One thing you can do is to pre-cook something like red beans and rice with sausage, freeze it in some ziplocks, and then reheat it at the campsite. With it frozen, it helps keep the cooler cold until you end up eating it. Don’t do anything that’s too liquid-y (like gumbo) or else it may leak when it thaws.
Since, as others have noted, the OP seems to be looking for shelf-stableness and convenience, they may want to consider the MRE. I see MREs have gone up in price quite a bit since I bought a 24-pack about 5 years ago. I got a great deal back then, which broke down to about $5 per MRE. Now they appear to run on Amazon for around $11 per MRE.
Still, with around 1300 calories in a typical MRE, $11 per MRE works out to less than a penny per calorie. Compare that to freeze-dried meals made for campers. This one is $18 for only 500 calories- 3.6 cents per calorie. This one is a little better at around $10 for 600 calories, but that still breaks down to around 1.6 cents per calorie. And those are freeze-dried meals-- you still have to boil and add water.
MRE entrees, on the other hand, do not need rehydrating, and come with a nifty heating pouch that you add a bit of non-heated water to, and a chemical reaction creates heat to warm the entree up. And (most of) the entrees are surprisingly tasty for a shelf-stable product. Also, MREs come with various snacks, sides, protein bars, candy, etc. in addition to the entree. One MRE goes a long way.
Maybe the biggest drawback with MREs is the amazing amount of garbage they create-- things are packaged within packages within packages.
All valid points however please allow me to introduce you to the Humanitarian Daily Ration. They are similar to an MRE but there are distinct differences. First, they require no heating and indeed do not come with a heater – they’re designed to be eaten cold straight out of the pouch. There are 2 main entrees in each pack plus several sides for about 2500 calories per pack. They don’t come with a drink mix or coffee or TP or chewing gum or Tabasco or other similar accouterments, it’s just food – lots of calorie dense food. They are designed to be accessible to as many people as possible so they are all vegetarian and have as few potential allergens as possible. One pack is designed to be a day’s worth of food.
They’re also about $3 per pack instead of the ~$10-$15 per pack for an MRE or ~$10 for a Mountain House meal.
I keep a few at work for power outages. They taste… well, not good necessarily but not horrible. Passable, perhaps? The price is right, for sure. Steve1989 did a review of one on YouTube; it’s worth checking out if you’re bored. I advocated for MRE’s or Mountain House upthread because those are better known but personally I’d take a few HDR’s on a camping trip and save the Mountain House (which I prefer over an MRE) for a last-day treat.
Interesting, I had heard of HDRs but thought they were more similar to MREs-- did not realize how much better the price is, especially price to calorie ratio, over MREs. Still, unless one is only purely interested in food as fuel, it sounds like they are overall better for a survival situation than a camping trip-- I actually have enjoyed many MREs I’ve eaten on camping trips in the past.
Will be sure to look up the Steve1989 HDR review on YouTube though, thanks!
My wife plans a campout twice a year for a meetup group. Usually around 30 people show up. I do the cooking. Here’s our typical menu:
- Friday evening: Hot dogs and bratwursts heated over the campfire. Brats were boiled at home so we don’t have to worry about them getting fully cooked over the fire.
- Saturday morning: Bacon-egg-cheese-english muffin sandwiches. Real fresh eggs only, never the yellow goo stuff. My wife will often cook pancakes on a separate griddle. Bacon grease on the griddle makes a huuge difference for perfect eggs and pancakes.
- Lunch: Campers are encouraged to bring snacks. We’ll bring sandwich meats and hoagie buns just in case, but everyone is usually too full from a heavy breakfast.
- Saturday evening: Fajitas. I buy pre-seasoned beef and chicken, and cook it sous-vide at home (optional, but makes it more tender). Then grill it up at camp along with onions and poblanos. Heat up pre-made tortillas. Serve with all the usual fixins.
- Sunday morning: Garbage hash. Cook up some diced potatoes along with any leftover bacon, fajita meat, bratwursts, deli meat, onions, poblanos. When the meat and potatoes are nearly done, crack a bunch of eggs over the top and fold them in.
- Lunch: Same as Saturday.
- Sunday dinner: Navajo tacos. Set out some frozen Rhodes Dough (no relation) to thaw and rise. Heat up chili (canned or pre-made) in one pot. Heat up cooking oil in another. Stretch the dough flat and fry in oil. Serve frybread and chili with the usual taco fixins. For dessert, serve the frybread with something sweet. Cinnamon-sugar + butter, honey butter, whipped cream, nutella, fruit, or whatever.
I often pack a few packs of Knorr pasta or rice sides. They’re lightweight and readily available at a (relatively) reasonable cost. Then I toss in the contents of a can of chicken or tuna. (If it’s packed in water, I use the water from the can to supplement the water called for in prep. Adds some flavor and nothing goes to waste.) Sometimes I’ll garnish it with some parmesan or pepper. No refrigeration needed at all.
This is so easy to do and the ingredients last so long that I keep quite a stock in my pantry to use during power outages or hurricanes. I just fire up a countertop butane unit and away we go for lunch and/or dinner.
Too much salt? Yes, indeed. But you can get low-sodium equivalents and I always use the low-sodium chicken/tuna.
If you’re going to bring fresh eggs, a hardshell padded egg container made for camping is indispensible.
If no cooler and warm temperatures are an issue, a good warm weather substitute for milk chocolate is sweetened baking chocolate; it will stand up to temperatures at least 10°F higher than milk chocolate.
Very much agree with the above!
I guess that depends on what kind of cooler you’re using. My etoufee always ends up too thin, so it’s more of a gumbo than an etoufee. I’ve frozen it for a camp meal several times. As far as my kids know, thin etoufee reheated in a dutch oven is the canonical Thanksgiving Dinner. Never had a leak. Although the rice generally goes in a ziploc bag, while the etoufee goes in a more rigid ziploc container.
So, lots of unknowns since we still don’t have details on the sort of camping being done (backpacking, car, campsite, etc), and lots of good suggestions, so I’ll just add a few.
First, since jerky has been mentioned upthread as both a snack and meal-ish item, quality (strong emphasis) jerky makes a fine cooking ingredient as well. I make my own, often with pork these days (1/3 or less the price of beef) using homemade green salsas, but use whatever suits your tastes. Break into small pieces, add to a pot of water, beer, or ideally Ro-tel, and simmer until soft. Serve with tortillas (my choice of shelf stable “bread” for camping, as it’s more or less crushproof and stable at room temps).
Seriously though, Ro-tel is great for camping, because I can toss most dried rice, beans, or the like in a pot with it, and have about three times the flavor I’d get if I was just using water.
Lastly, and mentioned in part upthread, for zero effort options (always good on the first day where you may be exhausted from getting to the site or setting up) a good, cured air dried salami/salumi, good cheese and crackers are about as easy as it gets. Most mid or lower moisture cheeses will be more than fine for shorter camping, and even with a more rigid container, good crackers (or crispbreads) are light and easy to move.
There’s no such thing as leftover crab meat.
Mountain House Freeze Dried food. Very tasty, and any packages unused will keep for years. Beef stroganoff, Biscuits and gravy, Chili-mac, breakfast skillet. Then some fresh fruit, and boxes of favorite cereals.
Intentionally left over. I always brought a canoe to Assateague and paddled around catching crabs like a madman.
And clams as well, lightly dragging a rake until you feel the scraping of a clam. Damn, those were good times.
Prepare a box of Near East Garlic & Olive Oil or Toasted Pine Nut Couscous substituting one can of Campbell’s Chunky Chipotle Chicken Corn Chowder and 1/4 cup white wine (or champagne) for water. Spoon into tortillas, roll up like a burrito and enjoy.
Whenever the subject of camp cooking comes up, I always have to mention the classic Boy Scout tinfoil dinner:
Lay out a strip of foil. Make a ground beef patty and place that on the foil. Top with chopped vegetables like potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, whatever. Season with salt and pepper. If you want to make it “fancy” you can throw in a few sprigs of thyme or rosemary. Drizzle with some cooking oil so that it doesn’t stick to the foil. Fold the foil into a packet. Bury the packet in smouldering coals from your campfire for about 20 minutes.
You can make the packets at home ahead of time, pack them in your cooler, and just throw them in the fire at your campsite (Although I emphasize again, for cooking these you want a smouldering fire, not flames). Seeing as the meat is perishable I recommend cooking them the first night.
I’ve camped in Death Valley with coolers, and, yeah, they won’t be fresh for ever, but if you’re able to top off the ice as needed, you can keep food fresh for longer than you think. But we weren’t those crazy people who’d go to Death Valley in the summer.
Yeah, the various ranger stations in the Sierras keep polaroids on their bulletin boards of cars peeled open like tin cans by bears.
Don’t you coordinate meals with the others?
My camping experience is mostly backpacking, so we had a lot of dried stuff, gorp, and a few oranges as treats. Nothing heavy like cans and certainly nothing fragile like eggs. If you don’t need to carry your stuff, and you have a cooler, you can basically cook anything you’d cook at home. What do you like to eat?
Much the same as we did on a Girl Scout trip (mentioned upthread). Though we had everyone assemble their own on the spot, which was more fun.
Pretty sure we bought heavy-duty foil, not the lighter-weight stuff we use for more routine stuff at home.
Beef jerky, cans of Vienna Sausage, and Baked beans are fairly easy to carry in a pack.
Mix the beans and V. sausage for a tasty meal. A few slices of bread in a ziploc bag is an upgrade.
Buy a food dehydrator and prep bags of beef and fruit for hikes.
I’ve taken backpacking trips. Most trails I walked came near roads with at least a store or a small town. It might require an hour detour. But worth the effort to buy a few cans of food. Maybe even rent a room for the night. A shower, restaurant meal, and comfy bed can be very refreshing. I don’t consider it cheating. I have no illusions that I’m a survivalist.
I’m guessing the OP is doing a camping trip at a campground since stuff like burgers and eggs need a cooler and don’t travel well in a backpack.
This is our go-to. Like the tinfoil scout dinner, we make them in advance wrapped in heavy foil. Easy to cook, even if you don’t have a camp stove.