Men's Journal

Camping isn’t meant to be gourmet. Eschew hard-to-prepare and time-consuming meals for the roughin-it version; add water and stir.

By Steven Rinella

My brother and I fight about food every time we go camping. He gets a kick out of preparing complicated meals under adverse conditions. I, on the other hand, prefer to keep things simple with freeze-dried backpacking foods. I’m not opposed to good eats — I keep an updated spreadsheet of my freezer’s contents taped to my kitchen cupboard and often spend hours preparing a meal. But the whole point of camping is that it’s supposed to be different. We encounter places and creatures completely foreign to us; we crash out in insulated bags laid over inflatable pads; we get a lot dirtier than normal, and usually much more tired. If all that fantastic weirdness doesn’t put you in the mood for 780 calories’ worth of Mountain House Chicken à la King and Noodles (one of my personal favorites), then you’re not camping hard enough.

Instead of fiddling around with some pocket-size vegetable steamer, haul yourself up another hill or down another river. I’d rather return to camp with just enough energy to pour some boiling water into a sack of freeze-dried mac and cheese. It certainly tastes better than a boiled mash of bland veggies, which is what we end up eating once my brother realizes he’s forgotten his olive oil and sea salt.

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This article originally appeared in the July/August 2009 issue of Men’s Journal.