I’m going to be camping for 4 days at a location without easy access to fire (hence no boiled water). As such, I’m going to be packing a bunch of canned stuff for my daily meals. The place is in England, where we’re expecting a few hot days this week and maybe some rain over the weekend.
However, I have some free time before the trip to cook food. But I’m not sure if there’s any good foods I could bring along that could keep for 3-4 days without a fridge. I guess that crosses out most meat dishes.
Some ideas I had were: falafel, fritters, bread, calzones, pasties. Have you tried taking such foods camping and if so, did they last a few days without spoiling? Are there any other foods you’d recommend? Thank you so much!
Cup noodles can be made with cold water too. But they will take about 30 mins instead of 2-3 minutes. Tried and tested. They still taste good. They are not very nutritious, though.
I would recommended making Energy Bars/Balls. You can find a lot of recipes online but here’s mine:
- Roasted almonds
- Roasted cashews
- Roasted pistachios
- Roasted hazelnuts
- Roasted walnuts
- Raisins
- Dates
- Dried Cranberries
- Peanut Butter (unsweetened) (mine contains coconut oil)
- Sesame seeds
- Muskmelon seeds
- Flax seeds
- Pumpkin seeds
- Dark Chocolate
- Roast the nuts and grind almonds and walnuts to almost flour consistency, and grind the others coarsly.
- Just put everything in a food processor and let it mix everything. You can also mix it with hand or spoon.
- To make bars, just put the mixture in a baking dish or a tray and put as much pressure as you can on top of it with your hands or spoon to remove all the air pockets. Refrigerate it for 4 hours. Then cut it into bars.
- To make balls, just lightly oil your hands and form a ball shape. Again, press them hard to remove the air pockets.
These can last over a week outside the refrigerator (considering the ambient temperature in your area does not rise above 30° C). And inside the refrigerator they can last for over a month.
You can add different types of seeds, nuts, sweeteners etc, depending on what you like, what your body needs and what’s available.
Hope this helps.
Activating your almonds, I see
Yes, roasting them will make them release their oil. That oil will help them stick everything together.
I’m over here getting nostalgic for BEANS.
New York City???
Look into backpacking meals. They keep forever practically and simply require heat and water most times to prepare.
Came here to suggest this as well. You said no easy access to fire. I don’t know if that means you can’t have a firepit or any kind of fire period. If it’s the former, you could look at backpacking stoves. They’re small and compact. Good way to boil some water.
a jar of peanut butter with granola and dried fruit and candy mixed in is a solid go to.
granola bars in general are solid, even the ones you make yourself.
fresh fruit like apples and bananas are good.
canned condensed soups are surprisingly good cold if you have access to fresh water to reconstitute them and you aren’t worried about dehydration. that brings me to my next and much, much more important question:
do you have water figured out?
you can easily survive for four days without food, but you can’t make it that long without water. you can’t expect to rely on springs/streams/wells especially if you haven’t been drinking from them for a while already.
you need about a gallon of water a day, more if youre exerting yourself, sick or eating very dry foods (like camping foods). so if you don’t have a supply already figured out, focus on water. If you do have a supply already figured out, pack a gallon or so and some iodine anyway. you literally can’t survive if for whatever reason the supply that was fine last time isn’t running or is spoiled.
if you do end up having access to water, you can use flameless ration heaters to boil it quickly and use that to heat up any sealed foods you have. frhs’ are powdered metals and salt that make a real hot reaction when you pour water on em. so if you had a bag with a frh in it, you had say some food that would taste good hot in another sealed bag, you could put your food bag in the frh bag and pour some water in, fold it closed, prop it up on a rock or something and wait for your food to get hot.
Don’t know how feasible this is to cook, but jerky will last more than 4 days. One of my favorite snacks, but it is very expensive.
Funny this comes up, I just made jerky at home for the first time a couple days ago. Much cheaper and very tasty. Easier than I was expecting too.
You’ve gotten tons of good suggestions, but also like just bring a camp stove? Even if an actual camp stove isn’t allowed, you could easily use a tea candle. It takes a bit longer but it will boil water.
There are some amazingly small and light stoves out there. There’s the Esbit stove (size of a deck of cards, including fuel) and the PocketRocket (fits in a mug but needs bulky fuel). Then if you’re willing to deal with collecting firewood, there is a whole family of wood burning stoves that can produce a surprisingly strong fire as long as there is firewood in the area. They then pack down completely flat.
24 packs of Scampi Fries and a dozen Mars Bars.
You can have meat, but something cured and in a pack like biltong.
And every hiker’s favourite, Kendal mint cake, which is as close to Terry Pratchett’s dwarf bread as any substance I know.
And this is England. Chances are you’ll be like two miles from the nearest shop at a push.
I tried to look for a super-remote forest location last year; my intention was to take a tent, get dropped off on the edge, go deep into a forest with laptop & keyboard, to write some forest-inspired music. I was pretty shocked to find out that all our once-deep forests are criss crossed with roads. You were kinda joking, but you’re literally right, there’s nowhere far from a road in any of our forests.
I’m going to guess Lake District or Scotland. You can easily be several hours walk from shops.
Well, Scotland isn’t part of England. But sure, you can get far from civilisation, by UK standards. Dartmoor and Yorkshire Moors are others. It’s only a few miles as the crow flies, but it’ll feel a lot more than that when carrying a load of camping stuff and having to go around a river.
biltong
Found the South African!
No but I’m a fan of the accent. Or at least Joss Ackland’s in Lethal Weapon 2. Diplomatic immunity!
They started selling it in the UK a few years back. It’s quite expensive though.
Beef jerky and salted/tinned fish.
Butter.
Eggs (unopened; only if not pasteurized/cleaned which you will not find in a typical US grocer for anyone other than OP).
Pretty much any baked goods.
Pasta (uncooked obviously).
Avocado, onion, tomato… Pretty much any fruit or veggie that isn’t kept refrigerated at the store really.
Nuts.
Chocolate
Marshmallows
Graham crackers
Edit: NO FIRE?! The hell you camping?! Could you at least get some sterno or an electric camping stove? How you gonna have a camping trip without s’mores? 😩
Although I also would suggest a basic ass ice chest. My family went camping all the time for that length of time when I was growing up and we would bring regular food to cook over a portable electric stove and keep it in an ice chest. It would keep for at least 5 days.
Eggs (unopened; only if not pasteurized/cleaned which you will not find in a typical US grocer for anyone other than OP).
You can usually tell by where the eggs are located in the grocery store. US eggs are ‘cleaned’ and kept in the fridge at the store (and at home), whereas a lot of other countries don’t clean them and you just find them on a regular shelf instead of in the fridge.
It’s interesting… It’s mandated to wash eggs in the USA, whereas it’s mandated to not wash eggs in Europe. Different standards.
Some places have fire bans due to dry conditions and high likelihood of forest fires. Those don’t include little stoves, though…
Another thing I don’t see people talking about much is canned food. Almost all canned food is precooked or otherwise sterilized, and it takes years to expire when the can is left sealed. While cold ravioli isn’t the most satisfying meal, it will fill your stomach without making you sick.
Lots of good answers here.
Another option would be taking MRE-s (meal ready to eat) it’s pre-packaged food designed for soldiers to eat while not having access to a kitchen. It usually has a solution to heat the food and plenty of calories for a full day.
You can order them on the Internet from military surplus or other places and there is a bunch of flavours to choose from. They also have a long shelf life, don’t need refrigeration, and fit in a small space.
Are they not famously gross…?
They scale on actually bad to like, upscale cafeteria food. It really depends on what you get.
I’ll add cured sausages such as chorizo and dried tomatoes. Both keep well unrefrigerated and add a lot of flavor to any dish.
jerky, granola, lots of vegetables are fairly stable and can be eaten raw. Carrots, garden peas, green beans, lettuce (you can eat that in the first day or two before it wilts), apples,
You can easily make overnight oats with dry ingredients (oats, fruit, nuts/seeds, some syrup) and some water each evening and then have them for breakfast/lunch.
Can you bring a canister cook stove? something like a Jetboil? that way no need for a whole fire etc. you can boil water etc, cook basic stuff like ramen etc. make coffee…Hardy veggies should be good, beef jerky, cured meats like salami etc. dried fruits and nuts, bread, crackers etc. regular fruit, granola bars…i would just bring a little burner thing if you can it will be so much nicer than only eating cold foods etc.
Get bread and canned fish. You can also get canned tomato soup and eat it cold. And then make sure to bring some fruits or something.