One of the most enjoyable parts of camping is outdoor cooking. While many rely on the traditional campfire staples such as hamburgers, hotdogs, and marshmallows, there are many other possibilities as well. With a little innovation and planning, your outdoor meals will be truly special events.
The key to a successfully delicious camping trip is to plan ahead. Decide what you'll have for each meal. French toast, pancakes, little sausages, eggs scrambled with chopped onion, jalapeño, and tomato, hash browns, and breakfast burritos are great campfire breakfast foods. Don't forget to boil water and serve hot apple cider, cocoa, and coffee. Sandwiches, salad, fast cooking rice packets (on gas stove), trail mix, cheese and crackers, bagels and cream cheese, and fruit are quick lunches that don't involve making a fire. For dinner you can always rely on hamburgers and hotdogs, but grilled steaks and corn on the cob with potatoes wrapped in aluminum foil are just as easy. Or use one pan to sauté vegetables and another to fry that fish your husband and daughter caught. Pack marshmallows, chocolate bars and graham crackers for smores. Campfire popcorn makes another great evening snack.
If camping with extended family, decide who will bring what. A good idea is to assign one meal to each adult camper, make them in charge of deciding the menu for their meal and packing the food. This way all can help to prepare it, but there is less confusion and all the ingredients arrive at camp. Nothing is worse than to plan a steak dinner and then have the person who agreed to bring the steak forget or think someone else was bringing the main ingredient.
Prepare foods at home as much as you can. Chop vegetables for sandwiches and salads, grate or slice cheese and pack in a plastic bag, pre-wash fruits and vegetables, season or marinate meat, and make hamburger patties. It is easier and more efficient to do these tasks where you have running warm water and a large counter space.
Pack the perishable foods in a large cooler with a few bags of ice. A cooler that drains out the bottom is much better if you will be keeping food in the cooler for more than one day, other wise the water level rises and food tends to get soggy. The dry foods, utensils and plates pack well in a large plastic box. This packing method allows you to get from car to picnic table in only two loads. Don't forget to take along something to cook your food in. Fry pans and a kettle to boil water, that you don't mind getting fire blackened, sturdy plates and mugs. A gas camp stove is useful when the campfire itself doesn't provide enough space for all the food to be ready at once or for lunches when you feel too lazy to want to build a campfire just for one hot dish.
There are a few things that are easily overlooked in the planning process, but are essential to outdoor cooking. Don't forget the firewood, a grill (in case none is provided), oil and salt. All that said; part of the fun of cooking over a campfire is to make do without having everything you normally "need". If you wanted to have every convenience available, you would just stay home and cook in your well-equipped kitchen. You are almost sure to forget something important, but work around it and take joy in your innovativeness. Almost anything can be cooked successfully outdoors; all one needs is a well-packed cooler and a creative mind.
