Ideas Needed for Food While Camping

You can also make salads and sandwiches ahead of time and just hand them out as needed. Corn on the cob is good. I used to camp all the time with little kids and I'd always have a little coleman stove that I could boil water on so you can make pasta or anything else like mac and cheese, veggies, etc. Par-boil chicken at home and then put it in a sealed bowl with some sort of marinade on it and BBQ when you want to. You can eat/prepare all the same foods while camping as you can at home (except microwaving). The trick is you need a coleman stove so that you can cook. Enjoy camping, I did it more many years, it was a lot of fun.

Hi. Do you have a george forman grill? I love to marinate chicken with little soy sauce, olive oil and salt and grill on the george forman. It gives it a grill taste with the brown grill lines. You can make a ton of chicken breasts cut into small thin cutlets and then heat them on the outdoor grill. Then you could do lots of things with it. Mix with grilled veggies from the grill as a "stir fry" type of thing, put on sandwiches for lunch and add to a salad. You could make rice ahead of time and heat it on the grill too. Corn on the cob pre cooked and then grilled to heat.
Also you could marinate leg of lamb chops cut thin with olive oil, garlic, lemon, oregano and salt. Then throw on the gill when you want. The left overs you could use for lunch the next day. Put them in a zip lock.

We like to cook over the open fire and have a large grate that can go over the campfire and we grill all types of meat (steak, chicken, pork chops), but this isn't for everyone.

We have a coleman roadtrip party grill (sells for about $40-45). It's fabulous and we couldn't live without it. It's only about 12" in diameter. The top grill part comes off and underneath in a stovetop burner. We grill chicken breast, hamburgers and sausage patties, and veggies.

For a hot breakfast, we use an iron skillet on the burner and cook bacon, then scramble some eggs, then use the same pan to make the homefries (see below for potato tip).

When you have a campfire at night, wrap up some potatos in heavy duty foil, give them a few pokes and place them down near the coals out of the direct flame. In the morning you can cut them up and make some home fries. Or you can reheat them the next night and have a baked potato with your meal.

I always bring along some hard boiled eggs, good for breakfast or lunch - sometimes I'll make them into an egg salad.

I always bring along cut up veggies (carrots, celery sticks, cucumbers) and some dip, makes an easy side dish or a snack. My daughter loves green beans, so I cook them at home, keeping them nice and crunchy and just add some seasoning - no butter, and she'll eat them cold.

When camping with electrical hookup, my girlfriend brings along the crock pot. She'll put the food in the pot in the morning, spend the day doing activities and can enjoy a hot meal at the day's end. This is a good way to heat up a stew or some chilli you may have prepared in advance.

Taco's are a kid's favorite. We use the flour tortilla shells, rather than the traditional hard shells. I cook the meat ahead of time at home and just heat it up. Bring along your favorite toppings.

One of our favorites is grilled boneless chicken breast. One of my tricks is to marinate it, then freeze it (double the ziplock bag, just in case). I bring it along frozen in the cooler, it slowly defrosts over two to four days, depending on the cooler quality, etc. Then it ready to go directly on the grill.

Bringing along some cooked grilled chicken breast is also a good idea. Makes a great sandwich. Cut it up and toss it in with a veggie salad or pasta salad.

Sometimes I make a quiche in advance and bring it along - great for breakfast or lunch.

Happy camping!

We do a lot of primitive camping and I only use 2 pans for cooking- my big cast iron skillet and my cast iron dutch oven. One of the favorites is chilli. It is SO easy to make and then you can have cornbread with it.
Another is biscuits (done in the dutch oven and you can use bisquick to make them) and gravy (ie chipped beef or sausage, etc).
Don't forget canned corned beef offers you a lot of great options.(gravy for those biscuits)
Jiffy mixes offers a mini recipe book on their site that has camping recipes and Lodge cast iron cookware makes several cookbooks (should be able to get on the website). The cast iron recipes are so easy to adjust to cooking over a campfire. The kids will love the "colonial/pioneer" aspect of it too- you can print up some colonial children's games and bring chalk boards for them to use while you pretend you are living 200 years ago.
My first biscuits made in the dutch oven using coals were the greatest accomplishment for me as a cook. I still get a little misty every time they turn out- thinking I would not have been hopeless a long time ago as a housewife! lol

BBQ chicken legs, can be heated or eaten cold. How about cold cuts (sandwiches), Macaroni salad with grilled chicken in it? Just some ideas....

Stores like Ramsey's Outdoor, Cabela's & other Sports or hunting type stores have a selection of vacuum sealed or dehydrated foods, eggs, meats, soups, pastas, casseroles, etc. For the dehydrated types, you just need to heat some water & add the food mix. With a dry egg substitute, you could cut up some deli or packaged meats, add peppers, onions, or other favorite seasonings to make omlets. These options are also easy to carry, & require little or no refrigeration. I also like the other responses with the pizza, & biscuit ideas.

I would love to have some new ideas. We are also campers and GS campers too.
Thanks

Cabela's or Bass Pro Shop sell a wonderful cookbook called "Creative Pie Iron Cooking". My kids LOVE pie irons we started out making pizza. Double pie irons are the best and Walmart sells them for like $20. The book is 64 pages and only like $8. try www.pieiron.com. Good luck!

S.

We cabin camp, so we have a fridge - we've done marinated chicken breasts - preparing them onsite and sealing them in a zip lock bag and letting them marinate all day in bbq sauce or teryaki marinade. (You could probably prepare them at home and let them marinade in a cooler too).

You could also make a foil packet dinner - I've seen tons of recipies for them on the internet.

Or you could make sandwhiches (pb&j or cold cuts)

We like to do chicken tenders. I marinate them in a ziplog bag with italian dressing and then just heat them on the grill. We also get the velveta shells and cheese to go with it. We like to do french toast for breakfast since it is so easy. We have also done pasta since that is also easy. I have made macaroni salad while we are already at the camp site since that is also a easy thing to make. We go camping all the timr do I know how you feel. It is hard to find easy good food to cook. Hope this helps you.

Yea for camping!! How about pastas? They're easy to either cook over the fire or prep at home and bring a little extra sauce and reheat over the fire. Pasta with marinarra/veggies mized in if you want or mac and cheese. Have fun!

We bring small pizza crust that come with the small containers of sauce, pepperoni and cheese. We cook them over the camp stove grill. If you have a lid to a pot, you can throw that over the top to help the cheese melt. Pasta is another favorite. Cook the noodles before you leave and place them in a plastic bag in the cooler. Boil water to re-heat them. I pre-make the sauce too and put it in a tupperware container. Easy to warm up and yummy. I pre-make a salad to go with it and pack 1-2 favorite dressings. Pre-made garlic bread to go with it! YUM!! Good luck!

I love camping! One thing we always do is take ground beef/turkey and then you can add whatever you want. Peppers (my 15mo old loves them), onions, mushrooms, potatoes...and wrap them up in foil. Then you just pop them into the fire pit and wait! It's too easy! You can wrap just about anything in foil- corn, potatoes, roasted veggies... And for dessert you can get those camp fire sandwich makers and make pies. butter two pieces of bread and fill it with pie filling. We also get jiffy pop (the kind in the aluminum pie plate) which is always fun.

Good luck and happy camping!

K.

Get yourself a grill with a lid, then you can cook anything. Light one side, put a pan of (chicken, beef roast, etc) on the other side, put the lid down and it works like an over would. You can bake potatoes, grill veggies, there is no end to what you can do with a little fore-thought. Marinate some meat and vegies and grill them or heat up a casserole made at home and stored in a grill-safe pan. We used to camp a lot and investing in a light weight gas grill was the best thing we ever did when the kids were little.

You have already gotten some awesome ideas about making chicken ahead of time and using foil on the fire. One of the best pieces of camping equipment my husband and I ever purchased was a non-stick griddle for our camp stove.
Eggs, toast, grilled bagels, pancakes, quesadillas, grilled veggies, chicken, etc on one easy to clean surface. We also
do some prepared foods like cous cous....boil water, pour, sits for 5 minutes serve. My kids like cups...soup, mashed potates, and risotto add the water and dispose of the cup; no dishes for you. Hummus is a camp favorite too, serve with baby carrots and/or crackers, lunch. And one girl scout trick...ice cream cones...fill them with yogurt, fruit, or pudding...we called them "walk-abouts". Have fun!

I'm a huge fan of everything-in-the-pot soups when camping. I know it takes a little more time than a hot dog or hamburger, but if you cut a couple of potatoes into smaller pieces, carrots, whatever veggies you've got . . the onion can go in whole or in big pieces . . .salt, pepper, etc. . . . then let it sit on the campfire until cooked through and eat! I also like to throw in those flat red lentils - they cook quick and add bulk (regular lentils will seemingly take forever . . . or add pasta to the soup. Also, any thing you can put in the fire - baked potatoes, roasted garlic, banana boats (with chocolate). Burrito night is also a hit - tortillas, beans, etc.

how about chicken? get the legs and cut them into thighs and drumsticks, you can cook them ahead of time. cold chicken is always good. you can make wings too. everyone loves wings and they are good cold too. also very inexpensive. I watch the sales on meat. one store here is putting pork on sale at 99 cents a lb. i get it and put it away. you can cook that ahead of time and then just throw it on the fire to heat through and give it more of a outdoor flavor. also make a good old fashioned stew in a cast iron dutch oven to leave on the fire to cook. that is not that expensive. happy camping.

How about frying up some chicken cutlets and then heating them up. You can also make some minute rice either there or bring it already made and heat it up...I actually love the white and brown minute rice. I made a pot of sauce and meatballs when we went away and just had meatball heros or made pasta and had the sauce heated up. Pasta Fagioli is good to heat up too....my son (6) loves this so that is why I thought of it. Not all kids like it but it is easy to make and very good for you too.

Good luck..

Here are acouple things that used to be our camping staples.

PUt frozen chicken breasts in zip locks with Italian dressing. They thaw by 2nd day in cooler and place on grill. YUM.

Start you wrapped in foil potatos baking early.

YOu can do actual pizza on the grate over your camp fire. Buy lumps of pizza dough, at camp break apart in to individual size and let the dow stretch some by it's own weight ( if your are coordinated toss. lol) Put it right on the grate -m it will cook immediately, flip and add sauce and topping . It works - I know - I didn't believe it either.

Pre cut cukes, carrots & celery into sticks. always taste better outdoors when you have worked an appetite.

Our first camping trip I remembered cereal, but no bowls. We improvised and make grilled cheese for breakfast. It then became our official camping breakfast.

Enjoy!

L.
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