And for breakfast...



Toasted English muffins, eggs, bacon, salmon locs, cheese, hash browns, eggs and coffee, of course.

And just in case you think our flying group is geared, up, check out how we roll rafting:





Why not? Breakfast cocktails.

My wife says I'm a pretty good camp cook. I learned it on my day job. On the other end of the spectrum though and I hate to wash dishes.

Steak on a stick


Tin foil stew

somebody mentioned baked potato's in campfire coals... been trying to perfect that one for years... I either get overdone burned taters or half raw... anybody know a formula or how long to leave them in the coals to get it right????? and a few more recipe's would be nice.. gettin tired of burgers and dogs with the occasional steak...I usually do a couple of meals spaghetti and ragu with a couple frozen meat balls thrown in..

I am decidedly on the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to cooking apparently. To be clear, I don't think my way is superior...I just figure there's so many more interesting things to do in the backcountry than cook. Like drink...

Here's a typical airplane camping dinner: beans and jalapeno corn nuts. If it was cold weather I'd have warmed them up, but it wasn't, and I don't care to do dishes.


Now here's dinner while kayaking: powdered hummus with dried soy beans and a cup of lemon-aid. Might be a little rum in the lemon-aid...I forget.


Here's the entirety of my gear for a six day solo kayak trip down the MF Salmon. The blue bag is the food. I think the yellow bags were full of rum.


And lest anyone get the idea that I make wimpy meals, here's some bear stew I cooked up for breakfast.


If anyone wants my recipes PM me. I won't just give em away, but I'd consider selling them with a signed non-disclosure contract.

To be honest I eat pretty well at home. Most every dinner starts with a sharp knife and a lot of fresh vegetables, and rarely if ever anything from a can or package. But in the bush I just can't be bothered. Probably one of the several reasons nobody wants to camp with me.

Instant oatmeal, and canned stew & chili.
Augmented by trail mix & cookies.

tcj wrote:Tin foil stew

Oh man, those are so good. We used to call them 'hobos'. They have everything. Meat, potatoes, carrots, butter and building a fire is a prerequisite. Doesn't get much better...

iceman wrote:somebody mentioned baked potato's in campfire coals... been trying to perfect that one for years... I either get overdone burned taters or half raw... anybody know a formula or how long to leave them in the coals to get it right?????

Seems like cheating, and maybe not in the spirit of camping, but an infrared thermometer or cheap FLIR camera could help a lot. Baking a potato is best done at the same temp and time you'd do it at home in the oven, so substitute hot rocks or coals and you have to use those to simulate the even cooking characteristics of an oven rack at 375. I think too many campfire meals are ruined by putting the food "on the hot part."

I'm one of those guys who doesn't like charred black food, so my marshmallows, wieners, etc all take a little longer but get cooked more evenly.

I'm kinda excited to try a campfire-baked potato now.

Zzz wrote: I think too many campfire meals are ruined by putting the food "on the hot part."

I'm kinda excited to try a campfire-baked potato now.

Yup, you got it. A healthy portion of butter and salt, wrap in foil, put on the edge, let them take their time to cook. You'll never have a better baked potato.

That takes care of the "over cook" possibility.

Then for "under cook", we just turn the potatoes every ten minutes or so and while doing so, give them a squeeze. Developing a touch for how done they are is pretty easy this way.

We used dutch ovens a lot in the field. They take too much time to sit in front of for dinner when you are working all day and very hungry, but they work great if you adjust your routine.

We made a small hot fire early for coffee and hot cereal, then made our dinner in the oven, put the lid on, and before we headed out for work, we skidded all the red hot coals into a pit, put the oven in, and covered the mess with about 6" of dirt. Pretty much anything from elk stew to river mussel/wild onion and rice soup to grouse and dumplings with rice to whatever we caught in the river. It was a team effort to get the pot full, and have something interesting to look forward to at the end of the day. It was never exactly the same twice.

Fish were packed in clean clay and placed in with handfuls of small alder wood or mountain mahogany whips. A tiny sprig of rabbit brush works too if some wild sage isn't available.

If it was early enough in the year, we could often find flowering blue camas roots to throw in soups or roast by themselves. They are like really tasty, slightly sweet potatoes if you let them go far enough to turn a little brown. It beat hauling around dried potatoes we resorted to the rest of the summer.

Everything steamed up all day and was generally still too hot to touch when we would get back towards the end of the day. The long slow steaming turns the toughest cuts of deer or elk into tasty pot roast. Adding extra water to make sure it would not run dry meant there was hot water for noodles or more rice if needed. The fish were perfect some of the time, and when lucky, the wood inside would smoke a bit to give the mud caked fish a good flavor...even catfish. Morels were even available for fleeting days, but only if one of us was around who knew what they were doing. Once in a while we would come across enough whortleberries, thimble berries, or huckleberries to put in the middle of some quick dough and put on top of whatever we were cooking to steam. It worked well enough to be fought over for desert.

The smaller deep aluminum models work great for 2-3 people, and weighed in at no more than bringing extra food that was boring and unappealing after a couple weeks on the trail. It made evenings pretty legit. Even if all we had was meat for a couple meals from base camp and the rest was staples, we only had to tolerate boring dinners a couple nights of the week until later in the summer when the good extras became scarce.

Another nice feature was that instead of a huge sterile fire ring to naturalize when we pulled camp, all the ashes and fire rocks cold pretty much fit in the pit, and aside from compacted vegetation, it was scarcely noticeable anyone had ever been there.

Years back my dad and i left moose camp early one morning. When we got to the river crossing there was a whole family of blue grouse pecking gravel. We shot several of them then on the way back to camp picked some shaggy mane mushrooms. Chickens cut up, shrooms cleaned, salt, pepper, taters, carrots and what ever all goes in the pot. Dribble some flour paste or hot cake batter around the rim of the DO and the whole thing buried in the fire pit for the day.
Early evening we pulled it out and popped off the lid, added bisquick mix dumplings and put the lid back on with coals on top for a short while.
Soon time for supper! You could reach in and grab a grouse leg and it pulled out perfectly clean, all the meat stayed in the pot.
Damn fine eating for a group of cold tired moose hunters.

The next night was heart, liver and hanging tenderloin but that wasn't in a dutch oven!

lesuther wrote:We used dutch ovens a lot in the field. They take too much time to sit in front of for dinner when you are working all day and very hungry, but they work great if you adjust your routine.

We made a small hot fire early for coffee and hot cereal, then made our dinner in the oven, put the lid on, and before we headed out for work, we skidded all the red hot coals into a pit, put the oven in, and covered the mess with about 6" of dirt. Pretty much anything from elk stew to river mussel/wild onion and rice soup to grouse and dumplings with rice to whatever we caught in the river. It was a team effort to get the pot full, and have something interesting to look forward to at the end of the day. It was never exactly the same twice.

Fish were packed in clean clay and placed in with handfuls of small alder wood or mountain mahogany whips. A tiny sprig of rabbit brush works too if some wild sage isn't available.

If it was early enough in the year, we could often find flowering blue camas roots to throw in soups or roast by themselves. They are like really tasty, slightly sweet potatoes if you let them go far enough to turn a little brown. It beat hauling around dried potatoes we resorted to the rest of the summer.

Everything steamed up all day and was generally still too hot to touch when we would get back towards the end of the day. The long slow steaming turns the toughest cuts of deer or elk into tasty pot roast. Adding extra water to make sure it would not run dry meant there was hot water for noodles or more rice if needed. The fish were perfect some of the time, and when lucky, the wood inside would smoke a bit to give the mud caked fish a good flavor...even catfish. Morels were even available for fleeting days, but only if one of us was around who knew what they were doing. Once in a while we would come across enough whortleberries, thimble berries, or huckleberries to put in the middle of some quick dough and put on top of whatever we were cooking to steam. It worked well enough to be fought over for desert.

The smaller deep aluminum models work great for 2-3 people, and weighed in at no more than bringing extra food that was boring and unappealing after a couple weeks on the trail. It made evenings pretty legit. Even if all we had was meat for a couple meals from base camp and the rest was staples, we only had to tolerate boring dinners a couple nights of the week until later in the summer when the good extras became scarce.

Another nice feature was that instead of a huge sterile fire ring to naturalize when we pulled camp, all the ashes and fire rocks cold pretty much fit in the pit, and aside from compacted vegetation, it was scarcely noticeable anyone had ever been there.

This here sounds way too ambitious for a guy like me but I'd sure like to chop the wood and fetch the water for the cook.......for a plate of that stuff.

whee wrote:I hope this thread gets lots of replies. I struggle with camp cooking. I don't care much about food so when I'm camping alone this is about as fancy as I get.

Wow! You heat em, eh?

Years ago, during spring waterfowl surveys in the Dakotas, we'd get tired of restaurant food occasionally. Carried a small leg-less barbeque grill and charcoal. Bought some big white onions, cut in half, hollowed out a bit, added some butter, salt, lemon pepper, etc to the middle, re-assembled them, wrapped in foil, and tossed in the coals for a while. When they came out, tasty.

Otherwise Nalleys canned Hot Chile is pretty good cold.....what a bunch of wussie boys.....

MTV

mtv wrote:

whee wrote:I hope this thread gets lots of replies. I struggle with camp cooking. I don't care much about food so when I'm camping alone this is about as fancy as I get.

Wow! You heat em, eh?

MTV

I can't eat a cold hot dog. Our rafting group calls them "river dogs." When the kids don't like what's for dinner we pull the dogs from the cooler, put a strip of ketchup on it and hand it to whatever kid didn't like the dinner. I personally think river dogs are gross and won't feed them to my kids. Doesn't matter though, my kids eats what's cooked or nothing at all.

One word:
bangers and beans.
Oops, make that three words.

So these photos are from the rafting ones posted earlier, but do contain a simple and easy cooking method - Zip Lock omelettes!

Because this is a group trip, all the fixins are in the paper boats. All that is needed is a zip lock, add raw eggs and prepared fixin's to the bag, seal mix by squeezing, and drop in the hot water until done, 6 to 10 minutes. Open and eat.





These can also be prepared before leaving home. Add everything to the bags and freeze. At camp just pull them out of the cooler and drop in boiling water.