried)
- 1 tablespoon wholegrain mustard
- Sea salt and cracked black pepper
- Crusty bread or a damper, to serve
Gear
- Heavy-duty aluminium foil (the thicker stuff — single-ply will tear on the coals)
- Long-handled tongs
- A small chopping board and knife
- A camp fire burned down to a bed of red embers (no flames), or a kettle BBQ with the coal tray set up the same way
How to make it
- Get the fire right first. Light the fire about 45 minutes before you want to eat. You are aiming for a flat bed of glowing red coals about 5 cm deep and roughly the area of a dinner plate. No flames. If you can hold your hand 15 cm above the coals for 3 to 4 seconds and no longer, you are ready.
- Build the parcels. Tear two large sheets of heavy-duty foil per parcel (you want a double layer). Drizzle the bottom sheet with olive oil. You can do one big parcel for four people or four individual parcels — individual is easier to turn and serve, and means everyone gets their own.
- Layer it up. Onion rings down first as a bed (they protect the snags from scorching), then a sprinkle of brown sugar and a few cubes of butter. Lay 2 sausages on top, then arrange apple slices over and beside the snags. Top with thyme, a teaspoon of wholegrain mustard, more butter, sea salt and cracked pepper.
- Seal properly. Bring the long edges of the foil up over the top and fold them down twice to make a tight seam. Roll up each end. The parcel needs to trap steam — any leaks and the juices drain into the coals.
- Onto the coals. Place the parcels seam-side up directly on the bed of red embers. Don't be shy — they need direct contact for the bottom of the onions to caramelise.
- Wait 12 minutes. Resist the urge to peek. The steam inside is what cooks everything evenly.
- Flip carefully. Use the tongs to turn each parcel upside down. The bottom should be sizzling and the foil slightly browned where it touched the coals — that is exactly right.
- Cook another 10 to 12 minutes. Bigger snags closer to 12, thinner ones closer to 10. The smell when they are nearly ready is unmistakable — sweet caramelised onion, a hint of apple, that good pork-fat aroma.
- Pull off the coals and rest 2 minutes. Use tongs and put the parcels onto plates or a board. Let them sit closed — the snags keep cooking gently from the residual steam.
- Open and serve. Peel back the foil at the table (warning the kids about the steam first), tear off chunks of damper or crusty bread to dunk in the juices, and eat straight from the parcel. No plates needed.
Camp tips
- Prep at home. Slice the onion and apple before you leave, store them together in a zip-lock bag with a squeeze of lemon to stop the apple browning. Drops your camp prep to under three minutes.
- No fire? No worries. Same parcels work brilliantly on a Weber Q or kettle BBQ over indirect heat at about 200 °C, lid down, for 25 minutes. Same result.
- Make it spicy. Swap the wholegrain mustard for hot English mustard and add a pinch of dried chilli flakes per parcel. Cuts through the sweetness of the apple beautifully.
- Bulk it up. Add a layer of par-boiled baby potatoes (boiled at home, cooled, sliced) under the onion rings. Turns it from a feed-of-snags into a proper one-parcel dinner with carbs.
- Leftovers are gold. Slice cold leftover snags into a wrap with the leftover sticky onion and a smear of mustard the next morning — best post-coffee road-trip lunch you'll have.
Why this works for off-grid camp life
The brilliance of the foil parcel is everything it doesn't need. No gas bottle, no cleaning, no precious cookware to scrub when water is rationed. If you are running a long off-grid stretch out of an Engel or 12V fridge, snags hold up better than almost any other protein — they last a good week sealed in their original cryovac and the apple-and-onion combination doesn't need anything refrigerated for the day. For more 12V-friendly cooking gear that travels with you, our 12V accessories collection covers the inverter and outlet kit that keeps a small van kitchen humming when the fire is too wet to light. And if you are still hunting for a recipe to follow this one up with, the cheese and herb skillet damper is the perfect bread to mop up those parcel juices.
Tell us how you do yours — apple optional, but in our camp it is non-negotiable. Drop a comment with your tweaks below.
