Camping Food

Cafe Society
1

There are plenty of options for camping food. Fresh in a cooler (or refrigerator if you have an rv or camper) to dried, vacuum packed etc.

Are you a camping* enthusiast and if so what sort of food do you take? Do you dry your food to prolong shelf life or make it easier to transport? Do you perhaps purchase prepackaged “mre” type provisions?

*by camping I really mean any sort of temporary recreational living in portable lodging, whether out in some sort of wilderness or in a KOA campground or maybe your cousin’s back yard.

2

Growing up, our family did a lot of outdoor rec. Camping food was usually freeze dried and lightweight. Supplemental food was fish, squirrels, grouse, and other available prey.

3

After the few times I’ve been camping, it seems we always overestimate. My new criteria for food is weight. I joke that I won’t be taking any food at all next time because it’s not worth carrying it.
Seriously, though, couscous and baker’s chocolate would be a starting point.

4

Camping in and around cars is simple. Just go to the grocery store and buy things that will stay edible if stored in an ice chest or a storage tub, and are easy to cook on a stove top. Mac and cheese, canned soup, minute rice, harder fruits like apples and oranges, more durable veggies like carrots, onions. Experience will tell you what you like to eat out of the trunk of a car, and how much time you want to spend cooking outside. I did this for decades, we never vacationed any other way.

Where it gets challenging is backpacking, where all your food is hauled on your back for many miles. Cans and most fresh foods are out (mac and cheese still works, as does ramen soups). There’s books and websites about this. It’s pretty specialized.

5

The dehydrated food-in-a-bag is fine (you are not going to be eating nothing but for months on end, right?) You do need a source of clean water and some type of portable stove to boil it. Throw in your energy bars, trail mix, instant coffee, whatever you like (see those websites with lists @Ulfreida mentioned).

6

I just call room service. Mind you, my idea of “camping” is staying in a motel without cable.

7

Camping, when you are any substantial (1+ hour) distance away from additional supplies always (ok, IMHO) boils down to one thing: Water. Many, many moons ago when I was in Boy Scouts, and we went camping, the heaviest single thing I carried was water, and it adds up FAST. I mean, a lot of the foods mentioned are definitely ‘water-added’ options. Especially the light-weight stuff.

And if you’re camping and need water to cook your food, standard drinking, and offset climate based loss of moisture (growing up in Southern NM means you planned for at least 1.5x normal water needs for your activity level) - 48 hours away from ‘base’ was at least 2 gallons (allowing for fudge factor).

So mostly we went with dried foods - jerky, dried fruit, nuts. Normally we’d leave in the morning (cooler). Hike 2-3 hours, then make camp, do Scout things, make one ‘real’ meal with canned beans, camp biscuits in out cups, and hot-dogs-onna-stick (mid 80s, what do you expect?). Overnight at the camp, more Scout things in the early-to-mid morning and then hike back. Done by mid afternoon. Maybe 30 hours total away from the cars or other source of supplies. And 2 gallons of water gone, with 4 meals of dried ‘food’.

I don’t camp these days. :slight_smile:

IF I did, it would be car camping, with a well stocked cooler and many, many gallons of H2O. At which point, the biggest issues are the number of fires/burners you have available to cook on, which in my case would be a single burner coleman style and my cast-iron dutchie on coals - so probably fresh Dutchie bread, clafouti, stewed green chili pork made from my homemade green chili pork jerky with beer and cheese, and an a can or two of good baked beans for the history of it all.

But honestly, if you’re car camping, it’s easier to make 70-80% of the dishes ahead of time, bring them done (or nearly so) in your chiller of choice, and just reheat and serve. As when I was a scout, maybe plan for one ‘big’ meal that you cook on site for the event of it all, but most of the time… it’s just more work.

8

Car camping: We’d make a pot of spaghetti and meatballs or sausage slices and after it cooled, it’d go into a gallon ziplock to be frozen solid. Come packing day it would go in the cooler as a large ice cube, with the steaks, chicken, beers and what have you, along with ice. Toward the end of the week it would be mostly defrosted and most of the other food was gone, so it would be an easy reheat meal.

Bike trip: delis, taquerias, and stores, along with any snack bars. Occasionally a dehydrated meal.

Backpacking: dehydrated meals, crackers, nuts, dried fruit, energy bars.

9

That’s really roughing it. Aren’t you worried about missing the release of a new season of a half decent series?

10

For camping - by which I mean something like car-camping - it’s a mix of canned goods, dehydrated, and stuff that doesn’t need refrigeration.

For backpacking it was dehydrated food, baby - and as much water as I could carry.

Planning on a car-camping trip this summer in fact. The plan is to bring some dehydrated (my preferred brand is Mountain House), quite a bit of canned, some bread and fruits/vegetables, and water. Also tea and sugar. We will have a cooler, but want to minimize what really requires cooling. Also, I have a co-worker with chickens and eggs that are not washed prior to storage do not require immediate refrigeration and can be kept at room temperature, as our European members probably already know. (Of course, you don’t want to store them too long, they don’t last forever). The plan is also to drive into town at least one day to do laundry and grab a meal at a restaurant because we’re old farts with nothing to prove.

11

The biggest reason I decided not to camp any more after decades of it was just the sheer amount of planning and organization and fuss that went into eating. Even the very easiest we did, which was car camping, requires assembling a whole abbreviated kitchen of goods and utensils. And I was the only person in the family who ever did it, no one else was interested.

Then there was that time outside Banff when the dog got sick from the kibble we bought when we ran out of the brand brought from home, and we checked into a motel suite with a kitchen so I could care for him. It was heaven, having a real kitchen! It was a kind of watershed event. The next trip we stayed in a cabin in the Sierras and did day hikes. No more camping.

12

They don’t mind you driving tent stakes into the floor?

13

We’re talking about backpacking in Colorado next summer. We’ve done it before, but that was about ten years ago.

14

Take out chinese for the first night - freeze it, wrap it in a space blanket, dine sumptuously for the first night. After that, lotsa gorp, crackers, time fishing and catching, dried eggs. It worked in Wyoming, not only Colorado.

15

Not so much the tent stakes…it’s the campfire.

In the 60s I had to be cool, and “with it,” and “natural” and pretend I liked camping (and didn’t like bras or makeup). My first honeymoon was a camping trip. Ugh (to the trip and the marriage). By the end of the 70s I could admit I wanted a real shower every day, a real bed, no bugs, a good-fitting bra, and a nice tinted moisturizer,

But I like hearing about others’ camping experiences. So carry on.

16

To paraphrase a comic who’s name I don’t recall:

17

Pretty much. Where we camp is only like 20 minutes away from supermarkets, so what I bring from home is my collection of spices, kitchen knife, cutting board, cooking kettle, tripod, cooler. There is water available on the KOA campground. For me, camping is mostly an excuse to cook outside over a hardwood fire. We just went last weekend and we had campfire/open pit grilled baby back ribs for lunch and the usual Hungarian goulash soup for dinner (the latter is our tradition.) The night before (we arrived late) we just cooked up some hot dogs and sausages. (And s’mores, of course, for the kids.)
It’s more of a Camping Lite experience, to be honest.

18

When I went backpacking I didn’t carry water, I carried a filtration device. You can boil it or carry chlorine tablets, but pumping it through a filter is the modern way to do it. Carrying water is crazy hard, I don’t think I ever carried water even backpacking in the 1970’s.

19

For drive-in camps, there’s no reason to purchase bespoke freeze-dried special foods. They are expensive and loaded with sodium and chemicals, and for the most part have a cloying sameness to the flavors despite the promising names. “Eat as fresh as you can as long as you can.” Established campgrounds usually have a fire ring where regulations permit, (if not necessarily firewood gathering) if you bring your own charcoal or briquettes you can make just about anything you make at home with a cast iron Dutch Oven or two. Nod your head “yes”, fresh bread, pies, cobblers, stews, casseroles, pizza, you name it. You will be a hit, trust me.

For long distance hiking and laying in caches for resupply the freeze-dried packaged meals are convenient, but even then depend on a reliable source of water. If you’re carrying your own drinking water as well, as in the high desert areas then there isn’t much point to freeze-dried or dehydrated foods. Nor are you probably walking very far as water weighs 8.3 pounds to the gallon, and on the rough estimate of requiring a gallon a day, a 5 day trip would, as Colin Fletcher once remarked “Just about takes the joy out of walking”.

Instead of laying out a planned menu - “On day 4, lunch will consist of…” I’ve decided extensive meal planning is too much of a hassle.

20

Not food, but for equipment one thing we do is bring a grill grate off a barbecue, then you can put that over the grate on the fire pit if your site has one. Then you can grill directly over the fire. Foil also comes in handy. You can wrap food in foil then set the foil on the grill or find a nice place in the coals (potatoes do very nicely this way). No cleaning greasy pans, etc. We’ll take a couple fresh items - rack of ribs, tri tip and such- and cook those over the fire the first couple days, then move on to cans and dried stuff.