This recipe is Lodge Cast Iron’s own Campfire Buttermilk Biscuits, published on lodgecastiron.com and baked in a camp Dutch oven set over coals rather than a kitchen oven. Lodge rates it a beginner recipe, and it’s built around ingredients and a coal setup most car campers can put together without much extra gear.
Ingredients
- ½ cup butter
- 2½ tablespoons granulated sugar
- 1 beaten egg
- ¾ cup buttermilk
- ¼ cup club soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 5 cups Bisquick biscuit mix
- ¼ cup melted butter, for the top of the biscuits
Method
- Grease a Lodge Dutch oven and get it heating with 8 coals underneath and 17 coals on the lid.
- Combine all the ingredients and knead the dough by hand until it’s smooth. Pat it out to about ¾ inch thick on waxed paper, then cut biscuits with a biscuit cutter.
- Place the biscuits in the bottom of the hot Dutch oven and bake 12–15 minutes, until golden brown, rotating the oven and the lid periodically so heat doesn’t concentrate in one spot and scorch the bottom or top. Because most of the heat is coming from the coals on the lid, these bake mostly from the top down, so don’t be surprised if the tops brown before the bottoms feel fully set.
- Pull the biscuits off the heat and brush them with the remaining ¼ cup of melted butter while they’re still hot.
Why 8 Coals Under, 17 on Top
Lodge’s recipe calls for a specific, uneven coal split — roughly twice as many coals on the lid as underneath — rather than an even split top and bottom. For a baking recipe like this one, that’s normal: Dutch oven baking leans on top heat to brown and set food from above, closer to how a conventional oven’s broiler element sits above the food than below it. The exact coal counts here are specific to Lodge’s own camp Dutch oven and this recipe’s target temperature; for the general principles behind why coal count and top-versus-bottom placement change the internal temperature, and how to adjust for a different size Dutch oven or a hotter or cooler target, see this site’s Dutch Oven Coal Chart guide rather than re-deriving it here.
A Few Practical Notes
Rotating the oven and lid isn’t optional if the goal is even biscuits. Camp Dutch oven coals rarely burn evenly around the ring, so a hot spot under one edge of the lid will scorch whatever sits directly beneath it if the lid never moves. Turning the base a quarter turn and the lid a quarter turn in the opposite direction every few minutes spreads that unevenness out instead of concentrating it in one spot.
Because Bisquick is a pre-mixed baking mix rather than flour, baking powder, and fat measured out separately, this recipe comes together fast — there’s no separate step for cutting cold butter into flour, which is normally where a biscuit recipe takes the most care. That trade-off is part of why Lodge rates this a beginner recipe: the technique that actually needs attention is coal management, not pastry work.
Waxed paper for rolling out the dough matters more at a campsite than in a kitchen. It keeps the sticky dough off a picnic table or tailgate surface, and it means less cleanup when water on hand is limited. If waxed paper isn’t available, a large cutting board or a clean camp table works instead, though the dough is soft enough that it may need a little extra biscuit mix dusted on the surface to stop it sticking.
Lodge markets these as a breakfast-by-the-campfire recipe and suggests serving them under gravy, topped with butter and jam, or alongside a bowl of chili — all of which lean on the biscuits being plain enough to pair with something savory or sweet. Because the recipe makes 12 to 16 biscuits from a single batch, it’s sized for a group rather than a couple of campers, so halving the ingredients (and adjusting down to a smaller Dutch oven and fewer coals, per the site’s coal chart) is worth doing for a smaller trip rather than baking a full batch and reheating leftovers over the next few days.
Keep reading
- Lazy Peach Cobbler in a Camp Dutch Oven (Lodge Recipe)
- Dutch Oven Coal Chart: Controlling Heat Over Coals
- Cast Iron on the Grill: Lodge Use, Seasoning and Cleaning
- Campfire Doughboys: KOA’s Biscuit-on-a-Stick Recipe