Food serves different important functions on a family camping trip. It’s the necessary fuel that keeps you moving, so it must be nutritious and packed with proteins and vitamins. Yet, it also has a social role. When sitting around a campfire with your friends and loved ones, cooking and eating together is a bonding experience.
Depending on how hiring is your trip, the next meal might occupy many of your thoughts. However, nobody wants to carry too much on a camping adventure, so gathering all necessary ingredients for various recipes is a whole other challenge.
How to plan and prepare your camping meals? First, pack all you need for a family camping trip, and let’s dive into some simple food ideas for your next adventurous trip to the outdoors.
Breakfast
While camping, you’re probably waking up early to take advantage of daylight hours, so you want a breakfast that’s nutritious, but also quick and easy to prepare, without requiring too many ingredients. Your options diversify if you’re willing to start a fire, but if you are in a hurry to move further, stick to items that don’t require cooking.
Scrambled Eggs with Spinach
Requiring only eggs, spinach, butter, and salt, this recipe is as simple as it can get. Low in calories but rich in protein and other nutrients, this is a tasty and healthy breakfast choice.
Oatmeal
Healthy and nutritious, oatmeal takes only a couple of minutes to prepare and can keep hunger away for hours. Add seeds, dried fruit, peanut butter, or a fresh banana to the mix for an enhanced flavor and a higher nutritional value.
Granola Bars
If making a fire is not an option, have granola bars available. They are tasty and good to eat on the go. While store-bought granola might have too much sugar to be healthy, homemade granola is easy to prepare before your trip and can be a perfect source of protein and fiber.
Lunch & Dinner
For the two most important meals of the day, you should set aside at least an hour. Preparing a nice meal is also a good way to get a rest from tiring activities like walking or hiking. Make sure your lunch and dinner at the campfire provide you with a significant amount of required daily nutrients.
Grilled Sweet Potatoes
For a recipe with limited ingredients, grilled sweet potatoes can be an excellent choice. After cutting the potatoes in small strips, add them to a bowl with olive oil, chopped garlic, and chili powder. As simple as that, they’re ready to go on the grill.
Pasta with Veggies
It’s hard to go wrong with pasta. A delicious pasta meal with veggies can be prepared in under ten minutes. Bring homemade pasta sauce to keep the cooking process simple. Add your favorite veggies or lentils.
Fried rice with Tuna or Beans
Bring some ready-made rice and fry it with some chopped carrots or zucchini. For proteins, add canned tuna or beans. Keep a small portable spice rack with you while camping to give some flavors to your rice meal.
Desserts and Sweets
Proteins and carbs are important to maintain optimum energy levels if you plan an active camping trip, but desserts are the things that bring us the most joy when sitting around a nice campfire. No one remembers with fondness eating a protein bar on a camping trip, but they do remember toasting cinnamon rolls by the fire.
Toasted Cinnamon Rolls
Good both for starting and ending a day of hiking and backpacking, cinnamon rolls are a favorite treat for children and adults alike. They’re fun and easy to make, and everyone can get involved in the process.
S’Mores
Your personal taste can decide what ingredients to add when making s’ mores, but they’re bound to be a delicious treat. Trying a new s’more recipe at the campfire is also an effective way to spend quality time with family and friends.
Baked Apples
All you have to do is slice some apples, sprinkle sugar and cinnamon, and wrap them in foil. They’re now ready for baking on the campfire coals. In less than ten minutes, you will notice the smell of sweet, caramelized sugar.
Camping is about enjoying the fresh air, open horizons, and the serenity that only nature can provide. At the same time, camping is also about sharing moments of connection with your family and friends, and there is no better thing that can facilitate that than food. Food brings people together around a campfire and beyond. If you don’t know what to cook on your next camping trip, let the list above be your guide.
Payasam
Is a one-pot rice pudding that originates in India. This recipe, once the favorite of the King of India, is straightforward and delicious. This is one of my favorite Dutch oven camping desserts, and it can be made with very few ingredients. Simply combine two cups of short-grain rice with four cups of whole milk and bring to a boil.
After around twenty minutes, add a cup of grated Jagger, which you can pick up in most Asian grocery stores, six saffron threads, and half a cup of crushed cardamom pods. Allow it to cook for a further ten minutes, then serve hot. This is a delicious camp-side dessert that can be stored and eaten later, too. This dessert is so easy to make, it’s a surprise so few people actually make it outside the Indian subcontinent.
Toasted Marshmallows
Could we have a list of campfire recipes without mentioning the quintessential campfire snack? Toasted marshmallows are a rite of passage for any aspiring camper. Until you’ve had them, you simply cannot call yourself an outdoorsman or a camper. Toasted marshmallows are not a recipe that needs to be explained to many of you, but we will anyway. Firstly, you will want to pick up some skewers from your local supermarket or home supply store.
Preferably, pick up metal skewers with rubber handles so that the heat from the fire does not burn your hands. Then, you will need a huge bag of marshmallows. Yes, huge! Build a fire, then simply skewer four or five marshmallows and hold it over the fire until they’re toasted and melting! This is a delicious fireside dessert that can warm up your belly and make every camping trip fun. No trip is complete without them!
Banana Boats
Banana boats are another quintessential camp recipe. This recipe is like the previous recipe, quite straightforward, and very delicious. In order to make this, you will need aluminum foil [if you don’t mind cooking in aluminium], some bananas, and a series of sweet toppings and fillers. We recommend chocolate, honeycomb, and a syrup of your choosing [it can be fruit flavored].
You could also bring some ice cream along in a cooler for this one – the ice cream will melt into the lovely fillings, and it will be absolutely delicious. Simply split the peel of your banana so that it opens up like a book, slice the banana length ways inside the peel, then insert your fillings, toppings, and syrup. Wrap the bananas in foil and put them atop a fire – you can also steam them if you want. When they are done, which should be about five or six minutes, take them out, add a dollop of ice cream, and get snacking!
Apple Crisp
Tasty, quick, and straightforward. Apple crisp is a snack everybody can enjoy, even at home. You need apples, granola, brown sugar, bourbon, and cinnamon. In a grilling pan, combine all the ingredients and allow them to cook for about fifteen minutes. The apple should crisp up during cooking and the bourbon should evaporate. By the end, you should be left with an absolutely delicious flavor combination that is both sweet and crispy. Apple crisp is a very warming campfire dessert that you can make very easily and quickly.
Apple crisp will definitely make every single camping trip memorable. It is delicious, quick, and easy, and one of this author’s personal favorites. Because of the alcohol content, however, it may not be a treat suitable for young children, although you can remove the alcohol and use a liquid-based syrup instead.
Also, take a look at this article for more information about essential camping gear.
