Our favourite camping meals

It’s not all waterfalls, deserts, and bush camps around here – a girl’s gotta eat! (And feed her husband, who would otherwise subsist on bread and peanut butter)

I’m trying to stay in the habit of writing a blog post every few days and so I thought it would be fun to share with you guys a few of our favourite camping meals, complete with some pictures of dubious quality.

Obviously, the #1 camp meal of all time in Australia is sausages wrapped in cheap white bread, it doesn’t even merit mentioning in our list because obviously we eat that at least a couple of times a month. Not Australian? This sketch by comedian Ivan Aristeguieta should be enough to educate you.

Anyway, whether you now understand the appeal of a sausage sizzle or not, on with our favourite camp meals!

1. Damper

Damper is an iconic Aussie food. It’s unleavened bread prepared in the ashes of a campfire, historically cooked by stockmen and other travellers whose rations consisted of flour, water, and whatever meat they could catch. These days, damper is even available in cafes & restarants, although it’s fairly modified. A traditional damper is made of only flour and water, but you can add salt, sugar, milk, fruit, spices, basically whatever you want! There are tons of recipes online and every camper has their own variation. Most of the time now, damper is cooked in a camp oven in the coals of a fire, or in a real oven, rather than directly in the ashes, Malcolm Douglas style.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biHPMpa0cgs#t=0m30s

Making damper while camping is as to Australians as making s’mores while camping is to Canadians. You could argue that damper itself isn’t really a meal, so shouldn’t be on our list, but honestly, it’s kind of the highlight when you make your own bread in a campfire.

The key is to get the heat right – otherwise you can end up with a very burnt damper (ask me how I know).

2. Grilled or pan-fried protein and a vegetable prepared in the lowest-maintenance way you can think of

This is probably one of our most frequent camp meals, it’s relatively healthy, and easy to prepare. I can’t often be bothered to dirty a pot (we’re only carrying two) to cook vegetables in, so usually I just cut them up raw. Sometimes we have a carb like rice or campfire-roasted root vegetables of some kind.

3. Sweet Potato & Black Bean Burritos

This is a rare favourite because it requires quite a bit of prep, we’ve probably only had it once or twice on this trip. But the prep time is worth it! There are usually leftovers of the filling to cook up as a side to something else, and a couple of leftover burritos for the next day. It’s also vegetarian which is nice (we are trying to eat more veg meals but on the road it can be tough).

The basic recipe is:

• Cook up some rice (I use 1/2 cup dried which is more than enough for Nick and I)
• Roast or boil some sweet potatoes (I used leftover roasted potatoes from a night I did them in the fire – one whole potato would be more than enough again
• Dump the cooked rice into an oiled pan along with a can of drained black beans (doesn’t matter if you rinse them) and some sort of tomato product – paste, canned, fresh chopped – doesn’t matter. Stir that around over low heat until it’s all warmed up. Add whatever spices you like (I use a bit of Montreal Steak Spice)
• Mash up the sweet potatoes roughly with a fork (doesn’t have to be perfect)
• Grab a package of wraps/flatbreads and fill them with one big scoop of rice/beans, one big scoop of sweet potato, and some cheese
• Wrap em up, pop them in the camp oven or individually in tinfoil, stick them into the coals and ashes of a fire, and within about 10-20 minutes you’ll have amazingly soft, gooey, warm burritos!

4. Cheese & crackers & wine

I mean, obviously. Especially when travelling through amazing wine/food regions like the Atherton Tablelands, and Margaret River (we’re coming for you Margaret River!!), it’d be a crime not to sample the local goods for at least a few meals. We’ve made some beautiful spreads from local cheeses, spreads, chocolates, and fruits! And the super easy prep and cleanup is a huge bonus too.

 

5. Leftover Mashup

Ahh, the good old leftover mashup. Dig around in the fridge for ingredients that need to be used up lest they expire and go to that great big trash bin in the sky. I love doing a sort of jambalaya with leftover sausage or lunch meat, or stews with leftover meats and that last lingering potato and onion. There’s no recipe, it’s all basically just a big experiment, and good luck getting the same results again!

Hope you’ve enjoyed this fluffy little post about what we’re eating! And these days, in the intense heat of northern Australia at the beginning of the wet season, we’re not cooking much – there’s a lot of sandwiches, salads, wraps, or what we call “trash lizard” meals (aka a spoonful of peanut butter and some fruit and cheese, or carrots and hummus, anything we can pull straight out of the fridge!)