What are your best tips/meals for cooking while camping?
Posted: March 28th, 2011 | Author: Mitch | Filed under: Camping Tips | Tags: chips, cold cuts, cooking meals, nightmare, sandwiches, Sightseeing, snack ideas | 9 Comments »My family has gone camping once (2yrs ago) and it was fun, but I found that I was not nearly organized as I thought I would be when it came to cooking meals. We tried packing lunches when we were out and about sightseeing and such, but everyone was so sick of cold cuts/sandwiches and chips…Dinners were a nightmare and breakfast a pain. We are taking another trip this summer and again we plan to camp. I hope to be better prepared this time around. Do you have any tips or meal/snack ideas for me? Thanks.
Breakfast: Instant Oatmeal n Hot Chocolate(or coffee). That way all I have to do is boil a teapot of water and I’m full and ready to hit the trails.
Lunch: grab what you can depending on where your daily adventures take you
Supper: brats, or any other meat you can cook on a stick, and baked beans, cooked right in the can
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I find the best thing to do is spend most of your time planning your menu with the family. Sit down and make a menu for each day you are going. That will save a lot of hassle in the long run. Specially get the kids involved in the process. Make sure you include lots of snacks for throughout the day.
Some specific foods that are easy to make and liked by mostly everyone. Grilled cheese sandwiches with ham. Chili – after all who doesn’t like chili. Breakfast Burritos (scrambled eggs, cheese, ham, and whatever vegetable you can get your family to eat). Meat on a stick – pretty much any meat stuck on a long clean stick or hot dog roaster, let the kids roast it over an open fire. Boy’s specially love this – brings out the caveman in all. Make sure the meat is cooked well, you can help by cutting all the meat into small cubes as this will help cooking times and ensure it being fully cooked. Marinade meat first in some Italian salad dressing or marinade of your choice for a few hours before roasting. Marinade it after you cut it up into small cubes. Anything, and I mean almost anything, tastes better when cooked over an open fire.
Good Luck and Have Fun.
For organization you can get a plastic storage bin and cut dividers out of lexan, plexiglass or just cardboard to fit the box and items you want to carry, and attach the dividers inside with duct tape. This makes accessing and replacing the kitchen gear much easier The bin I use stacks nicely with my coolers and grill/stove so I can easily use a folding luggage cart if needed to transport from my car to a nearby campsite. You could also build or buy a Chuck Box for organizing your kitchen gear.
Although using reusable plastic or metal dishes and bowls is greener and more economical than using disposables, the latter are quicker and more convenient, and there’s not much difference in storage space for a one or two week supply. Ultimately you need to decide what is right for you.
What do you normally do for breakfast when not on vacation? Most families I know rarely cook breakfast at home except for weekends, instead relying on cold or hot cereals, breakfast bars and items you can heat in a toaster oven or microwave. Anything you can heat in an oven or microwave can be wrapped in aluminum foil or placed in a dutch oven and heated over the coals from a campfire or on a BBQ grill. If a campfire is too much to deal with in the morning, you can bring a camping oven. Coleman makes a folding oven that will work with a two-burner camp stove, and another that is self-fired using propane canisters. Camp Chef makes a combination two-burner stove and oven that runs off of propane, and they are frequently available at good prices at Costco.
Same question for lunch, and probably the same answer. Most people I know fall into three categories, sometimes varying by day: 1) cold sandwich or salad, 2) leftovers or frozen dinner heated in the microwave, 3) eat-out or take-away. #1 and #3 are easy, #2 is not so difficult, again relying on the same measures listed above for breakfast.
This leaves dinner, and frankly I love to grill, so that’s generally not something we have a problem with while camping. Cooking veggies in foil packets with a little water, olive oil or butter is easy enough, and baked potatoes in the campfire is simple. Pasta, rice and beans get boiled on the camp stove. Once again, stuff that you would normally bake at home would be grilled at camp, optionally wrapped in foil or in a Dutch oven. A Dutch oven is also nice for making stew, chili, casseroles and the like.
The biggest challenges I face at camp are cooler space, counter space and washing the dishes. I limit myself to two coolers: one for beverages and one for everything else. I’ll sometimes use canned or dehydrated goods instead of fresh to avoid relying on the cooler. For counter space I setup my kitchen/dining area so it’s no more than a few steps from the kitchen to the dining table. I use a fold-up camp kitchen I found at Camping World for around $60. I do most of my cooking on a Coleman Grill/Stove combo unit, but if I have the whole family with me I’ll bring a dual-burner stove and a separate table-top grill.
The best solution I’ve found for wash-ups is to use a smaller plastic tub that fits inside one of the divided spaces in my larger "chuck box" organizer, a folding dish rack and a shower bag. I use the small tub as a sink, the shower bag to rinse after washing, and the dish rack to air dry. Once dry things go back into their places in the chuck box. Short of bringing a dishwasher, this is the quickest method I’ve seen for doing the dishes.
Walking Tacos! Get a little bag of fritos for everyone in your gang. Bring some ground beef (or whatever ground meat you like) and scramble it with some taco seasoning. Open the chip bags and sprinkle some of the beef into each bag. Add standard taco toppings to the bags, lettuce, salsa, peppers, cheese. Put them right into the little bag and eat them with a fork! Yummy!
If you are camping near your car, you can pack and eat the same foot that you would at home. Here are some things we prepare for meals when we are out:
Breakfast:
Scrambled eggs with veggies
Coffee
Campfire bread (Pillsbury crescent dough wrapped on a stick and roasted over a fire)
Oatmeal
Fruit
Lunch
Sandwiches
Trail Mix
Burgers, brats, or hot dogs over a fire.
Dinner
Beer
Dutch oven pizza
Burgers
Chili
Grilled Salmon
Dutch oven peach cobbler
Peach Cobbler
Chocolate mouse (You can melt chocolate near the fire, and make whipped cream from scratch.)
Personally, my favorite cooking tool is a dutch oven over a fire.
On my worst camping experience, I fought a wildland fire in 104-degree heat for three days. The Forest Service cook who sent dry cold-cut sandwiches and bags of potato chips out to the line was almost murdered in his sleep. We were all victims of horrible meal-planning. After three days, the firefighters were all dehydrated and sick. Our crew leader abandoned the line. We were glad to finish digging the break and evacuate to some healthy food. On our way out of the fire, we saw workers harvesting fresh, ripe peaches in the valley orchards. We were furious that our leaders had failed to provide us with more fresh fruit when it was closer than the remote grocery stores where they bought white bread and sliced meat.
When you go camping, focus on fruits, vegetables, and nuts because these are most likely to be forgotten. If you are backpacking, trail food can still include cans of mandarin oranges, craisins, apples, and frozen fruit juice in water bottles. While car-camping, potatoes wrapped in heavy-duty aluminum foil can be baked in red coals of a fire. Cut whole pineapples and place in containers packed in ice. Use lots of peppers, onions, salsa, tomato, and mushrooms in scrambled eggs, burrito mix, or whole wheat pasta. Stir-fry shrimp, pork, or beef bits with lots of veggies in a ginger terriyaki sauce over rice. Steam sweet corn with additional sugar and butter sauce or brocolli in a butter and cheese sauce. Prepare fresh salad. Drink gallons of fruit juices. Prepare mint tea to warm-up in the morning. Mix half-and-half lemonade over ice with a blush wine to prepare for sleep at night. Remind yourself every day: dehydration is misery.
Dowload Kindle for PC, then put some camping recipe books on your laptop to take along with you on your next camping trip. Many of the books are only $0.99 each, so it is hard to go wrong.
Great camp meals are one of the big items folks remember and it takes one with a heart of service and a desire to do all the planning and prep to make it happen your asking here shows you have that gift.
To start the more you can prep at home the easier it is to put a meal together in the field. Any meats you bring always taste better when marinated and that’s something you can start the process at home specially for the first dinner where fresh is best.
Another big point is the less pots and pans you use the less dishes the more time you have to enjoy and no one likes KP duty on a camp out. So think of meals you can cook by using a camp fire and tin foil. Use quality thick tin foil and paper cups and quality plastic forks spoons knives. Have plenty of paper towels on hand.
Freeze everything ahead of time so food lasts longer in the cooler those marinated steaks can be frozen after they have been marinated for an hour or two and then you can have steak another day out. And your ice will last longer too.
Drinks are important because dehydration is always an issue and you actually stay warmer at night when you have been well hydrated. Sodas fill you up with empty calories and gas with out fully satisfying your thirst. So make sun tea and lemonade, Adults can have some wine with their meal, if you partake it helps to unwind in moderation, but drinking it in a paper cup is not so romantic so get the plastic wine glasses and bring some of those little umbrellas with a cherry too add to the cup to liven up the gathering, kids can have one in the tea or lemonade and still be entertained.
Theme parties for each dinner starts the fun and if you plan ahead and your group is informed ahead of time they can bring outfits or a funny hat that adds to the fun, of course Luau’s are a common theme for camping as are cowboy and others be creative and have the kids do a skit for the dinner gathering. A real fun theme to do for a camp out is a murder mystery dinner!
http://entertaining.about.com/cs/dinnerparties/a/murdermystery.htm
here is a link for menu planning
http://www.boyscouttrail.com/boy-scouts/boy-scout-recipes.asp
Nightmares and pain? Aaah you poor little sweetie. C’mon, surprise ‘em.
Hehe.One al fresco banquet coming up……
Hope you like cooking………..and reading. There’s a lot of it
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100724174346AAi78F8 . .. . .