What are your favorite food to take camping?
Posted: April 8th, 2011 | Author: Mitch | Filed under: Camping Recipes | Tags: couple days, fresh foods, refrigeration | 4 Comments »i really prefer fresh foods over dehydrated or food that doesn’t need refrigeration. something that can be kept in a small cooler with a block of ice for a couple days and hold up.
Freshly cut pineapple and mandarin oranges. Ruby red grapefruit in March. Honey crisp apples in November. Ripe June strawberries sprinkled with sugar. Fall blueberries. Spreadable feta cheese over brown rice and seaweed chips. Crisp baby carrots. Frozen prawns and lobster tails grilled and drizzled with melted butter and dusted in garlic salt. Freshly smoked beef ribs with a dark molasses and brown sugar barbecue sauce dripping from the bones. A bottle of blush wine with lemonade poured over ice cubes to drink after returning from the summit of a fourteen-thousand-foot peak at the end of a hot August day.
Fresh fruits, steak, chicken or whatever I can catch and kill. Freeze everything you can before you put them in the ice chest it will give you an extra day or two. Here is a link to menu planning suggestions
http://www.rei.com/expertadvice/articles/planning+menu.html
@MM you made me break into my lunch early!
I like to prepare some of my meals at home in advance and freeze them in vacuum-pack food storage bags. At camp I can drop one into boiling water for around 15-20 minutes while doing something else, then open and eat. Chili, stew, paella, and many other dishes are great this way. Steaks, chops, seafood and poultry breasts can also be vacuum-packed and frozen, extending the time they last in a cooler, and removed a few hours in advance to thaw. Vacuum packing makes the food air- and water-tight. Use a separate cooler for frozen items and stack in layers with the first-needed items on top, last-needed on the bottom. Using dry ice (wrapped in newspaper) will keep things frozen longer. If you can’t or don’t want to get dry ice, used sealed ice packs or disposable soda/water bottles refilled 3/4 with tap water and frozen instead of regular ice. This will prevent accumulation of melt water that will speed the defrosting process.
There are some dehydrated meals that are better than others. For a long time my family enjoyed Mountain House Beef Stew. But either their recipe or our tastes changed, as the last time we had some it was horrid. Earlier this month I tried Backpacker’s Pantry Santa Fe Chicken and it was pretty good. My complaint is that a single serving doesn’t provide sufficient calories for an active adult, and with all the packaging, they are relatively bulky.
Peanut butter, unsalted multi-grain crackers, various types of jerky and air-dried sausages, hard cheese, dried fruits and nuts, instant oatmeal, whole grain rice, dried beans, broth packets, and breakfast cereals with powdered milk (an acquired taste) are staple foods while backpacking.
Rule #3 – EAT WELL.
(There are five rules of camping)
We cook a lot with Dutch ovens; breakfasts, dinner, and deserts.
Meat should/can be frozen ahead of time to cut down on the need for ice in the cooler.
Blend eggs ahead of time and store in a recycled plastic jar, plastic egg cartons are not an efficient use of space in the cooler, and the cardboard cartons soak up water and get soggy.
Apples are popular with my Scouts, they don’t require refrigeration and can be eaten "strait up", dipped in peanut butter or caramel dip (both do not require refrigeration), or roasted on a stick over a fire and then dipped in melted butter and sprinkled with Cinnamon and sugar.
Fresh corn on the cob can be roasted on the grill in or out of the husks.
Fruit such as pineapple, plums, peaches, and bananas do not require cooler space and are delicious grilled and drizzled with a sauce made of maple syrup and sour cream.