Recent Articles
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Recipe: Korean Beef Bulgogi (adapted)
Translating (literally) as “Fire Meat,” Bulgogi is a popular dish you can find all over Korea, from supermarkets to upscale restaurants. Typically, this dish is made …
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Making Better Instant Ramen
Today, we are making a variation on our recipe, Better Instant Ramen. Take those boring instant noodles and make them into a camping delight. Given the …
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Dehydrating Green Onions
Green onions (also known as scallions) are packed full of flavor, and a terrific addition to many camping meals. They can be fragile to store and …
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Dehydrating Corn
Corn is often a wonderful addition to your camp meal. Canned corn is a great option if you are car camping and weight isn’t an issue, …
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Dehydrating Mushrooms
Mushrooms might seem fairly dry to the touch, but they are sponges full of water. They make great candidates for your home dehydrator. Most chefs will …
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Dehydrating Eggs
For years, I have had the impression that eggs needed to be freeze-dried in order to dehydrate them. But recently I’ve been reading more about dehydrating …
Sitting around the fire after a long day on the trail,
Someone asks the dreaded question...
What’s for dinner?
When imagining a camping trip, most people picture cooking over a campfire. There is a romantic notion of red-hot embers heating a cast-iron skillet full of bacon, next to a pot of coffee.
The reality of this idea is often something quite different.
Sure, you might make a fire (if it’s allowed), but waiting until the fire is ready to cook can require some patience. In our impatience, we place our pot over the leaping flames, creating char marks that will never scrub off. Once you’ve found a spot for your pot, grabbing it off of the fire later can be really tough. And isn’t that water taking too long to boil?
Cooking in the outdoors is an exercise in balancing the convenience we have in our home kitchen, with what we can manage to bring with us to the camp table.
When I plan a camping menu, I think of reheating methods rather than making some wonderful culinary creation from scratch. There are two excellent rules-of-thumb I like to follow:
- The easier a meal is to prepare, the sooner everyone eats.
- The easier a meal is to clean up, the sooner you get to relax.
So, forget that pinned recipe depicting cinnamon rolls nestled in hollowed out half orange peels, simmering in a cast iron pan over a morning campfire for breakfast.