Easy Camping Meals

Tips and Tricks to Make Camping Meals a Snap With Little Prep or Cleanup

Meals are the biggest chore for me at home even with modern appliances, so meals camping are definitely going to be the biggest chore. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on meals. I want to enjoy hiking, playing in the river, bike riding, reading, singing to the guitar, and hanging out with my family. So I call myself a very lazy camper and cook very simply.

When I go camping with my extended family my parents are awesome at cooking. They make pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, omelets, etc. They bring their whole grill as well as a camp stove and will cook all sorts of things. When I take my kids camping by myself I bring no grill, stove, or even pots or pans. Kids require so much work as it is, I keep the food simple as possible. My mom will bring real dishes and haul water, boil it, then wash and dry the dishes. Go mom! Not me. I’m lucky to even be able to put the baby down long enough to get dressed.

Breakfast

Cereal, cereal, cereal. Cold cereal gets a bad rap, but a few days of it will be ok. I choose healthy kinds with 5 ingredients or less. I like Nature’s Path Harvest Flakes, Autumn Wheat, and organic granolas. Even Cheerios, Kix, Oatmeal Squares and Cracklin Oat Bran are fine for camping purposes. They can be eaten dry if that’s easier for toddlers and preschoolers who may spill. Often I put it in a cup or a ziplock bag for them to carry around and eat while the older kids can use bowls and spoons. Actually, I usually use cups for everyone because it’s less likely to spill. If they need to set it down, they can set it in a camp chair cupholder and it’ll be fine. Bowls somehow always spill on camp chairs.

Lunch

Sandwiches: meat and cheese at the beginning of the week, then when that runs out, peanut butter and jelly/honey.
Leftovers from dinner. A lot of times my kids will eat a cold hot dog or hamburger or leave it on the car seat for 20 minutes prior to lunch. I love any Mexican leftovers and will heat it the same way unless it’s cold and we have a fire going.
Cheese, crackers, lunch meat (kids love homemade “Lunchables.” Use nitrate free meat and whole grain crackers)

Dinner

Anything that can be cooked directly over a fire and doesn’t need any pot or pan. There are lots of camping cookbooks out there but I haven’t read them. This is what I bring that I know my family loves. We bring it every camping trip and they love the tradition.

Hamburgers and hotdogs
Foil dinners (ground beef, potatoes, carrots, onions or celery all cooked at home so it doesn’t take long to warm up in the fire and there’s no risk of it being undercooked)
Taco salad (taco meat made at home, lettuce, tomatoes, shredded cheese, tortilla chips)
Fajitas (make at home and bring in a Ziplock bag)
Stir-fry (cook everything at home and bring in Ziplock bag)
Grilled cheese

Snacks

Beef Jerky (I like Tillamook or Lowes Foods brand without nitrates)
Trail mix (I make my own with organic nuts and dried fruit)
My homemade granola bars. I take them on every trip. So filling and energizing and nutritious.
Packaged snacks like Nature’s Bakery fig bars, Just-It fruit bars, and other 5 ingredients or less snacks.

Tips and Pointers on Cooking Easy Camping Meals

At home cook 4-5 lbs of ground beef. Put 2 lbs in a Ziplock bag for the foil dinners. Season the other 3 lbs for taco meat. Add cooked beans. Put in gallon size Ziplock. Sometimes I do this a week or two before our camping trip and freeze, especially if I don’t want to bring much ice in the cooler or we’re eating the meat meals at the end of the week and I want to make sure it stays good.

For some of our meals like stir-fry, I cook a double batch a day or two before our camping trip. Then put whatever we didn’t eat–the rice and the veggies w/sauce and chicken–all together in a gallon size bag. I put the leftover potstickers and egg rolls in another bag. When we’re camping, everyone can scoop out as much as they want into a foil, add potsticker or egg roll, close foil tightly, and warm over the fire. Foil can be used as plate if you’re short on plates and clean up is a snap. Since we do so much American and Mexican foods, it’s fun to have something different in the middle of the week.

No Cooler Meals

If you’re short on cooler space or ice or staying a long time, you may want some meals that don’t need refrigeration. Here are a few ideas for that.

Canned Hormel chili with Triscuits or Fritos (warm in a pot if you’re bringing one, or put in foil over the fire. Or can be eaten out of the can too.)
Canned chicken with mayo packets to make chicken salad to eat with crackers
Canned refried beans in a whole wheat flour tortilla

More Tips and Pointers

Bring all plastic utensils except one sharp apple knife. We eat a lot of cut apples. Otherwise, I’m happy to use a plastic spoon or fork to scoop taco meat into the foil to warm up, mash egg yolks for deviled eggs with a fork, etc. Camping is my one time to be free of dish duty so I’m happy to use plastic and throw it away. Yes, it’s bad for the environment, but this is my one vacation a year and the only time I use plastic utensils and lots of baggies.

I bring a lot of the food in ziplock bags instead of containers so that I can throw it away. I love to hardly bring any food home.

Use the cardboard from cereal and cracker boxes for fire starter.

I also bring half of my food in paper bags (so about 3-4 paper bags) and half in grocery bags. I use the paper bags for fire starter and the grocery bags for a trash bag (and barf bag for car sickness.)

Assign each child a night to help you cook dinner. They can plan the meal before you go, or just help you prepare it at the campground. That way everyone has a few meals off of not having to help.

The last day is leftovers. I want everything gone. So I put out all our food even if it doesn’t go together. Even if it’s 3 marshmallows, I may put it out with the lunch just to get it all gone. Again, the less food to bring home, the better. I don’t want much food to put away and I certainly don’t want dirty dishes and utensils to wash.

Throw as much stuff away as possible. I try to finish one box of cereal before opening another so that I can burn it and not bring it home. I throw away as much trash as possible at the campsite. If there’s only a little bit of mayo left I throw it away. Normally we use every last drop and scrape jars with rubber spatulas, but not camping. When I get home I just want to put away the tent and sleeping bags, throw all the clothes in the washing machine, and be done!

Stop at the last town before your campsite and get your groceries there as well as ice for your cooler. Once we went on a spur-of the moment camping trip and didn’t have food so we stopped at Walmart on the way and it’s become our tradition. We pick up hamburgers, hotdogs, buns, s’mores, chips, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, bananas, etc. I do keep a lot of meat on hand at home so I do cook our taco meat and meat for foil dinners before hand like I mentioned. And I usually bring peanut butter, condiments, salt, and a few other things. But it can be helpful to stop at a store and get only camping food. When I get it with my usual weekly grocery haul I risk forgetting something.

Photos of Our Easy Camping Meals

~Eating cereal in cups around the fire one cold morning.~Buying Dave’s Killer Buns helps keep camping meals healthy and prevent constipation. ~Meals can still be colorful in the woods like Kaitlyn’s taco salad. ~Which kid doesn’t like roasting hot dogs? Classic camping food. Just get Hormel naturals without nitrates and get whole wheat buns. ~Flipping grilled cheese with marshmallow roasters is tricky, but can be done. Kids actually love improvising and having the challenge of doing things without our usual tools. ~Foil dinners are great if you don’t even have a grill over your fire.