Camping Food

[TimO]

Does anyone have any suggestions for camping food?  I'm thinking of stuff that requires the minimum of ingredients (or is premixed/cooked) so is lightweight, relatively easy to cook, not requiring equipment more complex than a couple of small aluminium saucepans (not non-stick!) cooked on a gas cooker, and will provide plenty of energy.  ie food for the lightweight cycle camper carrying the minimum of kit.

Historically I've ended up eating lots of rice and pasta, since water is generally easily available, so dehydrated stuff provides value for weight, in a manner of speaking.

Looking around on the net, some peoples idea of camping food is ludicrous, requiring a mass of equipment, time, and ingredients.  Fine I guess if by camping you mean out of the boot of a car, but I generally carry a knife, fork, and spoon, and one small kitchen knife, two small saucepans, a cup, and a plate that is deep enough to double up as a bowl.  Not enough equipment to prepare anything very complex, so bung into a saucepan, add water, cook whilst stirring, and eat is generally about as complex as I like to get!

[Deano]

Porridge - with a bit of sugar mixed in. It's OK with water, but I prefer a bit of milk as well. 

The milk also comes in handy for coffee - the one true camping necessity.

As for other meals, I've found that cup-a-soups and pasta mix surprisingly well together.

[hellymedic]

I made premixed varieties of dry food, which I bagged in my kitchen at home; just add water and heat.
Porridge: Oats, skimmed milk powder, raisins.
Cheesy mash: Instant mash + grated Parmesan + herbs.

[Julian]

If money is no object, then the packages of pre-cooked food you can get from outdoors shops are surprisingly tasty.  They are between £3 - 6 each though.

My current camping repetoire:

1.  Pasta & stir-in sauce (you can get a really good variety of flavours, and they don't need to be kept in the fridge.)

2.  Tuna pasta - boil the pasta, add a small tin of sweetcorn / a handful of fresh veg towards the end of cooking, mix in a tin of tuna

3.  Noodles & veg (diced spring onion, strips of carrot, mushrooms etc all soften as quickly as the noodles).

4.  Pad Thai (a gross bastardisation thereof):  1 sachet of black bean sauce, add Some Veg, stir fry for three minutes.  Add noodles (pre-soak them) and stir fry for two minutes.  Sprinkle bashed-up dry-roast peanuts on the top. A sachet of KP peanuts such as you can buy at the pub are good. 

5.  Banana custard, using Birds Eye 'just add water' custard

6.  'Special fried rice' - cook some diced fresh veg, add 1 cup of rice and 2 cups of water, cook until done.

7.  Garlic mushrooms - the truly adventurous can do this with wild garlic / wild chives and wild mushrooms

This is the sort of food that tries to avoid heavy tins - if you have capacity to take tins then you have a never-ending stream of options!

[TimO]

I've taken a small tin of stewed steak along in the past, and used it early on to drop the weight.  It works pretty well when added to a pack of savoury rice (near the end of the cooking, otherwise it entirely disintegrates).  Similarly I've taken boiled eggs, and chopped those up into rice, since I never entirely trust carrying raw eggs, given the potential for mess if they are broken!

I'd forgotten about instant custard, that can be combined with just about any fresh fruit, and I guess also with dried fruit that has been rehydrated in a spot of water.

Cous cous is a good idea, but I haven't seen the dried soya mince in Sainsburys, and I was looking for that sort of thing yesterday.  Which section is it in?  It's always challenging looking for this sort of stuff when you don't know where to find it in an entire store.

[goatpebble]

German brands of instant stuff are good. Where are you camping?

I am addicted to spaetzle with speck. The same brands often do rosti with speck as well. If you are near Italian speaking parts of the Alps, then every supermarket has packet risotto, and it is often very good, and nothing like you would expect from a dehydrated 'ready meal' in the UK. I had a left over pack, and I convinced a foody friend that I had made it myself, using dried ceps...

[rr]

Instead of pasta or rice, cous cous is good because it needs less cooking. Just add boiling water then leave to stand for 5 minutes or so.

Cous cous is great, quick - reduces the amount of fuel you need

[Really Ancien]

Go down Lidl or Aldi and look at the pre-packed rice and pasta stuff, it's cheap so buy one of each and test them, both for flavour and ease of cooking, you might not like the expensive camping stuff, which you won't taste until you need it. Instant mash with some instant gravy is acceptable, are you wanting a gourmet esperience, Muesli with the milk powder already in it is a great idea.

Damon.

[Malandro]

Small packets of dried or pre-cooked carbs such as rice, cous cous, noodles or pasta can be surprisingly good if combined with fresh ingredients.  We use them with lots of fresh veg - onions, peppers, mushrooms, herbs - whatever can be bought during the day while riding.  Often we supplement the packet stuff with small amounts of spices brought from home.  Meals do tend to have a similar theme but I find this no big deal if:
a) you're knackered from many miles riding and
b) you have alcohol!   

I'm not a fan of relying on dried foods full stop though.  Portion sizes too small, texture the same, boring, boring, boring....

[cometworm]

Assuming you're going to carry the fuel as well as the food, it makes sense to go for stuff that cooks quickly - cous cous, polenta (there's a good 1-minute cook version from Merchant Gourmet I use) and similar. Get around the boring texture/blandness issue by also bringing stock powder or cubes, plus a bit of protein for each meal. Some cheese to mix into the polenta, some tuna to go on top, some chorizo to mix into the cous cous. Stuff like dried onion, sun dried tomatoes or olives also work well to give flavour.

(I'm doing a three week self-supported hike in the Pyrenees this summer, so I've done a fair bit of thinking, trying out and planning on the subject

[bikenerd]

The lightest camping food is the type they sell in the pub or restaurant!
For a hiking trip I usually take "magic porridge" which is porridge oats, instant milk and a bit of sugar, enough for each breakfast.  I'll also take enough lunch for the first few days then try to restock at local villages / towns.  Dinner / supper I'll try to get at a pub, cafe or restaurant.  Otherwise, good food is instant noodles plus cup-a-soup (x2 needed to fill me up after a day of hiking), camping tagine (dried tomato powder + dried onions + dried apricots + spices) and cous cous, pre-bought dried rice type stuff, etc.
You can buy or make your own food dehydrator.  It's difficult to dehydrate meat effectively, though, so you're better off adding sausage or canned fish to stuff.  Canned mackerel is my favourite.  Yum!

[Tom M]

From an old copy of Cycling:

[TimO]

From an old copy of Cycling:

<Hedgehog recipe>

I've seen that recipe before, and I don't think I'm awfully keen on hunting around trying to capture a Hedgehog.   I don't suppose the Hedgehogs are awfully keen on it either!

I think I'll stick to capturing packets of dehydrated rice and pasta around the local Sainsburys.  It's probably safer and Less bloody, unless it's a Saturday afternoon.

[Jon P]

Who ever saw a hedgehog anywhere but in a town at night?

I've carried a week at a time for backpacking and could do 20 miles a day on the following:

brekkie - rice with raisins and maybe dried milk
mid-morning snack - dried fruit
lunch - bread or oatcakes, dried fruit, beansprouts
afternoon snack - dried fruit
supper - about a litre of rice, soup mix, lentils, then tea and maybe more dried fruit

It gets pretty boring after a time though.  For backpacking it gives you a lot more freedom to stop where you want and I've also found that most places where you might buy food just wouldn't give you the nutrition you need for the next day's walking.

[Valiant]

I'm going camping for the first time in a few weeks, I was gonna take cous cous and canned sardines, onions etc.

[Malandro]

Are you intending having these together?

[pcolbeck]

Depends if your hiking and have to carry all your kit or camping out of the back of your car as it were. If camping near your car then you just have to have a fry up on a morning. You can't beat a full English and a big mug of tea to set you up for a days hiking.

[TimO]

If you're camping out of the back of a car, you can carry a load of stuff, and aside from being a bit limited in the type of cooking (ie no traditional oven or grill), you are not that limited in what you can do.

Having said that, for the minimalist Zombocalypse camping on Friday, I may yet take enough gubbings for a bacon sarnie in the morning!

[gordon taylor]

Like others above, I usually take supermarket packets of pasta or rice with things in them. They are cheap and easy to cook - almost anything tastes wonderful in a tent at night! I only take one tiny cooking pan and eat my food straight out of the pan (an additional plate is too heavy,) so I don't do "recipes."

I also take tins sometimes - especially if water is in short supply. I'd gag if I tried to eat a tin of Campbell's meatballs and spaghetti tonight, but it is the food of the gods if you eat it under the stars after a long day on the road. The crispy burnt bits are always saved for last. 

Every dismal petrol station or convenience store in the whole world will sell cans of food, so you don't need to load up with more than one or two. It's fuel, not food.

[gordon taylor]

My other touring (camping?) weakness is a fetish for blue cheese on bread for picnic lunch. Blue cheese doesn't always travel so well when crushed into a black pannier on a hot day, but it spreads easily (over everything  ) and the smell keeps the bugs away. 

[alan]

and the smell keeps the bugs away. 

does it also keep away the campsite groupies?

[TimO]

and the smell keeps the bugs away. 

does it also keep away the campsite groupies?

There are campsite groupies?

[alan]

and the smell keeps the bugs away. 

does it also keep away the campsite groupies?

There are campsite groupies?

Did you not know ? 

[Adrian]

and the smell keeps the bugs away. 

does it also keep away the campsite groupies?

There are campsite groupies?

Did you not know ? 

I always thought that the bugs were the only campsite groupies on offer

[gordon taylor]

I get ants in my cammping pants, sometimes.