Camping Ideas for Food, Easy to Prepare Recipes

Camping Ideas for Food - I’ve been dreaming of this weekend for months. Every visit to the garage, passing by our stacks of sleeping bags, tents and the soot-blackened Dutch oven, brings back cherished memories of past camping adventures and visions of summer excursions to come. And now, the time has arrived: our first camping trip of the year!

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Attempting to keep sane while stuck indoors for the winter, I like to plan lots of outdoor summer adventures before the snow has even melted away. This year, I have at least one trip every month throughout the summer. Some are simple tent-camping trips to the lake or river; others are more intense backcountry trail clean-up projects where we hike up into the mountains, carrying all our gear on our backs.

No matter if you’re car-camping, backcountry-expeditioning or going for a weekend canoe trip, planning out a menu that fuels and satisfies is essential.

After confirming our first camping location, I pulled all my camp cookbooks off the shelf and begun dreaming about all the yummy food we’d be creating over the campfire. Lucky for me, our first outing is accessible by car, so I can bring all the gear(and food) we need and want. As the summer moves forward, I can start thinking about meeting the challenge of fitting everything I need into my backpack. But that’s another article.

Menu planning for the outdoors is much different than standard home cooking. To start, we need to consider many factors, including mode of travel, availability of water/fuel, weather, food cost and size of group.

For our first outing, we are only limited to how much we can fit in our car and what we can cook over a fire or small camp stove. For a novice, even these minor limitations can be debilitating. Attempting to guide the newbies, as well as offer inspiring, new ideas to the experienced camp chefs, I will walk through my planning process and come up with interesting delicious ideas for your next outdoor adventure.

Styles and tastes of campers vary drastically. Some enjoy spontaneity and are happy with a handful of trail mix, a crust of bread and full water bottle. Others prefer to not cook at all, but rather do cold cooking, packing pre-made salads, meats and cheeses and preparing sandwiches on the trail. Some folks find heat-and-serve or dehydrated meals the easiest solution, while others see an outdoor excursion an excuse to splurge on gourmet foods, with caviar, cheese and wine. I have found a happy medium between all these — what some like to call homestyle camp cooking.

Eating well is an important part of the camping experience. The rich aromas of freshly brewed coffee and bacon crackling over an open flame fill the campsite with the comforting smells that beckon everyone from their sleeping bag cocoons. These scents, combined with the taste of a buttery, crispy-edged camp pancake slathered in syrup, create a mood and memory as powerful as any spectacular, rugged mountain view.

Most of our camping adventures last between three to five days, which is a great place to start. It gives us an opportunity to try a few different meals, as well as fit in the old favorites. I like to begin by thinking about the last trip we had, recall the food we ate — what was successful, what didn’t work and things we might have forgotten and need to remember to pack this time.

It may help to write it out on paper. I’m all about the lists, especially when planning for camp cooking. Forgetting the sugar for your coffee could be solved by asking a kindly campsite neighbor, but forgetting the skillet could make a mess of the trip, requiring a run back home, or an expensive purchase at a small local store, if they have it at all.

For our first trip of the season, I plan to bring my big cast-iron skillet, my cast-iron Dutch oven, our camp stove and lots of firewood. Each offer a different way to cook our meals and diversifies our menu options.

We like to start out with a simple cold lunch when we arrive, giving us leisure time to set up camp and settle in. Cold-cut sandwiches, pre-cut veggie sticks, chips, fruit and maybe a fun bottled drink. My husband’s grandma always starts her family camp trips with cold fried chicken and potato salad, which works pretty good too, even if it’s a little greasy. But, hey, we’re camping; it’s suppose to be fun and a little extravagant!

Dependent on our energy level in the evening, and if the burn ban is in effect, I like to get a campfire going as soon as possible. We can cook over the fire, or just gather around, warm our bodies and succumb to its entrancing glow.

No camping trip is complete without hot dogs roasted over the coals, with a side of beans and chips. But there is a whole vast world of foods to cook over the fire, beyond dogs. Potatoes can be wrapped in foil, nestled in and roasted among the coals; corn, soaked and wrapped in its husk, can be cooked in the embers; and beans and/or veg can be cooked in a sturdy glass bottle (wrap in foil to avoid breakage) in the coals. That last one is new to me, and we’re going to try it with some beans, placed in the coals after dinner, to cook through the night.

If you’re lucky enough to find a big, flat rock in or around your campsite, try your hand at root veg crisps, thinly sliced, tossed with oil and set on the hot stone in the fire, turning occasionally until crisp. This would work great with carrot, beet, parsnip, kohlrabi or potato.

Bread over the fire is always a fun campfire activity, and with an abundance of recipe ideas, find one that fits you and give it a go. Bisquick mixed with water, plastered onto a stick, rotated over the fire until golden is a great place to start.

I’m trying my hand at a new recipe I stumbled across: baumstriezel (tree cake) on a stick, a Transylvanian pastry that mixes flour, yeast, milk, butter, eggs and sugar into a dough that is placed on a greased or foil-wrapped stick and roasted over the fire. Sounds like to perfect end to a lovely day of camping!

Using my handy-dandy cast-iron skillet, over the fire or camp stove, I can make an endless variety of delicious camp food. Spring provides nettles, not only to sting unsuspecting explorers, but also for eating.

How about some nettle chips, very much like the popular kale chips everyone loves? Simply fried in oil or butter until crisp, then seasoned with salt, they make a wonderful and nourishing snack — and they’re free!

We are big fans of camp spaghetti, but boiling a big pot of water can be a headache. How about instead, try easy skillet spaghetti? Fry the uncooked noodles with onions and garlic until golden, add tomato sauce, cover and simmer for about 20 minutes, checking occasionally to add liquid if needed.

Or maybe quick and easy mac and cheese? Combine cooked noodles with a little dry mustard, milk and cheese, cooking over low heat until cheese melts. Yes, it’s that easy!

The Dutch oven can be a useful tool in the camp kitchen, once we fully understand its potential. Placed over glowing embers, with a few embers shoveled over the top for even heating, it can cook a vast number of dishes you never thought possible while camping. Fruit cobblers, chocolate cake, cinnamon or caramel rolls, enchiladas, lamb in a bed of hay, fish in bread dough or even a loaf of bread. There are books written on the subject; something serious campers should consider exploring and adding to their camp cooking repertoire.

Sometimes we have more food than can be eaten, which can be a blessing in disguise. Leftover potatoes can be shredded and used for hash browns or rösti, a crispy, fried potato pancake. Leftover rice can be repurposed into rice cakes, either sweet or savory. Mix rice with egg, milk, flour and salt, fry and add sugar or spice. Great breakfast or side dish for dinner.

We all love camp snacking, with the plethora of yummy treats we normally reserve for only this occasion. But limited to only chips, cookies and soda, we can quickly begin to feel a sodium and refined-sugar overload. I like to balance out our snacks with lots of fresh veggie sticks (peppers, cucumbers, carrots, jicama, etc.), fresh fruit (cubed melon, berries, oranges, etc.) and homemade power bars, energy balls, breakfast cookies or whole-grain scones or muffins.

There are a multitude of recipes out there for healthy, homemade energy bars. Our favorites feature a simple list of ingredients that usually include dry fruit, nut butter, oats or crumbled rice cake and seeds. These nourishing snack options will offer you the energy you require for some quality day hikes or just lounging around camp, enjoying nature and a good book.

Melissa Davis, a local chef with a bachelor’s degree in nutrition, specializes in natural foods. She can be reached at jadenluna@gmail.com.

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