People talk a lot about "gratitude" these days. How it can shift your perspective, improve your mood and perhaps even physically alter your brain. Want to experience gratitude in your lived reality? Go camping. You'll never be more grateful for indoor plumbing (which is miraculous, if you think about it), pillow-top mattresses and high thread count sheets.
If you insist on going into the wilderness to camp, even if that wilderness is less than a hundred feet from your car (which, frankly, is the kind of camping we here at Good Food prefer), you'll need to eat. That's where we come in. And by "we," we mean people who know way more about camping than we do.
Since this is Good Food, not Naked & Afraid, we turned to Connie Alvarez, KCRW's official Communications Director and unofficial camping guru. Growing up in Los Angeles, Alvarez spent a lot of time camping with her parents.
"My dad was a big camper," Alvarez says. "I don't even know if he called it camping as much as it's just how he grew up in Mexico. I get the sense that he missed that. So when we were little, we would go camping a lot."
More: The KCRW Guide to SoCal Camping
Mostly, they camped in the Sonoran Desert, sometimes on the Mexico side of the border, often in Death Valley, Joshua Tree, and Mojave.
"That's probably my favorite, the Mojave National Preserve. My preference is wide open desert camping. There's so much to do. And I don't worry so much about burning down a forest," she says.
Later, while she was a student at UCLA, Alvarez worked as a counselor at Bruin Woods, a camp near Lake Arrowhead where families could learn how to rough it. (It's much posher these days.)
We also turned to Chris Waldhaus, co-founder of Cascade Trails Mustang Sanctuary & Campground in Joshua Tree, for advice. An avid outdoors person, he grew up in Colorado, living part of the time off the grid with his family and part of the time on a Ute reservation outside of Durango. He emphasizes that you don't need a lot of equipment when it comes to camping or the food prep that goes with it.
"I think the most important thing is that camping is supposed to be fun," Waldhaus says. "The food prep should not feel like a chore. It shouldn't feel like you're doing the most just to have a meal. You want it to be easy, you want it to be quick, and you want it to be efficient."
More: Campfire food: How to cook the perfect foil packet dinner while camping
Campfire cuisine should be easy, tasty and filling. Photo by Shutterstock.
That's perfect. The Good Food crew loves a good food prep, especially when it's easy breezy.
So what do you bring? It depends on what kind of camping you're doing.
If you're going on some sort of deep wilderness/survivalist trip, pass on. This is not the droid you're looking for. If, like many Americans, you only have a weekend and you plan to drive to the semi-wilderness where you'll either pitch a tent near your car (a.k.a. car camping) or hike and set up camp, then yes, we can help.
Cooking outdoors with a cast iron pot on an open fire is great when you're camping. Photo by Shutterstock.
Essential Cookware: You Don't Need Much
- Camping knife
- 1 fork, 1 knife, 1 spoon per person
- Aluminum foil
- A cooler (optional)
- Cutting board (optional)
- Sturdy pot or pan (optional)
- Camping stove (optional)
- Lighter fluid (if you don't know how to start a fire)
There are many ways to prep for a camping trip, and everyone has their favorite equipment. But the most basic rule is to keep it simple. Don't bring too much. Don't try to recreate your home kitchen in the great outdoors.
Waldhaus is minimal about gear. "Seasonings, essential. The knife, essential. The cutting board, you can create," he says. "You can use a rock, you can use a piece of wood, it just depends. You can be creative with your cutting board. You just need some type of surface where you can meal prep."
We like a clean work surface, so we think a lightweight but sturdy cutting board (we like the Oxo Good Grips plastic cutting board) is a necessity.
"I think that a lot of people get in their heads about making sure they go to REI or Patagonia," Alvarez says. "You really don't need that much. You just need a couple utensils, a good sharp knife, a block to cut things on. You barely even need that because you could literally just use the same pot [to cut and prep ingredients]."
For knives, Waldhaus prefers a traditional pocket knife, something with a 3-4 in. blade that folds into itself. "If you have fruit or vegetables that are semi thick, you'll still be able to cut it without getting fruit juice all over you," Waldhaus says. He likes Mossy Oak's knives, which can be found at many retailers.
"Utensils are important as well," he adds. "Some foods you can eat with your hands, but you don't want to have to eat everything with your hands."
What if you don't know how to make a fire?
"Rather than trying to figure out how to start these twigs and sticks on fire, get yourself some lighter fluid," Waldhaus says.
Find out in advance whether your campsite has a grill. If not, you may want to bring a small camping stove. If you want to bring cookware, Alvarez recommends a Dutch oven because "it's nice and sturdy." You can prep, cook, and store a variety of things in it.
Why is aluminum foil on this list? Because you can use it to cook without relying on pots and pans. Waldhaus shared his technique for making the perfect foil packet dinner of salmon, carrots, and asparagus.
Fried mushrooms, bacon and sausages sizzle in a pan over an open fire. Photo by Shutterstock.
Essential Recipes: Choose Your Meals
"The meals that we make have to be easy to prep, easy to cook, easy to clean and filling," Waldhaus says. "Filling is important because you may only have time to eat one meal." Here are a few recipes that fit the bill.
BREAKFAST
Food writer and Top Chef Canada judge Chris Nuttall-Smith features these Ash-Roasted Eggs with Grilled Toast and Good Honey in Cook It Wild, a repository of clever camping recipes. He says: "I feel safe in calling this the most low-fi camp recipe you’ll make this year. Ash-roasted eggs, done right, are rich, soft, and just the slightest bit camp fire smoky. The simple technique for making them dates back to the Romans, at least." Get the recipe
More: KCRW's Campfire Playlist: listen while you cook
LUNCH & DINNER
If you’re a parent eyeing a road trip with your kids this summer, you might find inspiration for your time outdoors through chef and stylist Sarah Glover’s new book, Wild Child: Adventure Cooking with Kids. The cookbook details simple but elegant meals that kids of all ages can help prep and cook around a campfire, inspired by both land and sea… like this recipe for Fire Salad, made with beets, carrots and onions that are grilled over a fire. Get the recipe
Waldhaus shares his tips for making the Perfect Foil Packet Campfire Dinner. He loves salmon, carrots and asparagus but you can use this technique with pretty much the protein and veggies of your choice. Get the recipe
Waldhaus also loves One Pot Pasta because, as the name of the dish implies, it requires only one pot and you can throw in whatever you want. Also, "pasta" isn't literal. "I say one pot pasta, but that's really one pot chili, one pot stew, whatever you want," he explains. There's no hard and fast recipe. Waldhaus usually throws in chicken or chicken sausage, vegetables and noodles, like elbow macaroni. "I let them soak so it's more or less cooking all day, like it's a crock pot," he says. "If you've made a campfire at night, you can sit your pot in those coals and let it heat up. If you need to add wood to it, you can. Now, it's simmering and stewing, so when you're ready to eat, it's there and it's warm and it's good."
Kabobs are a terrific option for camping. "The grilled stuff is so great, because you can just find a stick, whittle it down, make it sharp so you can stick whatever food you want on it — tomatoes, cucumbers, apples, meat — and then put that on the fire," Waldhaus says.
Campfire Chili is another tasty and versatile choice. Like One Pot Pasta, chili can accommodate whatever herbs, spices, vegetables and meat you throw in. Got leftovers from last night's meal? Toss 'em in. It's a good way to put a whole mess of stuff together in a single pot.
Alvarez likes Chicken Fajitas and Rice. She says that when she was a counselor at Bruin Woods, the cooks would send them off with large Ziploc bags of marinated meat and seasoned dry rice. She would often fill the Dutch oven with water, throw in a bag of meat and a bag of rice and let them cook at the same time. "It was super easy," she says. "Once it's done, you give everybody their chicken fajitas and rice. But my favorite part was that we would turn over the Dutch oven lid and because it gets so hot, you just cook your tortillas on the lid. We did that with my family too." Speaking of tortillas…
TORTILLAS
"Never forget the tortillas," Alvarez says. "Tortillas are the bomb. If you have tortillas, You don't need utensils. You can just rip and grab."
When you're camping, tortillas are so essential, they're basically an entire food group. "There are a lot of them and they don't take up as much space. You don't have to be as mindful about them as you do with a loaf of bread," Waldhaus adds. He mixes it up, sometimes using plain ones, other times buying flavored tortillas from the store.
Skillet s'mores are a fun take on traditional s'mores. Photo by Shutterstock.
DESSERT
S'mores are the obvious choice. You can make them the obvious way using a stick of a skewer. But Ashley Jones, author of Skilletheads: A Guide to Collecting and Restoring Cast-Iron Cookware, shares a recipe for Skillet S’mores. Get the recipe
SNACKS
Trail mix! Having nuts, seeds and dried fruit is essential because you can snack on it as needed with little effort. Trail mix is truly a choose-your-own-adventure creation. Throw in whatever you want. We like chocolate but if you're camping somewhere warm, the chocolate will likely melt and get messy. Pack a few Ziploc bags full of your favorite homemade or store bought trail mix and you're good to go.
With campfire cooking, you want to do as much washing, chopping, and prepping as you can before you leave for your trip. Photo by Shutterstock.
Essential Prep: Do As Much As Possible In Advance
The trick to campfire cuisine is to prepare as much of your food as possible while you're still at home. Once you've chosen your recipes and bought your ingredients, you need to slice, dice and marinate everything that you can before you leave.
"When I was camping with my family, we would buy meat, cut it up, marinate it, put it in bags and have it ready in the cooler," Alvarez says. "That way, we didn't have to cut up anything while we were there, if we didn't want to."
"Chop up vegetables, chop up meats, take the bones out of them," Nuttall-Smith says. That also reduces the weight of what you need to carry.
If you're bringing wine or liquor, Nuttall-Smith suggests you pour it in soda bottles or reusable containers.
"Freezing is a really big part of it. Anything that can freeze without losing quality is really worth doing," Nuttall-Smith says. For his make-ahead sticky buns, one of his favorite camping desserts, he prepares then freezes the dough.
Nuttall-Smith also has some suggestions for how to pack your cooler. "You want to have a lot more ice and frozen goods than you have non-frozen goods. Anything that you freeze in advance counts as ice. So when you pack your cooler, it's best to start at the bottom with block ice, if you have it, because block ice stays frozen longer than cube ice. Then, you layer your cooler with the foods that need to stay coldest and you're going to use last. At the top of your cooler is your lunch for the first day and more fragile things, the things that you need to grab more frequently. When you pack that way, you're not reaching into your cooler constantly. One of the keys to keeping a cooler cold is don't open it all the time," Nuttall-Smith says.
TLDR: Anything you can do at home, you should do. That includes spices.
Spice blends, whether store-bought or homemade, are key to making sure your campfire meals aren't bland. Photo by Tamanna Tumee/Unsplash.
Essential Seasonings: Welcome To Flavortown
- Salt
- Pepper
- Garlic powder
- Onion powder
- Oregano
- Lemon pepper
- Paprika
- Chili flakes
- Cayenne
- Tarragon
- Dill
- Seasoning blends
Technically, all spices aside from salt are optional but that would make life pretty bland, wouldn't it? The easiest thing is to buy a packet of a pre-made seasoning blend like Lawry's Seasoned Salt, Cholula's Chile Pepper Carne Asada Seasoning Mix, Old Bay, Tony Chachere's Original Creole Seasoning, any store-bought taco seasoning mix, Paul Prudhomme's Vegetable Magic, Hidden Valley Ranch powder (it works for more than salad dressing!), or one of Penzey's many excellent herb blends.
Classic spice blends like ras el hanout, za'atar, Chinese five spice, berbere, jerk, herbs de provence and garam masala are also great options. They're easy to find in stores or you can make your own.
With only four ingredients — thyme, oregano, summer savory, and rosemary — herbs de provence is easy to whip up and tastes great on vegetables, fish and chicken. Chinese five spice — star anise, fennel seeds, Sichuan peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon — is another great and relatively simple combo to prep. The same goes for taco seasoning, which relies on cumin, chili powder, paprika and crushed red peppers, among other spices.
You can also make your own spice blend completely from scratch. It's all about personal preference, using what you have on hand and balancing the flavors. Want to make your mouth tingle? Grind up some Sichuan peppercorns. Enjoy a bit of tartness? Throw in some dried lemon powder. Trying to add some warmth? Include ground allspice and nutmeg. Need to keep vampires at bay? Go heavy on the garlic powder.
Whatever blends you buy or prep, the best way to transport them is in tightly sealed Ziploc bags. They're lighter and less bulky than traditional plastic or glass spice jars.
Watermelons, because their rinds are so thick and juicy, make excellent cooking pots. Photo by Thought Catalog/Unsplash.
Bonus Food: Coffee, Corned Beef Hash & Watermelon
When you're camping, it's crucial to make use of what you have. Alvarez says that as a child, "We didn't have a lot of camping equipment. My dad always said you don't need all that stuff. You can use the fire and a flat comal and a pot to boil water in." But some things, you can't skimp on.
If you're a coffee person, bring ground up beans. If you're finicky about how that coffee tastes, bring a small pot separate from your main pot or pan. "If food is stuck in [your main pot] and you don't have the ability to properly wash it, your coffee's going to taste like beans or whatever else you cooked in there," Alvarez says. You may want to bring another small pot to boil water for coffee, tea or cocoa.
She confesses her "junky treat" for camping used to be a can of corned beef hash. "It is so good with tortillas and you cut up some onions and tomatoes into it. It's delicious," Alvarez says.
She has a fun camping hack that dates back to her childhood. "When I was a kid, we would bring a watermelon. If we went camping by a river, we would put the melon inside the river so it stayed cold," Alvarez says. They'd cut the watermelon in half, hollow it out and eat the fruit. Then, once the fire was ready, after the flames had died down and there was white ash with plenty of heat, they would put potatoes, short-grain rice and whatever else they were cooking inside the hollowed out watermelon. They'd cover it with the other half of the rind and use the watermelon as a pot.
"Basically, you can stew things in the melons," Alvarez says. "You don't have to take a giant pot if you have watermelon. The thick rind is full of water. That means it doesn't burn easily. You can even sauté meat in there."