Tips Camping - Tips Camping
The good news is that once you learn a few tricks of the trade, camp cooking is just about as easy as using a kitchen stove.
When done well, few meals taste better or satisfy more than those cooked at camp. Something about cooking the old fashioned way makes the entire experience – from food preparation to savoring your last bite – special. A real drawback, however, is that cooking at camp requires more time, patience, and ingenuity than kitchen cooking. Use the pointers below to help make cooking in the outdoors less daunting, and more fun.
Cooking Supplies
Regardless of what you specifically plan to cook on your next camping trip, there are a few food preparation staples that you shouldn’t forget. First and foremost is a box of matches and some lighter fluid. Most prefer to do their campsite cooking over an open fire, so you’d be out of luck without a way to start one. As for dishes, the true necessities are a medium to large lightweight pot, a pan of similar size, aluminum foil, and a portable grate that can be placed over a fire pit. This combination of cooking equipment can be used to prepare just about anything from bacon and eggs to beans and pasta. Lastly, don’t forget your spatula and tongs – pulling food off a fire bare-handed is far from pleasant.
Cooking Methods
Over the centuries, outdoor adventurers have come up with a number of ways to cook meals using a campfire. Of course, some are more complicated than others. Most camping trips, for instance, probably won’t require you to make a spit for roasting (unless you’re feeling a little overzealous).
The most basic form of campfire cooking is to use direct heat. There are essentially two ways to accomplish this. The first, an old boy scouts’ trick, is to wrap food items individually in aluminum foil and place them in hot coals. It requires frequent checking, but is very effective for foods that require high heat. The second, method is simply to place a grate over an open fire and grill your food like you would in the backyard. The heat from this source is less direct, so it will likely take a little longer to cook.
For soups, stews, and pastas, you’ll need the aforementioned pots and pans in the supplies list. To cook them, just build the fire, let it die down to hot coals, and place the pot or pan over them. Managing the hot coal amount and concentration is the key to this technique, as heat can become inconsistent pretty quickly.