What to eat when camping is a wide and varied subject, in fact its almost infinite, so I'm not here to tell you what to eat because I don't know what you like.
I will however show you what I prefer and what I take and when.
Food Types
Some of this is going to sound like teaching your granny to suck eggs, but bare with me.
these are as follows.
Fresh foods / ingredients
This one is pretty obvious, Fresh food is...well....fresh ingredients just like you use at home when cooking.
The benefit of fresh foods are they are really tasty and are tailored to your personal tastes and can often be sourced while on the move, given of course you are fairly near civilization or at least local producers such as farms.
And lets face it you just cant beat cooking with fresh ingredients especially when your outdoors.
The down sides to fresh foods are also pretty obvious, they dont last very long, they are prone to damage (being broken, squashed, eggs especially!) they can be heavy or need special care, I mean that bit of fish might have been freshly caught out of the river this morning but on a summers day in a backpack how long is it going to last very long before it starts to go bad.
As such you may need extra packaging or containers to carry the ingredients in.
Then there's preparation and cooking of such ingredients.
Your going to need at least one pan, a knife, eating utensils and if there's no open fires allowed then your going to have to carry a stove and fuel.
A lot of folks these days carry a good lightweight fry pan and a pocket stove and a knife/spork at the least.
Otherwise a multipurpose sove/cook system is reccomended such as the Trangia storm cookers as seen below in the image.
This of course all adds to the extra carry weight.
For one or two nights this isn't really a concern for most people as the benefits outweigh the cons.... mostly.....however on multi day hikes or a week long excursion it can be impractical unless you know there places on your route where you can source food or carry shelf stable foods or dried foods which we will move onto next.....
Dried / Shelf stable foods
These are usually long life shelf stable foods which you'll usually aquire from the grocery store on a fairly normal regular basis.
They come in an massive variety and are usually as cheap/heavy or as easy to prepare as you need them to be and also as cheap or expensive as you like too, these are things such as pasta, rice and ready cooked ingredients such as packets of meats or fish as well as dairy products.
Also things such as snack foods, chocolate, biscuits, crackers and nuts.
They can be ready to eat or need to be prepared albeit with not much in the way of preparation.
Things such as ramen instant noodles, couscous are lightweight, cheap, have a great shelf life and only require hot water to prepare.
These can be pared with shelf stable ready cooked items such as packets of tuna, chicken, salamis or other protein sources that require no or very little heating to prepare.
Ready meals / MRE's / Canned goods
Ready meals come in many forms for the hiking fraternity, at the bottom end you have simple shop bought tinned foods followed by the ever increasing packet / pouch variety the usual suspects are currys, chili con carne, packet cooked rice, stews ect ect.
Another step up gains you what I call crossover ready meals such as Look What We Found meals which although are sold in supermarkets also have a cult following withing the outdoors community, they are very tasty if somewhat lacking in content and calories.....just make sure you take 2 per meal.
Stepping up again (sort of) leads us to the specially prepared outdoor ready meals in the form of Wayfayrers meals these also come under several names including vestey foods (which also produce UK army ration packs for the UK MOD), be well expedition foods and the newest member at the time of writing Beyond the beaten track, which in all honesty all seem to be from the same manufacturer, or at least they all have the same factory producing the meals for them because they all seem extremely similar in taste, texture and price.
Not that they are bad, far from it in fact, I've tried all of the above producers and other than personal preference to any particular meal they have all been good, kind of...for lack of another word..."one step up" from a tinned meal.
As I said one producer makes meals for the UK MOD which brings us to British army rations.
buying a 24 hour meal kit should see most people fed well for a weekend trip, they basically contain everything you need from teabags and coffee, to jam and crackers and everything in between.
American MRE's (Meal Ready to Eat) are pretty similar to UK army rations albeit their meals are a bit more modular.
these meals usually come in a tan plastic bag and contain just one meal mad up of a variety of components.
these usually consist of a "main" and a "side" think of a hamburger patty and a portion of mash potatoes in separate pouches and you get the idea, there's usually a spread of some sort such as cheese or jam, peanut butter, some long....long life bread, and a snack such as pretzels or sometime a pound cake (think sponge cake) and the usual sundries, salt, pepper, coffee, tea, energy drink powder, spoon, napkin and a chemical heater.
I actually like the US MRE's mainly for their variety although of course there's always a few meals that let the side down as in all types of this kind of product. but the old menu No8 "beef patty" was basically 2 pieces of rather tasty long life bread, a beef patty, some jalapeno cheese spread (this was years before we had chili cheese here in the UK) and a portion of mexican mac n cheese (mac n cheese with chilies) and I was addicted to the stuff, so much so that blowing £70 for 12 beef patty MRE's wasn't unheard of back in the day.
Nowadays the these products seem to be in more demand and prices have soared to around £120-140 for a case of 12 which is pretty crazy for what is basically 12 meals.
I still have a few beef patties hidden away though :)
So, plenty of choice when it comes to menus, they can be eaten cold if a pinch and take very little to heat with several ways to reheat them, a small stove and pan will suffice or one of the many "gas kettles" as I call them such as the MSR reactor or a Jetboil, you can even buy chemical heaters and some meals actually come with them.
Downsides are simply that they are heavy, a 300 gram meal weighs 300 grams, 3 meals a day and that's nearly a kilo, again like fresh food perhaps ok for a couple of nights, but for a multi day hike or a week trip its pretty unfeasible.
there are many many Military rations around these days although they are fairly expensive compare to even a few years ago, The French RCIR is a prime example of this, these are usually referred to as the best tasting military rations around, although thy are heavy as they contain tinned foods and a few years ago they cost just £10 a box, compare to £20-25 a box today.
They contain 24 hours worth of food just like the British versions but are heavy to carry.
.jpg)
Most of these foods so far mentioned all have one major downside, and thats weight, carrying enough of them to keep you fed for anything more than a day or 2 is unfeasible.
so that brings us onto.....
Freeze dried / Dehydrated meals
These are the Marmite of camping foods...
.
Everyone has an opinion of dehydrated meals and it seems to be either "I love em!" or "I hate em!"
I'm a lover personally, although of all the meal categories its this one that has the most hit and miss factor.
Haters of dehydrated meals will instantly tell you that although they may have the best weight to calorie ratio, most of them either taste of chemicals, don't hydrate properly or end up as a texture less mush.
That's what I mean by these meals have the highest hit and miss factor,
You see any one manufacturing brand of meal seems to have a couple of great ones and the rest absolutely suck for one reason or another.
But the pro's for the good meals far out weight the cons
They are light weight and usually have a small pack size, they only usually need hot water to prepare and there is little waste packaging afterwards.
The negatives are basically...they are an acquired taste and they need usually need hot water to prepare them.
Yes having hot water is both a plus and a negative, if you have hot water all is fine, but if your means for getting hot water is lost or malfunctioning then you in for a long wait as you try to rehydrate the pack with cold water and its not going to be as tasty when your done.
Where as some fresh foods can be eaten raw and the ready meals eaten cold.
However for multi day hikes or just for that weekend away with a lighter load then dehydrated meals is where its at.
Personally I tend to use a good mix of all of the above, depending on the planned camp im doing and where and for how long usually dictates what to take..
So going forward I plan to start doing some reviews of these camping foods and rations as well as try out some good old fashioned camping recipes.
to be continued....