What can I actually cook while camping?

Camp cooking goes wrong in the same ways every time: too many components, too much washing up, and prep that should have happened at home. A single burner produces excellent food if the menu is designed for it, and the design work is mostly done before you leave.

Safety

What you'll need

• A stove with a stable pan support
• One decent pan with a lid
• A sharp knife and a small board
• Tubs and zip bags for pre-prepared ingredients
• A cool box or bag with proper ice packs
• Washing-up kit and a bowl

Step by step

1. Do the preparation at home.Chop onions, peppers and garlic, weigh out rice and pasta, decant spices into one small tub, mix marinades, portion oil into a small bottle. Twenty minutes in your own kitchen removes the worst of the faff and most of the washing up.
2. Design meals around one pan.The reliable formats are: pasta with a sauce made in the same pan, a curry from a paste with a tin of coconut milk, a chilli or stew from tinned pulses and tomatoes, a risotto, a one-pan fry-up, and noodles with whatever you have. All of them are twenty minutes and one pan.
3. Use the lid, always.A lid roughly halves boiling time and therefore roughly halves fuel use. On a windy pitch it makes the difference between water boiling and not.
4. Plan the food by day, coldest first.Without a fridge, eat the fresh meat and fish on day one, then eggs, hard cheese and cured meat, then dried and tinned. A cool box with proper frozen blocks holds a couple of days if it is kept shut and out of the sun; a cool bag with a supermarket ice pack holds a few hours.
5. Take the ingredients that carry well.Eggs in a box, hard cheese, cured sausage, tinned pulses and tomatoes, pasta, rice, couscous, noodles, oats, hard vegetables such as onions, carrots and squash, apples, curry paste, stock cubes, oil, and a bottle of something acidic like lemon or vinegar to lift things.
6. Set up the kitchen before you are hungry.A flat, stable, sheltered surface for the stove out of the wind and away from the tent, water and washing-up gear on one side, food and board on the other. A stove on soft or uneven ground is how pans of boiling water go over.
7. Manage wind, because it dominates fuel use.A windshield around the stove — never fully enclosing a canister-top stove, which can overheat the canister — or simply positioning behind a wall, a car or a tarp. Wind can double or triple the fuel you use to boil the same water.
8. Wash up immediately and properly.Hot water, biodegradable soap, and dispose of the water at least 30 metres from any watercourse or into the site's designated point. Strain food scraps out and bin them; never wash up in a stream or a loch.
9. Store food against animals.In the UK the problem is foxes, gulls, badgers, mice and rats rather than anything larger. Food goes into a sealed box in the car or a hung bag, never loose in a tent porch, and never inside a tent where you sleep.
10. Take one good knife, not a set.A sharp medium knife with a sheath, a small flexible board, a wooden spoon that also serves as a spatula, and a pair of tongs cover almost everything. Multi-tool cutlery is fine and a real fork is better.
11. Think about breakfast the night before.Overnight oats in a tub, or a fry-up with everything already chopped, or just good coffee and pastries from the village. Morning is when camping motivation is lowest.
12. Take one treat that needs no cooking.Good chocolate, decent coffee, a bottle of something. It is out of proportion to its weight in how much better a wet evening feels.

Tips

• A cheap insulated flask of boiling water made before you leave gives you tea on arrival before you have unpacked anything.
• Freeze a meal at home and take it as an ice block in the cool box — it thaws by the time you want to eat it on day one.
• Salt, pepper, a stock cube, chilli flakes and a lemon rescue nearly anything. Take them.
• A pan cosy — even a folded towel — keeps couscous or noodles cooking after the heat goes off, saving fuel.
• Wash up as you go, in the evening. Congealed pans in the morning are the reason people stop enjoying camping.

Common mistakes

• Taking a recipe that needs three pans and forty minutes — One burner, no worktop and a head torch. Meals that work at home do not necessarily work on a stove on the grass.
• Underestimating fuel — Wind, cold and boiling water for washing up all consume far more gas than expected. Take more than the calculation suggests and keep a spare canister.
• Washing up in a stream or lake — Food residue and detergent contaminate water others drink from and damage the ecology. Carry the water away and dispose of it on the ground well away from the watercourse.

Alternatives

• Canister-top gas stove: Light, instant, simple and the default for one or two people. Performance drops in cold weather depending on the gas mix.
• Twin-burner gas stove: The family camping standard — a hob and a grill on a stable base, running off a larger cylinder. Heavy, and vastly more civilised.
• Liquid fuel stove: Runs on petrol or paraffin, works well in cold and at altitude, and is noisy and needs priming. Overkill for most UK camping.
• Disposable barbecue: Convenient and environmentally poor, banned at many sites and beaches, and a serious carbon monoxide risk once brought under cover. If you use one, use it outdoors and douse it fully with water.
• Cooking on a campfire: Only where fires are permitted, on an existing fire ring, with the right pans. Slower and more work than a stove, and lovely when the setting allows.
• Cook nothing: Bread, cheese, cured meat, tomatoes, fruit and a flask made at home is a perfectly good camping dinner and it takes no fuel and no washing up.

Questions people ask