Hi, I’m Manon Lapierre, and I cook over fire every chance I get. The Fire Cook is where I share what I’ve learned doing it: at a campsite fire pit, on a grill set right over the flames, in a kamado or a Kudu, on the backyard barbecue on a Tuesday night, and soon in a wood-fired pizza oven. If it can be cooked over fire, it belongs here.
🔥 Why I cook over fire
About ten years ago, my husband and I bought an Airstream and started camping for real. I brought a Big Green Egg along at first, then realized that cooking right over the fire was what I loved most. So we ditched the traditional barbecue and he installed a grill directly over our fire. It’s been our main kitchen outdoors ever since.
Fire isn’t an oven. The heat moves, the wood changes everything, and the same dish never cooks exactly the same way twice. That’s what I love about it, and it’s what I try to teach here: reading the coals and the flames, not just watching the clock.
📖 The book behind the site: En Feu!
Those years of cooking over fire became En Feu! Enfin bien manger en camping (Éditions Cardinal, 2021), my French-language cookbook for eating well while camping. It won the Gold medal at the Taste Canada Awards 2022 (single-subject cookbook category) and became a Quebec bestseller.
The Fire Cook brings those recipes to English-speaking cooks for the first time, and takes them beyond the campsite. The book was written for camping; this site is for every fire, including the one in your backyard.
👩🍳 My experience
- Cookbook author: four published cookbooks, three of them Quebec bestsellers, including En Feu!
- Barbecue on TV: competitor on the Quebec barbecue show Fous du BBQ (2019), and on the cooking shows Meilleur que le chef (2017) and Je suis chef (2018). I also hosted a camping food web series on Noovo Moi.
- Bread and wood-fired baking: trained at the King Arthur Baking School in Vermont (Artisan Bread II intensive) and with baker Nicolas Supiot at the École du Vivant in Brittany. That’s where my love of bread from a wood-fired oven began.
- Food creator since 2015: I founded La petite bette, a French-language cooking site and YouTube channel, where I develop the recipes and host the videos.
🏕️ What you’ll find here
- Campfire cooking: meals that travel well, what to prep at home, and how to cook on a campsite fire pit.
- Grill over the fire: steaks, fish, vegetables and flatbreads cooked right over the flames.
- Backyard fires and barbecues: every recipe tells you how to make it on a barbecue, in a fire pit or at home.
- Cast iron and Dutch oven: stews, breads and desserts baked in the coals.
- Wood-fired oven: pizza and bread recipes, coming soon.
🧪 How the recipes are made
- They come from En Feu! Every recipe was developed and cooked over fire for the book, then translated into English.
- Quantities, times and heat are the ones I actually use. I tell you what to look for (flame height, coal bed, colour, sound) as much as how many minutes.
- I keep cooking them. I’m re-cooking recipes over our fire and re-shooting them, and I update a recipe when readers ask questions or when I find a better way.
A question, or a recipe that didn’t turn out? Leave a comment under the recipe. I read every one.
🧯 Fire safety
Cooking over fire is wonderful, and it’s still fire. Follow local fire bans and campground rules, keep water or an extinguisher close, never leave a fire unattended, and put it out completely before you leave. When in doubt about meat, use a thermometer.
🔍 Transparency
- Photos: many are by Quebec photographer Jimmy Hamelin, shot for En Feu! The others are ours, taken around our own fire as we re-cook the recipes.
- Advertising: The Fire Cook is supported by ads, which keep the recipes free.
- Partnerships: any collaboration with a brand is clearly indicated in the post.
- Translation and AI: the recipes were written and cooked in French for En Feu!, and translated into English with the help of AI tools, which I also use to organize and revise texts. The recipes, the cooking and the opinions are mine, and I review every page before it goes live.
🤝 Who’s behind The Fire Cook
Manon Lapierre: author, recipe developer and cook. Lionel du Souich, my husband: videographer, designer and our official firestarter. The Fire Cook is published by Bette Studios inc., the company we founded together in Quebec.
Our two Portuguese water dogs, Rio and Shelby, never miss a campfire. And our next chapter: a seaside studio-home in Gaspésie, Quebec, with a wood-fired oven and fire cooking workshops.
For collaborations, use the contact page. I hope you enjoy playing with fire as much as I do. Have fun, and be safe!
— Manon