Backpacking Food Ideas

[Music] hey everybody and welcome to outdoor adventures today we're gonna be talking about easy food ideas on the trail this is for backpacking this isn't necessarily gonna be related to any kind of car camping or anything like that this is geared toward high calorie low volume low weight meals so that's we're gonna get to so you can see we have a just a ton of different food ideas on the table so I think the easiest way to do this would be to maybe break it up for maybe breakfast then lunch and dinner because they're all kind of interchangeable there and then my favorite thing which is snacks so let's do that all right first up let's talk about some breakfast ideas so over the years I've just kind of limited myself to these breakfast ideas I'm a person that just likes to wake up and just get on the trail fast and not really into cooking an extravagant breakfast I just want to get on the trail as fast as I can so this is what I usually go to now before we talk in greater depth about this stuff is we're pretty familiar with the dehydrated meals from you know mountain house backpackers pantry packet gourmet that kind of stuff they also make really easy breakfast ideas and pretty much any of their breakfast meals you can also put on a tortilla and make a little bit of a wrap for you in the morning which I which works out really well I've been kind of shying away from these expensive mountain house meals and just going with some cheaper options now these are great as far as calories for instance like this dinner right here this chili this chicken and dumplings right here is 620 calories so this is this is ton and ton of calories but I just keep going back to a bigger variety of just stuff that's easier to cook and really takes no brainpower to get it in your stomach and on the trails so let's talk about this so first thing and foremost my favorite breakfast is usually just you know some simple oatmeal packets I mean this is essential every day great value really really cheap stuff Quaker Oats obviously my favorite is strawberries or strawberries and cream now most people know that you can simply just kind of boil water then put these kind of into your pot and then you have a big mess by the time you're you're done eating you know you know you've got to kind of clean up your pot before it turns into oatmeal cement so what you can actually do with these and I've done this for a couple years now because it's amazing is you tear off the top you boil your water in your pot and then you can actually pour the water in these little packets now I put these inside either my pot or my reflective pot cozy I made out of reflectix and they stand up very well and you just got to make sure you kind of stir it up with your spoon to make sure you get the corners and that works really well after you're done you can just throw this out and clean up your spoons so you don't have to clean up your entire pot whenever you cook oatmeal so a lot of people don't know that I really recommend you try it at least if you don't like it you can always go back to the pot another thing is you know your good old pop-tarts again my favorite flavor is strawberry here so these pop-tarts will give you a burst of energy but they won't it won't be long lasting energy so I highly recommend that you have something solid like oatmeal or these are which I'm gonna talk about next and then later on down the trail you can have your honey bun which is absolutely delicious or your pop-tarts and get you an extra little burst of energy in some calories like I said this isn't really a good breakfast meal for sustained energy throughout the day now speaking of sustained energy we're looking at these carnation breakfast essentials this is just a like a chocolate milk kind of thing you put it in a like a little Gatorade bottle is is the best size for these I do two of them and these I forget how many calories are there's something in the range of like a hundred and eighty one hundred and fifty calories a packet which is really great and also if you really didn't want to cook or excuse me if you didn't want to heat up water for coffee you could add your coffee into these and just kind of get your caffeine fix that way so breakfast essentials my favorite is rich milk chocolate it's kind of the only one I've tried but I really don't like any of their flavors that they offer so that's really good speaking of coffee there are plenty of like instant coffee ideas I know some people like to bring their their coffee press out there but for me it's Taster's Choice all the way I like it black if you're a person that doesn't like black coffee I highly recommend the Starbucks via you can get these little one inch by two inch little baggies on Amazon just search you know baggies one inch by two inch and I put sugar in here and then you can get coffee mate to go creamer or you can just get you know powdered milk or whatever you however you like to take your coffee and you can drink it that way so I prefer the tasters choice black coffee and without anything in it it's not gonna be like a you know something out of a cure egg but it'll taste just fine to get me on the trail something else that I do sometimes in the morning I've included this in the breakfast area because sometimes I put this in my oatmeal for some added flavor or you know I'll just snack on these throughout the day this is just freeze-dried just fruit really so this is uh this is apples and this is freeze-dried strawberries they taste really good these are from simply nature and you know they're really really fantastic so we were talking about the packet gourmet and the mountain house meals most of those breakfasts you can put on tortillas so I've included the tortillas here all right well I think that about covers breakfast so let's move on to lunch and dinner all right lots of stuff to talk about for lunch and dinner let's get the big items off the table so like I said before mountain house backpackers pantry this is packet gourmet these are really good for lunch they're pretty expensive for what you get but they taste absolutely amazing this is something that you probably want to look if you're really into food and most of these they're just dehydrated meals that come with a little bit of condiments and you just put them on our you know a tortilla to make a little wrap like this is deli roast beef wrap no they don't supply the wraps or the tortillas for you but you know you bring your own you can even add a little bit of olive oil to any of this stuff that I'm about to tell you or even some peanut butter for some extra calories if you need it but these these are good but they're expensive but very high calorie filling meals so let's knock this over to the side and we'll get into the stuff that I really like let's talk about this these are simple boil in a bag Rice's so you kind of just boil water set the bag in there for I think it's 10 minutes or so and then you have a bag of rice that you can eat you don't even have to really put this in your pot you can eat the rice right out of the bag you just cut the top off for that I definitely would throw some olive oil in there olive oil is great to bridge the gap if you're if you have low calories throughout the day for instance this is serving size of one tablespoon and it gives you an additional 120 calories so you put like an extra tablespoon in here and now this the 80 calorie meal has turned into a 200 calorie meal so that's what I really like to do and I use olive oil a lot on very high mileage days same thing with peanut butter now as far as peanut butter they make little peanut butter to go packets I've known people especially my friend Gary who have brought a whole jar of peanut butter on some longer hikes that we've done for instance the superior hiking trail which was a 240-mile two-week trip and he ate an entire jar of peanut butter so that's another option for you so let's get rid of that I think we've talked about the olive oil already another really easy idea for lunch or dinners you know just a simple ramen packet I mean this is 190 calories 70 calories of fat and you can add whatever you want I mean people have put you know that Bulls in it I sometimes put some spam singles in it these are really good or like me push pops I just eat them right out of the package no cooking necessary but you know you can throw these on your stove and kind of cook them a little bit if you'd like whatever whatever you want to do but ramen is a great option so another thing is these instant mashed potatoes instant mashed potatoes come in a variety of flavors and they are really really filling these for serving size of four is 110 calories per serving so what I usually do is I split these up because that's you know 450 or whatever calories is quite a lot for one sitting especially when it's mashed potatoes and full of carbs and it's really filling tip that I really like to do though is I like to take my ramen noodle the flavor packet and then half a packet of these instant mashed potatoes any flavor that that comes with and I put them all together add two cups of water and now I have what's called a ramen bomb and again you can add spam or vegetables or cheese or whatever you want to that and it tastes absolutely amazing and it's a really high calorie long-lasting meal for you and I love it for lunch and dinner something new this year that I found was these just you know Velveeta shells and cheese like kind of like just you know macaroni and cheese it's a little bulky but it tastes really good for a little snack there's 220 calories per package in here when you open the top there's actually a water fill line now it says you have to microwave these I never had a problem with just adding boiling water this and letting it sit for a little longer so you know 220 calories and just this and then you can just squish this down when you're done and pack it out so Velveeta makes these craft makes these great value a whole bunch of companies make these but these definitely work on backpacking trips though they are a little bit hefty as far as the volume goes another thing that is my absolute favorite meals are these noir sides now they come in pasta and rice the rice sides are easier to cook because they usually don't require any kind of milk or margarine or butter or anything like that but I've had pretty good luck especially with the fettuccine alfredo it says you need milk and a teaspoon of margarine it's optional what I usually do is I've just put two cups in these you can cook right in the package really really simple you don't have to dirty your pot and then kind of just you know when you put the water and just kind of fold this down a little bit very carefully and just kind of set that off to the side and you can eat it in about ten minutes and they are really good like I said the fettuccine the pasta pasta north sides fettuccine is freaking phenomenal and these little guys here have 250 calories per serving so and there's two servings in a package so we're talking about a 500 calorie meal with pretty much no prep time and these are delicious what I usually do those since these don't have a lot of protein as I supplement some tuna or some spam or some you know chicken creations same thing and that will give me my protein fix for whatever I'm eating with these north sides while we're talking about protein let's go into additional ways you can get protein through you know just chicken or tuna so these are always at Walmart I found at least my walmart at least always has these these are a great option because you need protein to recover your muscles throughout the day if you're really really sore you know when you wake up in the morning you're probably not getting enough protein or you're hiking too far or not stretching enough these kind of bridge the gap for me the lowest that you can get is I think eight grams of protein and that comes from the kind of the chicken creation so I kind of stick to the tuna creations because they're 15 grams and up from what I found each one of these packets for this this is a hundred and ten calories this is an additional 80 calories and these just like I said bridge the gap with the protein and some of the north sides or some of the other meals that I'm having these Buffalo style either the chicken creations or the tuna creations I really really love putting them on a tortilla adding some peanut butter maybe some pepperoni on there and they just taste so freakin good speaking of which if you just thought what I said was just absolutely disgusting you guys have to try a tortilla with about 15 pepperonis put tortilla on there and then put a cheese stick right in the middle of it it is so unbelievably delicious and it's super high in calories pepperonis are just one of those things are just the ridiculous as far as calories and then you know just their weight so serving size is 15 slices of pepperonis and you get a hundred and fifty calories from that you know add the cheese add the tuna you're looking at a 300 to a 400 calorie meal you can even put some spam on there if you'd like but yes peanut butter tortilla pepperoni maybe some string cheese which a lot of people are worried about you know string cheese I was one of those people but you can actually take string cheese outside for quite a while as long as they're you know in there shrink-wrap they're not gonna kill you or anything they're not gonna taste the greatest from you know when they were in the refrigerator but they do work very very well and it helps you get some calcium and some additional protein into your body all right well that covers lunch and dinner let's talk about my favorite which is gonna be snacks snacks are one of those things that are just they're easy to shop for you don't really even have to understand what you're doing you know the snack aisle you know what's good for you it can be as good as you know dried fruits or as bad as Sour Patch Kids which would be absolutely love so let's get into this we'll just kind of run it down I don't really need to explain a lot to you I mean they're just knack so I like to have two different types of trail mix I like to have my healthy trail mix which consists of you know some raisins some almonds peanuts and possibly some sunflower seeds all that's really really healthy for you it'll give you sustained energy throughout the day but I also like to have another bag which consists of either you know just peanut M&Ms with some regular you know nuts mixed into it or what I really really enjoy is having a little boost of sugar so what I do is I end up mixing one of these bags a day so this size bag with skittles and sour patch kids that is like my go to trail mix munch throughout the day kind of thing on top of getting my healthy trail mix in if you don't like to do trail mix there's always you know these little fruit bars I really really recommend the pressed by kind fruit bars they are absolutely amazing I think they give you like five servings of fruit in one bar another thing is the just the nature valley bars I know sometimes when you bite into it it just crumbles into a billion pieces but these are really really good there's 190 calories in just one of these votes and honey crunchy bars another thing to do is if you're still lacking protein and you don't really like tuna or chicken just eat some protein bars I mean I know that Nature Valley makes some protein bars our X bars are absolutely fantastic they are so high in calories and so healthy for you and they just give you a ton of energy I don't have any here to show you I thought I had them but I must have missed them when I went grocery shopping so I gotta go back but rx bars I can't recommend them enough some people don't like the way they taste but if you can just get it down I really like them I really like the again I think it's strawberry something or other but really high in calories really high in good stuff there's cashews there's dates there's some I think some of nuts in there and a whole couple servings of fruit so really good stuff peanut M&Ms really really good I can't stress that enough two hundred and fifty calories for this little package and it's semi healthy I know there's chocolate in there but there's also peanuts so some candy bars I really like Hershey's chocolate bars those are pretty good but what I really really like are Snickers these things are like gold on the trail and I just you know when I'm getting hungry and I don't really want to stop for lunch you know 250 calories in a Snickers bar and they're delicious they literally have everything you need to keep happy and sometimes whenever I'm getting like oh man I hate this trail I'll just eat a Snickers cuz you know you're not yourself without a Snickers anyway another thing I like to do is I know we've already talked about making ramen but you can also open this package up and there's that's their flavour seasoning you just kind of sprinkle it on the dry ramen and just kind of eat it like that like a noodle bar really and it tastes pretty darn good I mean you're still getting all the calories all we're talking about almost 280 calories or just this little package so that's really good we talked about this at breakfast but you know sometimes I'll just munch on these throughout the day these are just dried fruit really anything works here you know it depending on how fast you want to eat on the trail spam is another one that we talked about I really really like these again you don't really even need to cook it you got 210 calories for this tiny little package right here waste practically nothing and there's protein in here there is nine grams of protein so I know it's not the best for you it's processed obviously way way processed at this point but you know with enough water intake you're gonna flush that sodium out of your body so I don't know I'm not a physician or a dietary specialist but to me in taking a lot of sodium is fine as long as you're drinking enough water to flush it out of your body and sometimes sodium is good for your muscles and making that brain action speaking of sodium intake well let's just let's just get this out of the way first any kind of crackers I really like cheez-its you know peanut butter crackers one of these these are just mini peanut butter sandwich crackers you know any kind of cracker thing works on the trails it might be crushed beef it still eat the crumbs and then going back to the sodium topic this is something that is really really important to do and I saved it for last because it is so important hopefully you can see it with all the bottle caps on the table but some some electrolytes your body you're drinking so much water you're flushing all this salt out of your body and sometimes you need to replenish it or you just start not thinking straight and that's a really really dangerous thing so I always try to have at least one full liter of electrolytes the day and what I can recommend is anything knio knio energy you know just put a couple squirts in your bottle this will actually give you a little bit of caffeine they make it without caffeine you know just the flavors still give you electrolytes but they also make it you know specifically electrolyte base so that's what I ended up doing the energy stuff because it's really really good another one I can recommend our squinter zero packets these are zero caffeine zero sugar but they still give you electrolytes they have a whole bunch of flavors including strawberry and lemonade of course I went with strawberry and this is really really good Gatorade makes some some packets I really like the blue I can glacial freeze I believe it's called so check that out I mean there's a ton of drink mixes everybody makes drink mixes I would HIGHLY highly recommend it every day that you're backpacking take a drink mix with you so you can restore those electrolytes back to your body anyway that's it for my food ideas now if you guys have any other food ideas and want to share them with the group go ahead and comment below and I will definitely read those ideas and you'll give me some ideas I'm sure you'll give me some ideas but maybe you'll give us some other people ideas is the big thing anyway thanks for watching I am frozen's hands and I will see you on the trail

Channel: Outdoor Adventures

Views: 311,098

Rating: 4.7693162 out of 5

Keywords: adventure, hike, camping, lunch, documentary, trails, white blaze, food ideas, through hike, reviews, mountain, ultralight, georgia to maine, adventures, backpacking dinner, backpacking snacks, long distance hiking, easy food, food, backpacking, dinner, backpacking lunch, camp, breakfast, trail, appalachian trail, snacks, thru hike, gear, camping food, backpacking food, mt washington, AT, frozen, hammock, backpack, outdoor, katahdin, ultralight food, hiking, backpacking breakfast, 2019

Id: 8-dzQYey1C0

Length: 22min 15sec (1335 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 12 2018