Traditional hobo dinners consist of a burger patty that’s been salted, peppered and placed on top of sliced potatoes. This is a good, basic meal that will fill up hungry campers, but some families prefer a little more flavor. Mashed, not sliced potatoes are what they prefer with meatloaf, so you can make your own version of a hobo dinner that provides a sit down, Sunday dinner feel that you’ll enjoy for dinner while camping.
Preparing the meatloaf and potatoes before your trip makes this dish easy to cook at the campsite, and using mini foil pie pans for cooking and eating makes for super easy cleanup.
Ingredients
1 ½ lbs. ground beef
1 cup plain bread crumbs
3 TBSP. Worcestershire sauce
1 egg
¾ cup ketchup
½ TBSP salt
½ tsp. pepper
2 tsps. Minced garlic
1 small onion, minced
Directions
In a large bowl, mix all ingredients together until well combined. Wear food prep gloves and use your hands for fast and easy mixing, and then shape the mixture into 8 round patties.
You can use real mashed potatoes if you choose, but for convenience I used boxed mashed potatoes and make 6 cups, for eight ¾ cup servings.
I use two jars of beef gravy for this recipe, again for convenience, but if you have homemade gravy on hand you can use that too.
Spray 8 foil mini pie pans with non-stick cooking spray. Place one meatloaf patty in each tin. Spoon ¼ jar of gravy over each patty. Top with ¾ cup mashed potatoes, spreading them so that the entire patty and gravy are covered. Pat down the top to level the potatoes and compact the whole dish.
Wrap pie tins in foil twice. Place prepared tins on campfire grill over medium coals and cook for 15 minutes. Dish is ready when ground beef is no longer pink. Remove foil and serve.
Makes 8 hearty servings.
Tips
Freeze already made up tins and take them in your cooler if you don’t want to make these for a day or two.
Replace the minced onion with 2 tsps. Onion powder if you like onion flavor but don’t care for the texture of onions.
