Campfire Carne Asada Fries

Take your campfire dinner to a whole new level of awesome with these crowd-pleasing, stick to your ribs campfire carne asada fries. Sponsored by Idaho Potato Commission.

After teaching my girls cooking last year for my summer cooking camp, I wowed them with easy and delicious meals that their kids could help make. For this year’s camp, I knew I had to kick it up a notch and develop a menu that would really impress these 11-year old food connoisseurs.

So, I decided to take it outdoors with these Campfire Carne Asada Fries.

Why you have to make this recipe

I live in San Diego, where Mexican food gets influenced with California living. It is also the birthplace of carne asada fries. But, what are they??

Have you heard of poutine? If you don’t know, poutine is a dish that originates from Montreal, Quebec. It is basically french fries topped with gravy and cheese curds. Consider this dish to be the Mexican twist to poutine.

A bed of french fries topped with carne asada (Mexican steak), cheese and whatever extras you might find on nachos: guacamole, sour cream, salsa and cilantro.

I told my girls we would be making San Diego’s answer to poutine with this carne asada fries. And to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the National Park Service with the Idaho Potato Commission. And, we were going to make this dish outdoors. My girls were giddy with excitement.

Ingredients you need

There are several components to these carne asada fries. You have the meat, the potatoes and the yummy toppings. I broke down the ingredients so you can customize your fries to your own favorite flavors.

Carne asada ingredients

• Flap or skirt steak: Carne asada is a thin strip of meat. Although you could use flank or a flat iron steak, they are a bit thick and will cook longer than flap or skirt steak.
• Marinade ingredients: garlic, onion, fresh cilantro, extra virgin olive oil, lime juice, soy sauce
• Spices: cumin, salt, ground black pepper

French fries ingredients

• Russet potatoes: These brown skinned potatoes make the best french fries.
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Spices: garlic powder, chile powder, onion powder and salt.

Pico de gallo ingredients

• Tomato: When tomatoes are in season, I like to use colorful heirloom tomatoes. You can use any tomatoes, just choose ones that have flavor.
• Red onion: Although I prefer red onions when eating onions raw, you can also use any other onion you have on hand.
• Fresh cilantro: In this case, fresh is a must so please do not use dried cilantro.
• Jalapeño: Remove the seeds from pepper if you don’t like it spicy. You can also use serrano chiles for something more spicy or omit altogether.
• Lime juice: You can use lime or lemon juice
• Salt

Remaining toppings

• Guacamole
• Shredded cheese
• Sour cream
• Radishes
• More cilantro!

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Step-by-step directions

If you are camping, you can marinate your skirt steak in resealable bags before you leave home. All the garnishes can be made ahead of time or you can prepare them at camp, it’s up to you.

But the cooking, well that is all done over hot coals, whether you are using store-bought coals or wood embers from your campfire. For the sake of my camp and the 85ºF weather we had going on that day, I lit up charcoal in my chimney.

1. Add garlic, onion, cilantro, olive oil, lime juice, soy sauce, cumin, 1 teaspoon salt and black pepper in a blender and pulse until coarsely pureed. Place steak into a large resealable bag, pour in marinade, zip shut and squish around to make sure all of meat is well coated. Refrigerate 4-6 hours, or up to overnight.

2. To make pico de gallo, combine tomato, red onion, cilantro, jalapeño (if using) lime juice and salt. Stir and reserve.

3. Peel and cut potatoes into wedges. Add potatoes in a large bowl and evenly coat with olive oil. Season potatoes with garlic powder, chile powder, salt and onion powder.

4. Using heavy duty foil, cut foil squares and place 5-10 potato wedges in each square. You do not want to over-stuff the foil packets. you want enough room for steam to go between the potato wedges. The number of fries depends on the size of the wedges and the size of the square.

The potatoes do not necessarily get super crispy with this method, so do not cut your potatoes super thin. I like big, fat potato wedges and they made a hearty base for the carne asada and all the toppings that would accompany the fries.

5. Grab 2 opposite sides of the foil square and pull up and above the potatoes. Roll the foil together down to just above the potatoes, about ½-inch. Grab the unrolled sides of the foil and twist each to itself until tight, then curl the tip up.

To cook potatoes over a grill, heat grill over medium-high heat and place foil packets on the grill. Rotate the packets and turn them over to cook evenly. Cook until potatoes are fork tender, about 20 minutes. Be careful opening the foil packets as you will release a lot of steam!

To cook potatoes over coals, fill chimney with coals and place in a fire ring or fire safe container. Add kindling or newspaper scraps underneath chimney and light it up. When flames have receded and coals are orange, dump coals into fire ring in one layer. Place foil packets in the coals and rotate the packets and turn them over to cook evenly. Cook until potatoes are fork tender, about 20 minutes. Be careful opening the foil packets as you will release a lot of steam!

6. To cook carne asada over a grill, heat on high and grill steak about 5 minutes each side.

To cook carne asada over coals, fill chimney with coals and place in a fire ring or fire safe container. Add kindling or newspaper scraps underneath chimney and light it up. When flames have receded and coals are orange, dump coals into fire ring in one layer. Place your grate over the hot coals and and grill steak about 5 minutes each side, or until cooked to desired doneness.

7. Transfer steak to a cutting board and allow to rest for a few minutes before chopping. Chop into small bite-sized pieces.

8. To serve, place potato wedges on your plate and top with carne asada. Top with pico de gallo and guacamole, sour cream, julienned radishes, shredded cheese and wedges of lime.

Recipe tips and FAQs

As you could expect with nachos, carne asada fries are naked without the toppings! My girls made all the toppings for the carne asada fries. They happily piled on the homemade baby heirloom pico de gallo, the homemade guacamole, sour cream, shredded cheese and slivers of radishes.

This is one meal that my whole family whole heartedly love to eat. If you serve it buffet style, everyone can assemble their own portions, adding their own favorite toppings as they wish.

Fries aren’t reserved just for carne asada. You can do this with grilled chicken as well. My family loves

Need more campfire recipes? Then check out my new cookbook, The Camp & Cabin Cookbook (Countryman Press 2018). I have 100 recipes that are all prepared outdoors and over fire using multiple techniques. Learn more about my new book and where you can get your copy here!

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Disclosure: I was paid a stipend to develop a recipe cooking Idaho Potatoes in the great outdoors. The opinions I expressed in this post are 100% all mine. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t blog about it.