Camp Cooking!

[bucksmum]

Just retunred from fab weekend camping and we are in the process of planning a few more weekends away plus our main summer holiday. Just wanted some inspiration for some top camp meals! All ideas welcome

beans on toast and pot noodle

actually my nana used to make us fantastic fritters for breakfast when we were camping

I don't know how he does it, but dh manages to serve up the same sort of meat-and-two-veg-plus-pasta/potatoes/rice meals as he does at home - but cooked on a little Trangia and a single-burner gas stove.

All I can manage to do when camping is boil a kettle, fry eggs and set fire to the grass. Oh, and order food in the restaurant.

I am the BBQ Queen, though!

Mince?

(mince, camp, mincing.. get it?)

I like couscous, because you don't have to cook it and it goes really well with barbequed meat, especially lamb. I just add dried apricots, flaked almonds and some veg stock (from stock powder!) and leave it to soak. If you spread the lamb with harissa before grilling it, it's especially nice.

Dh made us lovely cooked breakfasts when we went camping at the bank holiday weekend. Sausage, bacon, scrambled egg, bread rolls and coffee. Yum. The rest of the time we lived out of tins and cup a soups

we take 'made' meals in the cooler for the first few days - bolognese, chilli, casserole etc that just need heating up and pasta/bread/rice on the side.
Add one evening eating out and that's four night's dinners; and a bbq, that's 5 nights... nearly time to come home!

How does everyone keep their food chilled? We took a cool bag with 3 ice blocks. I know you can get ice blocks from the camp sites but is that enough to keep food fresh. We are considering buying a cool box that you can plug into the car. Does anyone have one of these and would you reommend one?

Couscous! Cooks in minutes!

We also take 'made' food for the first few days. Lods of BBQs and *always bacon butties for breakfast with filter coffee! Heaven

We take 2 cool boxes. One has frozen things & we don't open lid until other onbe emptied so it doesn't go off.

Curry!! We take a tub of Pilau Rice & wok it on the burner, & a sizzle n stir curry sauce + chicken (some people take the ready cooked chicken), cooks in minutes in a frying pan. Serve with Pappadoms & Booze.

Don't ask me! We dialled for a pizza last time we were camping. I was a bit annoyed they only delivered to reception and not our actual pitch .

We also do soup and french bread....easy peasy, bung in some grated cheese. We take a lot of cakes for pudding. Lots of cold meat and pate.

I take a beef in beer stew for the first night....warmed up with cous cous! Fantastic.

In France you can get prepared bolied potatoes in a bag....slice them and fry up with some butter and garlic, perfect with BBQd meat

We've got a cool box that works off the car or off the mains. It's not as good as a fridge, but certainly does the job. Some campsites will allow you to freeze your blocks in their freezers, so take more icepacks than you think you'll need, as you can have some freezing and some in use. When we took frozen food with us, the labour-saving plan almost backfired, as the stuff at the bottom of the icebox stayed frozen for almost a week!

darling little canapes and amuse-bouches

oh, think I've misunderstood 'camp' there fnar fnar

Don't know if its been mentioned but a lot of campsite wardens will re-freeze you cool packs for you, make sure your name is on them in permenant pen, if you take 2 sets you can keep rotating them.

PrettyCandles - The plug in coolbox is what we are thinking of getting. Would you recommend it? Does it keep things chilled well? Do you trust to keep perishable goods for days?

Would it keep milk fresh?

Boil-in-bag rice, frozen chicken casserole

Spaghetti, frozen bognase sauce

Pasta, canned frankfurters + canned sweetcorn + chicken soup

takeaway

By then I've had enough of camping and want to come home

We also like bananas and tinned custard for pudding.

And supernoodles.

Are M&S tinned curries really nice then?

cows milk

We fidn that things like butter and milk it's better to take the minimum with you and buy extra as-and-when. Taking frozen single pinters works, but can be inconvenient. Small bottles or cartons of UHT are the most convenient. Even with the coolbox (we didn't have ehu) the butter went off very quickly. The drawback with powered cooling when you drive around, is what do you do when you've arrived? We drove to trainstation or attraction, then left the car for a good few hours, often in the sun. So the icebox wouldn't have kept cool. Instead we would leave it in the shadiest part of the tent. Nonetheless, we do rate the powered coolbox, but this year we've booked a pitch with ehu!