A Day of Camping Meals

Camping meals can be a lot of fun – they often take a little extra creativity and lots of team work. And, in my experience, everything tastes better when you’re camping! There are millions of options for what to cook and how to cook it, but here are a few of our favorite meals, from the start of the day all the way until dessert around the campfire in the evening.

Breakfast

My favorite meal of the day! As we often camp with only one burner, our first priority is usually to boil water. That way there’s tea and coffee available to enjoy even while we’re preparing the food. I like my coffee hot, strong and as soon as possible!

Our usual breakfast includes eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, miniature bananas, and bread. Either fry or scramble the eggs, balancing people’s preferences with whatever’s easiest. Once the eggs are done, set them aside with a lid on top to keep them as warm as possible and use the same pan to fry up mushrooms, followed by tomatoes. Finally, cut the miniature bananas in half and put them on the frying pan. By this point, the pan will often be a bit of a mess, but that’s okay. The fried banana adds just the right amount of sweetness to balance all the savory. Once they’re are a little brown and crispy on one side, load up your plate with a little bit of everything! It’s also always nice to add a thick piece of bread to this meal.

Note: You can do all this over a fire, but I prefer bringing a burner because it takes much less time!

Lunch & Snacks

Camping lunches are often what we like to call “grazing lunches”. Some people feel like a snack around 10, so they open up a bag of crisps, someone else eats an apple with some peanut butter around 11, and so on. Our go-to for these type of lunches is crisps, fruits, vegetables (like carrots and cucumbers) with hummus, and sausages or hot dogs that can be cooked over the fire or on the burner. If you enjoy the smoky flavor, it’s definitely worth cooking them over the fire! You can bring buns, mustard, ketchup, chopped onions and cheese if you really want to make this a feast!

Dinner (Vegetarian)

This dinner is very little work, but it takes quite a bit of time, so it’s a good idea to get it started fairly early. Chop up potatoes, sweet potatoes onions, peppers, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, or any combination of vegetables that sound good to the group. Get a campfire going to ensure there are good coals for cooking. Each individual gets a piece of foil and fills it up with whatever vegetables they fancy and add some olive oil, salt, and whatever other spices sounds good (we recommend sage or thyme). Close up the foil package and stick it in the coals of the fire and leave for at least an hour. You can check it from time to time to see how it’s progressing and may want to adjust its positioning to ensure that the heat is being distributed evenly. When everything inside looks good, open up the foil package and enjoy! And, of course, we usually enjoy a glass of wine or a nice beer with our dinner.

Dessert

For dessert, you can make a sweet version of dinner. Instead of potatoes and vegetables, put a banana with some chocolate, peanut butter and other ingredients that sound good to you (marshmallows are a popular option) into a piece of foil. Just like dinner, stick the foil into the coals of the fire and leave it to heat up. Since none of these ingredients need to cook, though, it won’t take nearly as long. You just want things to get nice and melty! Enjoy this warm dessert while sitting around the campfire, having great conversations with friends, listening to the night sounds of nature and looking up at the excellent view of the stars!