Campfire Cuisine

Three recipes to spice up your campsite cooking

By Stio

June 29^th, 2016

We each have our own personal relationship with food. And this relationship also reflects who we are—whether we’re an athlete fueling up for a big day in the mountains, or a parent trying to get his kids fed before school. And like every other relationship in our lives, while we grow as people, our relationship with food grows, too.

As for me, my relationship with food evolved the moment I moved into my car two years ago. It’s an old Subaru Loyale. I have a small fold out table, a single butane burner, and a few pots and pans. My pantry piles itself into a transparent plastic container I found in my parent’s basement. I started out with a cooler back in 2014, but I don’t use one anymore. This kitchen has been with me while I’ve explored North America as a climber, from Squamish, British Columbia, to Fayetteville, West Virginia, and south as far as Mexico City.

I’ve gotten pretty good at the “single-pot” meals, especially since I’m usually trying to cook after a long day out climbing. I don’t have the energy for something complicated when I return, usually well past dark, too exhausted to cook but starving. Likewise, I’m always wondering about breakfast: do I have time to cook something before we do it all over again? Must I suffice with a cream cheese bagel under a fried egg yet again?

Here are a few options, then, from my no-measure cookbook to yours. These are simple recipes that might give you a few ideas on how to balance your food with your life, whether it’s a night out camping in the Tetons, or a thousand more on the road, exploring the world.

BREAKFAST: BANANA-EGG PANCAKES

Ingredients:
Bananas
Eggs
Vanilla extract (optional)
Flour (optional)
Syrup (optional)
Butter (optional)

This is a great option for breakfast if you know that massive breakfast burrito is going to be too heavy right before a big day out. This breakfast packs a ton of energy without exploding your stomach.

The ratio is one banana per egg. You want well-ripened bananas so you can mush them up and mix them with the eggs easily. In this case, old bananas that look too brown to put in your daypack would serve as fine contenders for this breakfast, as you’ll never know the difference once they’re on the plate.

After the bananas and eggs are mixed up, you should have something akin to batter. If you’d like, add a couple drops of vanilla for added flavor, maybe a touch of salt. Without flour, the pancakes are thin, but if you add just a bit of flour, you’ll see the batter thicken to the point you’d prefer, and ultimately these will make thicker, more traditional pancakes.

In a non-stick pan, or a pan with a bit of coconut oil and butter, fry’em up. You’ll see that they bubble just like normal, giving you the signal that they are ready to be flipped.

With 4 bananas and 4 eggs, you’ll have about six to seven pancakes. Fold them up and pack them away for the trail or serve with a square of butter and syrup.

Lunch: Dirtbag Trailmix

Ingredients:
Granola
Dried Fruit
Nuts
Chocolate
Potato Chips

This is simple: build an assortment of granola, dried fruit, nuts, some chocolate and salty potato chips. Combine.

The dried fruit provides essential sugars, the nuts give you much-needed fats and oils, and the granola provides that buffer-crunch that keeps your bites interesting. As for the potato chips, this is an inside tip I’ve gotten from a few experienced alpinists, who all point out that the salt and calories in plain potato chips provides a much lighter alternative to other on-the-go-foods. This is why I put potato chips in my “GORP sack” this past spring before my one-day ascent of The Nose on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley. 17 hours of climbing, and an hour hiking back down. It was the only thing I ate the whole day, and it kept me going.

Dinner: Single-Pot Super-RAmen

INGREDIENTS:
GINGER
GARLIC
ONION
RED PEPPER
CARROT
BROCCOLI
GREEN ONION
CILANTRO
LIME
SOY SAUCE
COCONUT OIL
THAI CHILI PASTE
NOODLES
SHALLOTS
SPICES: THYME, RED PEPPER FLAKES, SALT
SWEET CHILI SAUCE (OPTIONAL)
BEEF (OPTIONAL)
CHICKEN (OPTIONAL)
EGG (OPTIONAL)

I call it “Super-Ramen” but in reality it is more of a Thai-infused pasta, depending on how much water you use.

In a large pot, add a healthy amount of coconut oil and brown shallots, garlic and ginger. The key to the flavor in this pot lies in the ginger, so be liberal. The ginger combined with the coconut oil, soy sauce and Thai chili paste will provide the oriental flavor base for all your veggies (and meat).

Add onion, broccoli and carrot to the mix after the ginger and garlic is brown, and cover for a bit. We want to sauté all these together, as if they were going right over a bed of white rice (good idea- but that’s another recipe…) Once all the veggies are about half-way cooked, add about two or three cups of water. Depending on how many veggies you decide to throw in (if the meal is for one or a bunch) this amount of water will range. The goal is to have the veggies cooking about half way submerged underwater. Leave the pot uncovered and simmer until your veggies are cooked but still a bit firm.

While the veggies are cooking down in the pot, you can add your spices. I prefer a simple combination of a bit of salt, a bunch of thyme and some red pepper flakes. Once your veggies are ready, the water should be a bit lower. This is the time to add your noodles. I prefer Udon noodles the most because the large noodle compliments the chopped veggies and the theme of the dish best. This will be a bit tricky because you already have a lot of food in the pot, but persevere and try and keep them long!

By the time the noodles are done, mixed in well within all the flavors, your water levels should be basically gone. Add chopped green onion, and a good helping of soy sauce. Add your Thai chili paste to taste based on how much red pepper you used, and make it perfect. Let it simmer just a bit longer.

Once it’s ready to eat, fry an egg over-easy and put that on top. The yolk is your secret weapon of flavor. If you used a protein like beef or chicken, you would have sliced it to a half-inch and added it with your onion, leaving them somewhere in there, waiting…

And just at the end, to impress those strangers at your campsite or your neighbors in the Walmart parking lot, drop a small bush of chopped cilantro on top, and serve it with a slice of lime. The lime and cilantro add an impeccable freshness to the flavor.