This dinner will forever remind us of our once-a-year campout in the summer. We’d assemble these tin foil packs and throw them in the campfire. In about 30 minutes, we’d pull them out and enjoy a homestyle meal while cozying up around the fire.
The best part is that they do make a great camping recipe, but they can easily be made at home in the oven or on the grill, too. With budget-friendly ingredients like beef (pretty much any cut will work), carrots, and potatoes plus a little sauce, they’re easy on your wallet, too.
We love to top them off with a little bbq sauce and shredded cheddar cheese for a comforting meal you can enjoy any time of year.
Don’t want to make them over the fire or in the oven? Try our Slow Cooker Hobo Dinner for the same delicious flavor, no foil needed.
Ingredient Notes for these easy hobo dinners:
- Beef: to make 4 servings, we use around one pound of cubed steak. You can also sub in ground beef by chunking it across the top, or even making a little beef patty to go in the foil packet.
- Potatoes: 4 medium potatoes, which we like to peel and cube. It will give you one potato for each packet. The smaller you cube them, the faster they will cook.
- Carrots: 2 cups, thinly sliced. Like the potatoes, the thinner the sliced, the quicker they will cook.
- Onion: 1 onion, diced. You can omit this if you don’t like onion, or swap it out for dried minced onion if you prefer.
- Worcestershire sauce: to taste for a little savory bite to the recipe.
- Toppings: we like to top this recipe with bbq sauce and shredded cheddar cheese.
How to make tin foil dinners:
- Prep. Get four large squares of heavy duty aluminum foil ready by spraying them with nonstick cooking spray. Chop your veggies and separate them and the beef into four equal servings on each sheet of foil. Sprinkle with seasonings and Worcestershire sauce.
- Cook. Fold up the foil tightly around the entire meal. Take extra care to seal everything, especially if you’re cooking them on the grill. Cook on medium-high heat or in an open fire for 25-30 minutes, until vegetables and meat are cooked through.
- Serve. Open the foil very carefully (you will probably want to wear oven mitts or gloves). Top with bbq sauce and shredded cheese (if desired), then enjoy. You can eat it straight from the foil packet, or transfer it to a plate to eat.
Tips and Customizations:
- Swap out the meat. This recipe calls for steak, but you can used any type of cubed beef or even ground beef. You can also swap it out for chicken chunks or ground chicken, however you may need to add a little more fat to the packet to make sure the chicken doesn’t stick to the sides.
- Swap out the veggies. These are great with potatoes and carrots, but a few readers have also suggested making them with green beans, zucchini, or other seasonal veggies.
- Make them ahead of time. Assemble the foil packets and keep them in the fridge until you’re ready to take them out and cook. They can be assembled up to 2 days in advance.
- Add some creamy soup. Growing up, we would sometimes add a dollop or two of cream of mushroom soup to these. After cooking, it was almost like a little bit of gravy added to the packet and it was a tasty touch.
Reader tip for a crow
“We did this on a church camping trip with 29 people. We cut up all kinds of veggies, had hamburger and chicken, and a couple of different sauces such as Worcestershire and teriyaki and hot sauce, and let everyone assemble their own. They put their name on the outside of the foil packs with Sharpies so that they could be identified after cooking.”
– Maggie
Serving Suggestions
This recipe truly does stand on its own as a full meal, but if you want some ideas of what to serve it with, here are our favorites:
- Corn on the Cob (try it in the Instant Pot, too)
- Grilled or broiled asparagus
- 30-Minute Dinner Rolls
- S’mores Clusters
- Peach Cobbler Dump Cake
FAQs
To really make sure they’re cooked properly, you’ll need a meat thermometer. The beef should be around 160 degrees F. The veggies should be fork tender when they’re ready to eat. The times we share are a good estimate, but may change slightly depending on the heat of the campfire and how thickly the food is wrapped.
If you’re making these in the oven, parchment paper will work great. If you’re making them on the grill, you can wrap it in parchment paper and add a layer of aluminum foil underneath (or a grill pan) to cook it.
These will cook in about an hour at 350 degrees in the oven.
More delicious beef dinners to make:
- John Wayne Casserole (Beef and Biscuit)
- Instant Pot Ground Beef Burrito Bowls
- Steak Fajitas
- Slow Cooker Steak and Potatoes
Hobo Dinner (Foil Packet) Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 pound steak, or ground beef
- 4 potatoes, peeled and cubed
- 2 cups carrots, thinly sliced
- 1 onion, diced
- salt and pepper, to taste
- Worcestershire sauce, to taste
- ½ cup barbecue sauce
- ½ cup shredded cheddar cheese
Equipment
Instructions
- Use a large square piece of aluminum foil for each tin foil dinner. Spray foil with nonstick cooking spray.
- Separate ground beef into 4 equal patties, or steak into 4 servings, and place in the center of each piece of foil.
- Divide potatoes, carrots, and onion evenly between all 4 dinners and place on top of meat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, to taste. Pour a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce on top of each dinner and fold foil up tightly around the entire meal.
- Cook on a grill on medium-high heat or an open fire for 25-30 minutes, or until vegetables and meat are cooked through.
- Open foil carefully and top with BBQ sauce and shredded cheese.
Notes
Nutrition
Did You Make This Recipe?We’d love to hear your thoughts! Leave a review or a question in the comment section below the post.
A great tip that will help immensely is once you have wrapped it in your tinfoil, get a sheet of newspaper and soak it in water. Wrap the wet newspaper around the tinfoil dinner and then do another layer of tinfoil. This steams your food inside and prevents them from getting your food burned on the edges! You do have to cook about 10 minutes longer but it’s worth it!!!
We made these at Girl Scout Camp. Best meal I ever had after hiking up the Guadelupe River.
Growing up this is one of our favorites. And I also make these Hobo Dinners for my kids. I add cabbage. Gives a nice flavor.
Can this translate to an oven well, or does it need to be grill/campfirey?
Hi Tiffany, we have only cooked the hobo dinners over the fire. I’m sure you could do an oven version. Just not sure what the cooking time and temp would be. The main thing would be sure the hamburger is cooked through and your veggies are tender.
oven = 1 hour 350 degrees been making them since i was a wee lad in cub scouts all the way up to now so i have made them a few different ways. just make sure the meat is cooked through
Growing up my mom made these exclusively in the oven. Love them! Sometimes she would add cream of mushroom on top before sealing them. I believe it was 350 for about 1 hour.
My mom made these at home quite often, just using the oven. ~350 degrees for about an hour is just about perfect. I’ve continued but switch up the veggies from time to time. Cauliflower and broccoli do great as well! =)
I have lots of tots and the way we camp is a pop trailer bought used. Makes the outdoors a bit better than tent camping which is for the Boys Scouts in my opinion. Most state parks have full connections in nice places not from the interstate. Cook meals ahead to save time, set up near the bathrooms and go for only 2 nights. Good luck.
I do these in the oven at 350 for an hour on a cookie sheet. We love them. Can also do chicken breasts with Italian dressing. Have added cheese to both types.
That is a good idea, if I understood correctly. Cook them at home in the oven ahead of time and then take them to warm up over the grill or campfire?
We did not cook them in the oven ahead of time, just over the grill or campfire. The kids love this!!
Some 55 years ago where I lived, these were called Boy Scout Dinners. My brother’s troop used to make them over the camp fire. My Mom decided we could make these & place them on the stove burner (which was gas) & cook on a low flame for 30 minutes. They came out great & we loved them so much we could hardley wait to eat them.
This is great recipe. I also add squash. Summer, Zucchini abd whatever yiu like. DELECIOUS
We made these when I was a kid — just like the recipe–in the fall when we burned leaves. They were part of a “mom’s recipe book” my kids all got when they left home
Where do you find Tin foil?
All I can find is aluminum!
Tin Foil is the same as aluminum foil.
Might try this recipe this weekend, going camping in the Everglades.
I’m thinking of preparing a bunch of these (for 10 adults and 11 kids) for a big family campout coming up. I was thinking about preparing them before hand and freezing them and then cooking them over a campfire once we get there. Would that work? How much longer do you think they would cook for?
Where do you find tin foil? Really!!! People use the label “tin” because it’s easier to spell than aluminum, simple as that, it’s one of the same.
See my reply under L.D.
My family has made this using the oven for years. 350 degrees for 1 hour.
We add green beans.
You can cook it in the oven at 400 degrees for 45 minutes. It won’t be brown, to brown it, open it the last 10 minutes.
We called it Tin Foil in the old’en days.
We make these with cooked chicken and canned vegetables (potatoes, corm, green beans). Really just reheating – no worries about making sure the food is completely cooked. We have done it on the grill as well as in the oven. They sell non-stick aluminum foil. Works great!!
We make them with chicken breasts and pork chops as well. With the pork chops, I usually use sweet potatoes and onion slices. We did this on a church camping trip with 29 people. We cut up all kinds of veggies, had hamburger and chicken, and a couple of different sauces such as Worcestershire and teryaki and hot sauce, and let everyone assemble their own. They put their name on the outside of the foil packs with Sharpies so that they could be identified after cooking
My brother and I have done fish with onion, lemon. potatoes and any fruit we would have around, i.e. green beans, carrots or whatever. Sometimes, we do just potatoes with olive oil and whatever spices we would have on hand.
I don’t know if anyone has brought it to your attention previously… but while review the ingredients of the recipe I though it was wanting 11 pound ground beef…. My that was WOW, and this is for how many servings?… so I decided to read through further (which I usually do anyway) and found that it was suppose to be for 4 servings… next thought, wow that is 2.75 pounds of meat per serving… IT has to be a typo, right??
Hence the reason I decide to send a comment, because if it caused me to question amount at first how many others may it have done the same with… especially if he/she is a novice cook?
I did something similar to this a few nights ago… I wanted pot roast (homemade) but for just one person
but I also wanted to use what was left of a pound of ground beef so my thought was hum… if I wrap everything in foil and baked in oven would it work?.. Low and behold it was Fabulous… kind of a cross between a mini meatloaf and pot roast diner for 1 person… I seasoned my a little differently but if someone want the recipe just send me the request via email and I would be happy to make the substitution if it okay with this websites staff… pleases have them contact me…
Hi Teresa. So glad you liked it and your recipe changes sound amazing. Thanks for bringing the typo to our attention. It has been fixed.
I remember cooking something similar during Girl Scout camp 60+ years ago, except we layered the items in a rinsed out coffee can over embers. Delightful memories!
One of the things that has always irritated me a little is how do you check for doneness inside a sealed package? I have no intuition or knowledge of cooking. I simply follow a recipe sometimes it turns out OK and other times not what I imagined (I is still eaten though :-).
I hate these – until things. just tell me how long :-), I am a simple fella on his own. Not helpless, well I wish I was wealthy enough to be able to emply a cook but I think that is a universal wish.
The idea about preparing the meals and cooking them in advance, then freezing them is excellent. They’ll thaw while you’re traveling to your campsite and nobody will notice that all you’re doing is warming them over the open fire or a grill. My wife and I did this when we were campers and it works really well. These days, we consider roughing it to be a motel without a restaurant. 🙂
I love all of the ideas that have been presented. This shows how versatile this tin foil cooking is!
Frozen potatoes / has browns and frozen carrots are a great substitute for fresh. This way you can be sure the veggies are cooked when the meat is done. I like to use onion soup mix in my ground beef to bump up the flavor.
i like the idea but that’s not ground beef those are beef cubes
I am curious about your meat? What cut is that and does it change the cooking time at all?
You can use steak or hamburger. Just slice your steak thin or make your hamburger patty thin.
You can use hamburger or beef
Could I cook these in the oven if I use parchment I stead of foil? I try to not cook in foil of any kind, if at all possible.
You can typically use parchment in place of tinfoil. In this recipe, because it’s cooked on the grill, I’d be careful using parchment paper. If you prefer you can use it as a lining between the food and the foil
Thanks Bobbi!! I plan on using the oven, so the parchment won’t be a problem there. I never would have thought about using parchment between the foul and the food. This is such a smart solution for grilling. I’m excited now!