Backcountry Kitchen

In grad school a friend asked me where I found a recipe for something I was eating at lunch.  My answer wasn’t from Pinterest or Betty Crocker’s cookbook but Backpacker Magazine.  I figured if someone could make the recipes suggested in Backpacker in the wilderness at 10,000ft elevation then surely with my limited cooking skills I could pull it off in my fully outfitted normal kitchen.  (Side story:  I tried to make some granola bars or something of that nature from a Backpacker recipe.  They flopped and turned out the consistency of plywood.  The only way my roommate and I could eat them was with large amounts of ice cream—waste not, want not.)  When we started backpacking I didn’t realize that a large chunk of backpacking is all about the food.  More cooking—my favorite.  

In preparing for this trip I had to develop a detailed menu for 4 days that was high in calories, light weight, didn’t need refrigeration, and would keep Arthur happy and well feed.  They have pre-made backpacking meals that you can purchase but at $8-10 a piece I decided I could do better.  I am really amazed at the amount of foods on the market that are designed so you just have to add water.  These are highly processed and not a great nutritional value so I never have paid attention before but for backpacking foods that just require boiling water is king.  This included stuffing, instant potatoes, mac and cheese, and noodle dinners in a bag.  Of course most of these included a day’s allotment of sodium in one serving but after sweating all day we look at this as electrolyte replacement.   

The next step was adding protein.  Thank goodness for pouches of tuna, salmon, and chicken.  For breakfast each day we had pop tarts and oatmeal.  Pop tarts are easy and pack well.  I made our own oatmeal packets but will just get instant oatmeal packets next time—not worth measuring out the ingredients for a dozen servings of oatmeal individually.  For lunch each day we had tuna salad on flatbread.  I scored about a dozen packets of mayo from Subway that we would squeeze into our pouch of tuna and scoop it out on our flatbread.  Finding pickle relish packets for our next trip would be great.  Arthur also got some honey packs that McDonalds has for chicken nuggets that we brought to make peanut butter and honey sandwiches but the honey containers didn’t stand up to the abuse of backpacking so we had a sticky mess all over our lunch sacks.  Another good learning experience. 

Over the past few weeks I have fallen in love with dehydrating food.  I borrowed a food dehydrator and have dehydrated bananas, pineapple, tomatoes, and blueberries.  Water weighs a lot so dehydrating food to remove the water makes items much more backpacker friendly.  I loved the addition of dried bananas, blueberries, and pineapple in our oatmeal and trail mix.  Other snacks in our packs included the faithful granola bar, beef jerky, cheese sticks, and jolly ranchers.  

With cooking in the backcountry there are a few differences than in a kitchen.  First is you have to filter all the water.  We used about 3 gallons of water a day which isn’t a lot until it takes about 45 minutes a day to squeeze 3 gallons at a trickle through the filter.  We didn’t want to waste any water doing dishes and you can’t throw out any bits of food into the woods or water sources- it all has to be packed out.  Our answer to this was freezer bag cooking.  I mixed up individual servings of each meal in quart sized freezer bags.  We would boil water to add to each bag, seal it in a cozy I made from reflective windshield sun blockers, and wait about 10 minutes.  Then we would eat the meal right out of the bag and any leftover crumbs were contained in the bag to pack out and no mess in the cooking pot since it was just water.  Another difference is you can’t have leftovers so getting the right serving size is important.  Luckily, hungry backpackers basically inhale everything that even resembles food.  All of our cooking—boiling water—was done on our backpacking stove.  Before we left we did practice several times with the stove to make sure we could prime and light the stove without a problem.  We would hate to end up in the middle of nowhere and not be able to light our stove.  With backpacking most of the time building a fire is not allowed due to the chance of forest fires so the stove is important.  The last difference is that you have to protect your food from critters.  Rodents will gnaw holes in gear such as tents or packs to get at food so each night we put all of our food into a metal mesh sack—it looks like chainmail—and hung it up to keep critters attracted to the smell or food out of our camp.  

While I am normally not a fan of cooking, I was much fonder of “slaving over the hot stove” with beautiful scenery such as a secluded cove.  Also walking 8 hours a day makes a person hungry and hunger is the best sauce.  Our meals were delicious.  Omni Vincit Amor.