The Best Pie Irons for Camping (and What to Make in Them)

Why a pie iron is the best $25 you'll spend

Most camp gear is something you use to feed the kids. A pie iron flips that — it's the thing the kids use to feed themselves, which is the whole magic. They butter the bread, choose what goes inside, and hold it over the coals (with supervision), and somehow a toasted cheese sandwich they made beats anything off the camp stove. It's cast iron, so it's basically indestructible, and "mountain pie night" becomes the meal everyone remembers. For the same long-handle-over-the-coals fun at snack time, see our campfire popcorn popper.

How to use one

It couldn't be simpler:

• Butter the outside of two slices of bread (the sides that touch the iron).
• Lay one slice butter-side-down in the iron, add your fillings, top with the second slice butter-side-up.
• Close it, latch it, and trim any bread hanging over the edge so it seals.
• Toast in the coals, not the flames — a few minutes a side, peeking until it's golden. Flames char the outside while the middle stays cold.

The first one is always the test one. After that everybody dials in their timing.

Square or round, single or double?

• Square fits standard sliced bread with no wasted corners — our default, and what most families want.
• Round makes the classic mountain-pie shape, but you'll trim the corners off your bread.
• Single is one sandwich at a time; double does two at once, which matters a lot when three kids all want theirs right now.

Breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert

This is where it earns its space — one tool, every meal:

• Breakfast: scrambled eggs with cheese and ham, or an egg-dipped slice with cinnamon for campfire French toast.
• Lunch: the classic grilled cheese, ham and cheese, or a pizza pocket (sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni).
• Dinner: spoon in last night's camp chili with cheese, or taco filling for a crispy hand pie.
• Dessert: the original mountain pie — buttered bread and cherry or apple filling — or a s'mores version with chocolate and marshmallow.

For a full meal-by-meal guide — including pie iron pizza — see our easy pie iron recipes hub. It's a natural across all of it: breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Seasoning and care

Pie irons are cast iron, so treat them like the rest of your cast iron. Season before the first use (there's often a wax coating to burn off over the fire first), butter the bread every time so nothing sticks, and wipe them clean rather than scrubbing. Done right, one pie iron outlasts the kids who learned to cook on it.

A few honest tips

• Don't overfill — an overstuffed iron won't close or seal, and the filling oozes into the fire.
• Coals, not flames. Every burnt-outside-raw-inside mountain pie comes from impatience over open flame.
• Let it cool a moment before opening near little hands; the filling is molten.