What are your priorities when planning a camping trip? The location, the company, the gear? How about what to eat?
It’s a universally acknowledged truth that being outdoors makes you hungry. Whether thru-hiking, hitting the road in a campervan or simply pitching up at a festival, fresh air is a surefire way to get your stomach rumbling.
When that hunger hits, a meal-deal sandwich just isn’t going to cut it. Here are some of our favourite outdoor meals for you to enjoy on your next adventure.
A hot meal is one of the most effective ways to warm yourself up when sleeping outdoors. Warm food raises your internal body temperature, so it’s particularly important to indulge in hot food and drinks when camping in cold environments. Sticking to cooked meals is also more likely to guarantee nutritious and calorie-rich meal times.
If you’re camping in a van, your cooking style will undoubtedly be different from those thru-hiking the Pennine Way with a rucksack. This is why our guide provides camping means for every roof-free occasion.
On a thru-hike or wild camp, you’re likely to spend hours fantasising about your next meal – your every step punctuated by the idea of your pre-prepared dinner. A great long-distance hiking camping meal should be lightweight and calorie-dense.
Your camp stove should be lightweight too, compact, wind-resistant and durable. We particularly like the Jetboil Zip Cooking System which weighs just 340g and boils half a litre of water in just two minutes 30 seconds. The high sides are excellent against wind and the drink-through lid means you can minimise the number of pots by drinking and eating straight from the cup.
Hoping to get the calories in without the fuss of prepping a camp kitchen? Check out the best freeze-dried meals for backpacking in the UK or further afield.
Damn, are these baked beans posh? And filling. Firepot lights up your tastebuds as vibrantly as it lights up shelves with its trademark bright yellow packaging.
Top marks for originality, you could eat Firepot meals your entire hike and not get bored. Forget instant noodles, other boil-in-the-bag meals by Firepot include Tuscan stew, barbecued pulled pork, and dal and rice with spinach, and typically take just 15 minutes to cook (simply add boiling water).
The only sticker is the price point—they’re not the cheapest, but they are fantastic.
The Firepot Baked Beans are fantastic for any occasion – a must-try for any backpacker, thru-hiker or wild camper.
When thru-hiking a typical adult can burn between 3,000 and 5,000 calories a day, and carrying all your food turtle-like on your back can make that kind of calorie deficit hard to replace.
Expedition Foods offer a range of different sizes, and the Vegetable Stir Fry provides a whopping 800 calories in one pouch. Compared to many rehydrated meals, it takes comparatively little water to cook and is ready in as little as five minutes. It felt flavourful and hearty, and we enjoyed the subtle spice.
They’re not cheap (there’s a theme here), but we feel it’s worth it for the fuss-free calorie count.
A high-calorie freeze-dried meal that’s perfect for thru-hiking – the Expedition Foods Veg Stir Fry is a fantastic mountain fast food solution.
It may not be readily available in the UK, but if you can find it, it’ll change your life!
For restaurant-quality hiking nosh that’s feather-light, RightOn Trek is about to get the Michelin star of hiking cuisine. Individual sauce, dried veg and noodle sachets are all in fully recyclable packaging and although the instructions list is a little longer than simply ‘boil in the bag’, we promise it’s worth taking a couple of extra minutes to unwrap different spice packets.
The only downside—although this comes with much less waste, if the packaging gets wet it disintegrates, and since you can’t cook your meal simply by adding hot water to the pouch, you do need to wash your pot after.
Are you heading over to the States on a hiking/camping trip? You must give the RightOn Trek High Country Pad Thai a go – your camping tastebuds will never be the same again!
After hours of “are we nearly there yet?” the last thing you want to hear is “I’m not eating that!” Catering to the tastes of all the family is difficult enough in a kitchen, let alone in the wild.
A barbecue is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser and a great way of getting kids to eat vegetables (skewer them, chargrill them, and add a glaze made from olive oil, honey, thyme, salt and pepper). We would, however, recommend steering well clear of disposable barbecues and instead look at all-in-one solutions like the Cadac Carri Chef 2 or the Campingaz Party Grill.
The Campingaz 400-ST is a fantastic all-round gas-powered camping stove that does it all.
A Campingaz 400-ST camping stove has plenty of room for cooking food for a family, with two stoves and a toaster grill. Toasted marshmallows always keep the kids happy (see our guide here on how to build a campfire).
Easier and cheaper than chips is a hearty portion of camp nachos. Simply smother tortilla chips in your choice of topping (bean chilli, guacamole or salsa, for example), cover with grated cheese and bake in a skillet like the Sea to Summit Alpha Bread Round Casserole.
Taking the car? Bring a camping fridge and serve up ice-cool drinks on your summer camping trips.
Remember getting told, “Don’t snack, you’ll ruin your dinner?” Fortunately, this rule doesn’t apply when camping, when snacking only serves to whet the appetite. Plus, if you don’t want to break your marching pace when thru-hiking, you might want to substitute your lunch with a good snack (or several).
Nakd bars are nutritious and delicious. Made from nothing but dried fruit and nuts, it’s refreshing to read the ingredients label on a snack bar and understand…everything. They’re also great for keeping you *ahem* regular.
For a savoury snack, we recommend Graze’s Marmite bundles (we accept that 50% of you will not be with us on this suggestion). Love it or hate it, the high salt content is good for replacing what you sweat out during exercise, they’re vegan and the Marmite crunch contains 4g of protein in just a 25g serving.
The most important meal of the day is all the more crucial when you’ve got a big day in the wild to prepare for.
In my opinion, you can’t beat porridge. Oats provide slow-release energy, they keep for ages and there are infinite different flavour combinations to experiment with. Get creative, or buy ready-prepared sachets from The Great British Porridge Company, which if you’ve ever thought porridge bland will have you eating your words.
Flavour combinations like red berry and pumpkin seed and strawberry and peanut will have you swapping lunch and dinner for brunch and brinner.
