baking potatoes in campfire without aluminum foil?

[marija_jane]

I have read some various things about people concerned about using aluminum pans, foil, etc. for cooking, and have started to think I should avoid it. But searching the archives here for "aluminum foil" led to tons of suggestions to use it for various things, rather than information I thought I'd seen about why to avoid it.

I am going camping with a friend and we were thinking of baking potatoes in the campfire but I was concerned about the safety of using aluminum foil.
Does anyone know if an eco-friendly, sustainable, etc. and healthy way to bake potatoes in/on a campfire without aluminum foil?

Or words to relieve my fear about aluminum foil?

!

[Annie Mac]

You can bake a potato in the oven without tin foil, so the trick would simply be to avoid burning the potato up in the fire. In the oven, you oil and salt the potato and just pop it in. Using russets or other thick skinned, starchy potato is important. How about doing that, throwing it in a dutch oven and cooking it over the fire? I have never tried this, but think it would work. You might add a little rack in the dutch oven so the potatoes don't burn to the bottom.

I try to avoid aluminum too, but I figure once in a while, probably no big deal.

[LaughingHyena]

They come out wonderfully when cooked in a Dutch oven. The ones our friend makes are some of the best baked potatoes I've eaten.

[lil_earthmomma]

"A potato buried directly in coals of a fire cooks very nicely, with a mostly burned and inedible skin." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baked_potato

I remember reading in Farmer Boy (Laura Ingalls Wilder) how the children buried the potatoes in the hot ash/coals. Be careful, Almanzo gets and eye full of exploded potato, and the skins are definitely unedible with this method, but the insides are delicious! (We've never had a potato explode btw)

[Arduinna]

I love potatoes cook directly in the coals, awesome!

[Ellp]

My parents tell of when they were kids growing up in Asia, they'd wrap sweet potatoes in some wet banana or lotus leaves and bury them in a low fire. They'd come back from fishing and the potatoes would be ready to eat.