60-Minute Activity Plan: The Great Outdoor Cooking Challenge

A hands-on Scout cooking activity where teams plan, prepare and present a simple outdoor meal using a limited selection of ingredients.

This session isn’t about producing complicated camp recipes. Instead, it introduces young people to practical outdoor cooking, food hygiene, teamwork, planning and making sensible choices with limited resources.

Before You Start

Decide whether you’ll be using camping stoves, a suitable barbecue, or another approved cooking method. The activity can also be run indoors using normal cooking equipment if outdoor cooking isn’t practical.

Prepare ingredients in advance and check for allergies and dietary requirements.

Choose simple foods that can be cooked safely within the available time. Examples include vegetable wraps, pasta, simple soup, toasted sandwiches or foil-wrapped vegetables.

Keep ingredients straightforward. The activity is about learning how to cook outdoors, not creating a restaurant meal.

Have separate equipment for raw and cooked food where necessary, and make sure there is a suitable hand-washing or cleaning arrangement.

Safety

Cooking must be closely supervised throughout.

Follow your group’s procedures for the use of stoves, fires and cooking equipment. Only young people who are appropriately prepared and directly supervised should handle heat sources.

Keep fuel, flames and hot equipment away from clothing, bags and other combustible materials.

Establish a clear cooking area and prevent young people from running through it.

Food hygiene is equally important. Wash hands before preparing food, keep raw and cooked ingredients separate, and cook food thoroughly.

Use appropriate heatproof equipment and allow hot pans and cooking surfaces to cool before handling them.

Keep suitable first-aid provision available and know what to do in the event of a burn or other cooking-related injury.

0–10 Minutes: The Cooking Brief

Gather the teams together and introduce the challenge.

Tell them:

“You’re preparing food at camp. You have limited ingredients, limited time and a cooking method chosen by your leader. Your job is to create something simple, tasty and safe.”

Show the ingredients.

Ask:

“What could you make with these?”

Let the teams suggest ideas.

Then introduce the most important rule:

“Before you cook anything, you need a plan.”

Briefly discuss food hygiene and the safe working area.

10–20 Minutes: Plan the Meal

Give each team its ingredients.

Ask them to decide what they’re going to make and how they will prepare it.

They should think about:

What needs cooking?

What needs preparing first?

Which ingredients will take longest?

How will everyone get a job?

For Beavers, give them a fixed recipe with simple steps.

For Cubs, provide ingredients and let them choose between two or three meal ideas.

Scouts can be given greater freedom to design their own simple meal.

20–25 Minutes: Kitchen Setup

Before anyone starts cooking, teams prepare their workspace.

They need to organise ingredients, utensils and cooking equipment.

This might seem like a small part of the activity, but it’s an important outdoor skill.

A cluttered cooking area is harder to manage safely and makes it much easier to forget something.

Ask teams to show a leader their setup before moving to the cooking stage.

Use this moment to check that everyone understands the cooking method and safety arrangements.

25–45 Minutes: Cook

Now the practical work begins.

Let teams prepare and cook their meals.

Encourage everyone to have a role.

One person might prepare ingredients, another might manage equipment under supervision, while another keeps track of the recipe and timing.

Avoid taking over when something doesn’t go exactly according to plan.

If food is cooking too quickly, ask:

“What could you change?”

If the team is running out of time, ask:

“Which part of your plan could you simplify?”

This turns cooking into a genuine problem-solving activity.

Keep a close eye on food hygiene and heat sources throughout.

45–52 Minutes: The Camp Kitchen Review

When the food is ready, teams stop and clean their work areas before presenting their meals.

Each team has a minute to explain:

What did you make?

What was the hardest part?

What would you change next time?

For Scouts, ask them to explain one decision they made because of the limited ingredients or time.

This keeps the focus on learning rather than simply whether the food tastes good.

52–57 Minutes: Taste and Compare

If appropriate and safe, allow everyone to taste the completed food.

Take account of allergies, dietary requirements and cross-contamination.

Rather than asking simply which meal is “best”, give the group a few categories to consider:

Best use of ingredients

Best teamwork

Most practical camp meal

Best presentation

This means different teams can succeed for different reasons.

57–60 Minutes: Clean Down and Review

The final three minutes are deliberately important.

Teams clean equipment, dispose of waste appropriately and leave the cooking area safe.

Then ask:

“What would make outdoor cooking easier next time?”

Finish by reminding the group that good camp cooking isn’t just about the food.

It’s about planning, hygiene, safe equipment use, teamwork and leaving the site clean.

Adapting for Different Ages

Beavers

Keep the cooking simple.

Use a fixed recipe and let Beavers help with safe preparation tasks such as mixing, assembling or arranging ingredients.

A leader should manage the heat source and hot equipment.

Focus on food hygiene, teamwork and following instructions.

Cubs

Give Cubs more responsibility for preparing ingredients and organising their workspace.

Provide a small selection of ingredients and allow them to choose between a few possible meals.

They can also take responsibility for timing and cleaning up.

Scouts

Give Scouts more independence in planning their meal while maintaining appropriate supervision of heat sources.

Introduce a budget or ingredient limit.

You could also challenge them to create a meal suitable for a hiking or camping situation where weight, cooking time and washing-up all matter.

Leader Notes

Don’t underestimate the value of the planning and clean-up stages.

Young people often focus on the exciting part of outdoor cooking—the flame, stove or finished food—but effective camp cooking is mostly about preparation.

You can also make this activity more challenging without making it more complicated.

Give older Scouts a fixed number of ingredients, a maximum cooking time and limited cooking equipment. They then have to design a meal that is realistic under those constraints.

Another useful variation is to deliberately leave one common piece of equipment out and ask teams to adapt their plan.

This encourages flexibility and reinforces a useful camping lesson: things don’t always go exactly as expected.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the activity, young people should have had opportunities to:

Final Thought for Leaders

Outdoor cooking is much more than putting food over a flame.

It brings together preparation, practical skills, teamwork, hygiene and decision-making in one activity.

The best meal isn’t necessarily the most complicated one. It’s the one the team can prepare safely, cook successfully and clean up afterwards.

That is exactly the sort of practical confidence that can make camping more enjoyable as young people become more independent.