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!
Whenever I go camping I pack a cooler with ice and put my perishable food items in there. Easy to grab snacks, like fruit, pastries, and pre packaged items are also a favourite of mine.
Also, having a portable grill helps when you cannot use fire to cook.
Ramen and soylent
Why no boiled water? A small backpacking stove, something like a Pocket Rocket from MSR, is lightweight and can give you a very small, controlled flame that’s hot enough to boil a liter of water in less than two minutes. And if you look around on Amazon, you can find them even cheaper than MSR, usually for less than $20. They connect to an isopropane canister which runs about $5.
Here’s a list of some candidate foods, compiled from the experience of people who live in vans and other vehicles without refrigeration.
No easy access to fire? Is that because fire is forbidden or because getting wood and/or a place to burn stuff isn’t available? If it’s the latter, a gas burner is your friend
It depends if you’re not trying to poop that whole time?
I’m not sure how we’re supposed to help OP without knowing his target poop rate. Babybel cheese and canned Hormel corned beef hash are going to produce wildly different results, for example.
We need to know the Poop:Day ratio
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.
Did you just use a cut of meat from the store?
Yup, top round.
Would you mind sharing the recipe you used? I may have to try this!
The recipe I used ended up being terrible haha, so I kinda started winging it halfway through. The later batches turned out better after some adjustments but I’d still like a better starting recipe, so if you find a good one please let me know!
I have a friend that makes his own before trips. He has it down to x pounds of fresh meat per person per day. He just buys meat, adds seasoning, and dries/cooks it in his oven. There is surely a youtube on how to do it.
Yeah, beef jerky, even when making it yourself like @CloverSi@lemmy.comfysnug.space does, can be quite expensive depending on where you live. Thankfully beef jerky doesn’t require high-end cuts of beef. Round Eye is one of the preferred cuts and even in regions with relatively high prices for beef (e.g. Germany) it’s still quite economical compared to store-bought Jack Link’s.
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This is great info! Does the “heet” stove give any flavor to the stuff you are cooking?
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I mean I would just eat cold canned ravioli because that’s delicious and it would be a great excuse to eat cold canned ravioli, but you do you
Triscuits.
Beans
I’ll add cured sausages such as chorizo and dried tomatoes. Both keep well unrefrigerated and add a lot of flavor to any dish.
Nuts and dried fruit, granola bars, halva, canned beans in tomato sauce, canned meat and fish and other canned stuff, bread, all sorts of cheese, cucumbers, smoked meat were the staples of no-cooking-needed foodstuffs that keep for several days in the summer when I did hiking in my younger days. For breakfast, muesli with milk from powder. You can prep buckwheat overnight in cold water and eat it for lunch or breakfast. Onions and garlic to add taste, fresh herbs will keep just fine, too. Sun-dried tomatoes. Bell peppers.
Basically, you need to start thinking antique: what did travellers and adventurers eat several hundred years ago when refridgeration wasn’t a thing?
If you’re in England look into the Duke of Edinburgh club. It’s an outdoors camping club for youth. You should be able to find a packing list and it will have food suggestions.
That’s just long enough for things that aren’t shelf stable to start going bad, depending on local conditions. Bread can mold in a couple days though, in warm and humid places.
So, focus in on shelf-stable or preserved things, whether made in a modern method, (sterile packaging of some sort) or an old fashioned method, (drying, curing, smoking) or just naturally able to keep (nuts, seeds, chocolate, honey).
Someone posted their granola bar recipe, that looked pretty solid. I would certainly not bring a bunch of pasties or a calzone unless I was also bringing a cooler. Then I’d be bringing ingredients and tools and making them on-site just for fun, as I assume I’m now car camping, or at least camping fairly close to my vehicle. If backpacking in, then absolutely not. Ready-to-eat, shelf-stable stuff only, to cut weight and stay efficient. And a pasty or calzone would squish in the backpack and end up gross anyway.
