Cooking Food While Backpacking

hey there it's AJ and today I thought I would tackle one of the questions that I probably get most commonly in backpacking and one of those questions is how do you make food or what do you eat when you go out in the woods and for every backpacker that's going to vary quite a bit and how they prepare that food is also gonna vary quite a bit so I thought I would walk you through some really basics of kind of some of the different types of food that I eat when I go out backpacking and then also some of the different ways that you can make food or some various stoves and cook sets that I've assembled these are all very personal choices that everybody should explore for themselves I'm gonna do individual videos for each and every single cook set that I have so I will dig deeper in the future into each of these but today I thought I'd give those of you that may be new to the activity or just looking to vary some things up from some of the stuff that you've gotten right off the bat check out some of these options so I'm gonna kind of start with how I go through my day from breakfast all the way through to dinner how I manage water which if you haven't seen my video on water filtration and you want to see how I process water check that out it'll be right up here link to that so I will also have links to a lot of this type of stuff on my website so if you want to get more information check it out at outdoors podcast comm so starting in breakfast the most important thing of the day that I focus on coffee I saw guys out in the woods you've probably heard me about the three wise men many times that have mentioned before but they mentioned why not have plenty of coffee I typically prefer the instant coffee the via options from Starbucks I think they make it really easy it's an individual serving of coffee I keep one of these little bags and this thing is pretty low for me right now it's normally about twice this full but just these little individual packets they're pretty inexpensive I think six or seven bucks for I think eight or something like that but for coffee in the morning having good quality coffee that you like that's great in this little bag I also typically keep some just Crystal Light drink mixes or some sort of like mio energy drink mixes just things to add to my water throughout the day as I'm walking also for breakfast sometimes I'll do some sort of like a fruit twist or a fruit roll-up or something like that just some sugar to kind of get me going in the morning those are great when you're just laying in the hammock just kind of a little motivation to get your day going but I typically go with bars I don't cook a lot for breakfast most the time I want to keep things simple and move forward so bars something with some carbohydrates will kind of get me going during the day so that's kind of breakfast and how I get the day started speaking of water there's a bunch of different ways that you can carry water when you're out in the woods most commonly is probably the Nalgene bottle these have been around forever I love these I've got like 10 of them and they're great they're really really good because they've got a wide mouth so you can get a lot of water they're easy to get into water sources and they're pretty much bulletproof so really really love these things they're fantastic a lot of people I think are using you know more Yeti products or more Arctic or any kind of brand like that you know Ozark Trail makes great products things like that these are all really really good however for backpacking really really heavy so maybe for float trips or for horseback riding things like that maybe the heavier stuff but for backpacking what you'll find most people focus on is kind of the throw away bottles the smart water bottles Evian bottles even glacier bottles things like that I tend to think with the ones that are a little thicker sided versus like a you know a nice mountain or something like that there's just a little bit more durable but they're really really lightweight this is a liter of water and so this kind of lets me know pretty easily from afar how much I've got how much more I need to get and what I'm going for so that plays a big role water is going to be instrumental in to kind of some of the next types of food so for lunches a lot of times what I will do is just tuna packets or tuna salad packets with maybe some tortillas or something like keep it simple just so I can kind of stop get my nutrition and move on to the trail I'm not really worried too much about cooking and making a lot of mess and having to clean up and do with all that kind of stuff so lunches are typically really easy simple one one stop foods for me and then getting more into the dinners a lot of times what you'll see more and more often these days are people that are using freeze-dried meals and these come from mountain house this one's from alpine air and there's also some from backpackers pantry some of the great brands online hot vittles and one of my personal favorites packet gourmet I don't have any of those with me right now but those are really really good check those out and they're all pretty much the same it's just kind of a dried food typically some sort of rice or pasta with some proteins and vegetables that you basically add boiling water to like cook in the bags or in your pot whatever you choose to do and then basically you've got a real full meal this particular pepper beef with rice 620 calories per package designed to I believe served to people 28 grams of protein all you have to do is add water and for this particular meal you need 2 cups so basically in one of these you've got a liter which I would say is somewhere in the range of I think it's 32 ounces or close to so that's going to be two of these meals because this would be 16 ounces of water 32 ounces of water here so this would be like dinner and a cup of coffee and 1 cup of water to drink for the evening or for breakfast so something to think about when you're making these larger meals more commonly what I've moved to is doing the stuff that's less expensive these meals these back packing meals these are gonna range anywhere from like 7 or 8 dollars up to 12 to 14 dollars depending on what kind of protein and how involved you're getting and then obviously you've got to account for shipping and things like that if you're getting them online some of the stuff that I've been doing more often is a 25 or 30 cent packet of ramen and a 40 or 50 cent packet of instant mashed potatoes put those two together you've got yourself a ramen bomb Jason or frozen from over at outdoor adventures and Tim Watson I know you guys are big fans so ramen bombs all day long this is like a dollar combined tons of carbohydrates tons of calories really really filling and absolutely delicious plus doesn't make too bad of a cleanup so big fan of the ramen bomb same thing Norse Kitchen sides Rice's pastas things like that this thing takes 2 cups of water and gives you ton of really delicious rice throw in some tuna or some canned chicken or some packet chicken you get yourself a pretty great meal or a spam single that would be a great meal so getting into some of the stuff that you use to make your food I'm gonna go through some of these cook sets here but kind of one thing that's pretty tried-and-true for me is just this little human gear fork spoon combo this thing makes for a full length option on either side or you can have a double so if you're sharing this makes for a great great option it's really easy to clean there's no kind of nooks and crannies for stuff to get into from what I can tell it's really strong I've never broken it so I'm a big fan of this thing it's super lightweight it packs down really small it doesn't take almost any room in your pack it's absolutely fantastic lastly options for knives there are a ton different directions that you can go with knives when you're backpacking and for that for that decision that's kind of a personal one everybody should kind of really make for themselves what you'll see is there's you know kind of heavier bushcrafting style knives and there's lighter backpacking style knives the style of knife that I have traditionally going with has been a more a knife and what these typically range in is really lightweight they're very dependable they have a great edge this particular one is a light my fire combo so it's got a fire steel built into the handle which actually throws pretty good Sparks so just a little bit of redundancy it's lightweight it's stainless steel so I don't have to worry about rusting or anything like that and it's just a great little knife I've never needed to do anything in the woods that this thing wouldn't do so moving on to the more complex portions of what this is all about the cook sets themselves now this is the cook set that I've kind of evolved into so we're gonna leave that one for last I really kind of started off with a couple of different styles of stoves so I'll start with kind of where I kicked off and that would be with what a lot of people out there would call a canister stove or the MSR pocket rockets kind of where I think it got started this particular set not including the bag well screw it let's just put the bag on there let's just go announces this whole thing weighs eight point five seven ounces this is a Snow Peak titanium I can't remember what size this is but for any budding view out there I'm sure somebody in the comments can make a comment on what the guess is but basically I've just got a Snow Peak titanium pot and this is a super lightweight set up in here I've got a vapor barrier they made it with some tin foil oh sorry this is not the canister stove option this is the alcohol stove option this is an alcohol stove this makes fuel that I did not bring out here that's a bummer I will include that in a later video but this just uses like heat the yellow bottle that you buy at Walmart or at any automotive store denatured alcohol methanol stuff like that will all kind of burn in these this is basically a fancy feast cat food can and a Hunt's tomato ketchup can with a little bit of char cloth in the middle that basically acts as the wick that goes down this is a homemade windscreen that I made out of some aluminum kind of heavy aluminum foil one of those kind of disposable pans which you buy at the grocery store so then the pot would simply go on top of there ounce of alcohol goes in the stove pot goes on top and you basically end up with this configuration here also included in this setup is a Snow Peak 450 titanium coffee cup so that's one direction that you can go with your cooking set up and everything clearly fits nicely down in there I keep this stove in this little bag it just keeps everything kind of nice this burns really really clean but it just keeps everything kind of nice and tidy and then I'll just put my vapor barrier back there and boom bottle that one back up and there is your alcohol stove one option about eight and a half ounces with a coffee cup the way I have it set up canister stove and this is a pretty unique one this one is made by Jetboil you see a lot of different manufacturers of these but this particular one is a Jetboil flash this way is twenty point nine five ounces but comparing two apples to apples it doesn't it this one has fuel with it this one does not so you'd have to add comparable fuel probably eight ounces or so before a standard trip and that would bring this up to 16 ounces so within four or five ounces so in here I have got the actual fuel canister this is a hundred gram bottle and they make these in all different sizes I like this one because it fits down in there this is the actual heating element of itself the Jetboil that little fuel regulator flips down tighten that up you simply screw this on and this is quite frankly one of my favorite cooking methods does have a pot stand that comes with it which I really like because that makes it a lot more sturdy and uneven ground take this cup off the bottom which is included this screws in or just kind of connects with some easy easy tabs and then the top goes on so what you do with this one is you literally just turn the fuel on you'll hear it you hit the igniter boom it's going and you can boil up to two cups of water in 90 seconds so this thing will get you there faster I believe than just about any other option I just grab the bottom here but if you grab the actual heating element itself no matter how long it's been burning that thing will stay cool and it's easy to put this thing back away pretty quickly what I really really like about this is the ease of use how quickly you can boil water how quickly you can handle the pot itself while holding it itself because of this built-in heat cozy which is really really nice and then the fact that you can use this one really really cold nights now some people are going to tell you that these fuel canisters don't work extremely well in really cold weather I have not found it to be a problem down to 2025 degrees I'm here in st. Louis or in Missouri so we're not too too far above sea level I've heard that altitude creates a problem as well but basically you can use these things in pretty chilly weather in my experience in the middle of the night if you need to reheat a cold water bottle that you want to use in your hammock to stay warm I have laid in my hammock at night and turned a bottle a Nalgene bottle upside down into this thing while laying in my hammock and about two minutes later I had a nice nice hot water bottle that I was able to bring back down into my hammock and really have a nice warm night sleep so these canisters are great if they tend to be a little bit on the heavier side but I really enjoy the ease of use if you're just getting into backpacking these canister stoves especially the jet boils are really really great place to start I want to say this total package is around 70 dollars pretty much all in I didn't include this little stuff sack but you really don't need one for some reason I just always liked having one on my cook set so 20-ish ounces about 70 bucks and you've got an all-in really great cook set and it does include a coffee cup or room to carry one but pros and cons with every cook set last one that we're going to discuss it's kind of a two piece one and this is really for when you need to really get some heat going really cold weather if you're using a one pot for a couple of different people and you want to just kind of pound through some water this is a really really great option so this is a really famous stove a lot of you out there probably that have seen backpacking videos have probably seen one of these before these are a classic you really just can't eat one of these things MSR whisper light this thing has been around for a really long time this one here is the international model they also make kind of a simpler one the one what this allows is for a little bit more complexity in burn fuels so you can try different things white gas and gasoline and diesel and different things like that I you know don't quote me on all those I'm not an expert on these but what's beautiful about this particular stove is basically the way that this gets set up is you basically run this into this little fuel bottle this goes into here and then this closes around it and then basically this sits like so X is your fuel regulator here you pump this system this lights and boom off and running you go so the pot and the set that I use with this comparing even semi-closed to apples to apples the pot itself is 11.6 ounces the fuel bottle with some fuel in it 13 ounces so now we're up to about 24 ounces and then the stove is about another 9 ounces so you're up into the 30-something ounces so another half again as much as your canister stove however this bottle of gas will burn for a very very long time at very very cold temperatures even at very high altitude so this is kind of your failsafe bomb-proof solution that really will cover just about any problem you have so I built these cozies out of reflectix this is a 12 CM I moose a pot that I cut the handle off of very similar feel and setup to the alcohol pot so you've got a pot itself this vapor barrier would go underneath the stove and basically I've got a folded in half windscreen pops out curves goes around as you can imagine and then also in here I keep a very similar to the Snow Peak 450 this is a tokes titanium 450 coffee cup I really like this one actually like the handle better than the Snow Peak and as for any of you out there that know tokes is about half the price in my experience as most of the snow Peaks so really cool setup I really like this kind of overall whole pot this is one of the pots that I've really been using probably the longest going on a lot of backpacking trips with this I moose a pod if you don't have one they're great they're kind of a soft malleable aluminum but they're stiff enough that they do anything you'd want to so I'm a big fan of the eye Musa pots if you don't have one definitely pick one up and then getting all of this stuff back in here is always a little bit of a challenge that was in the in here and then this basically just folds back down flips it on itself and then also in the cosy we've got the lid itself and I just use pieces of aluminum tape and replacement of the handles I think they're easier they're lighter and they just fold down and don't get in the way of anything so you always see one of those on pretty much all my pots so you've got the NSR twist for light kind of the whisper light international which would be kind of your white gas kind of that kind of stove this fuel here you've got your canister stove jet Buhl Jetboil flash oh by the way the MSR whisper lights are probably somewhere between about 70 and a hundred dollars depending on the model that you get you can go a little bit north of that you'll also have to get a fuel bottle and some other things they take a little bit more maintenance and a little bit more care but properly maintained you can have on those things for fifteen or twenty years the alcohol stove this is probably your least expensive option if you're willing to do a little bit of DIY you could really get into one of these for probably 10 or 15 bucks plus a pot in a coffee lid so really really cool option there and then lastly this is what I'm working with today this is an S bit fuel stove big thanks to Sean over at syntax 77 for suggesting that that was kind of a direction he was going I've kind of gotten more into it and I range back and forth with all of these different options so eleven point seven eight grams so not the lightest of all the options but I think the most complete in everything that allows me to bring so this is an MSR tightening titanium kettle has a flip-out handle a little spout in the lid which is really handy and then another thing that I like is just this little fold flat flip up handle you can remove that really easily inside here I've got a five hundred pot that serves as my coffee cup so same thing has that kind of inset for your fingers and it gives you a little bit bigger coffee cup five fifty really is a nice number in here I've got a titanium windscreen and the whole thing here was light yet everything cover all your bases so this is a titanium esbit stove this is the entire stove itself it's put out like that and then basically you've got your fuel tabs each fuel tab will boil 2 cups of water approximately sometimes yes sometimes no pot goes right on top of that that's the coffee cup pot goes on windscreen goes around and you've got a real nice all-encompassing option that weighs practically nothing includes fuel includes the coffee cup and really gives you a tiny little footprint in your backpack which is a big thing for me was fuel everything all together small footprint lightweight easy to use easy to clean up this really gives me that all-encompassing option so guys those are all the different ways that I make food on the trail leaves the different ways that I boil water essentially for my dehydrated meals to bring things back to life make macarons things like that when I'm out there on the trail if you have questions about any of these individual setups feel free to leave me comments down below or check out the blog post on my website at outdoors podcast.com you can also check me out on instagram at outdoors podcast and on facebook at facebook.com slash outdoors podcast hopefully this was helpful for somebody out there if you have any questions again feel free to leave them in the comments thanks for coming by feel free to leave a thumbs up or subscribe for future updates thanks

Channel: Outdoors Podcast

Views: 11,307

Rating: 4.8742137 out of 5

Keywords: backpacking, hiking, camping, outdoors, outdoors podcast, cooking, boiling water, cook set, stove, coffee cup, titanium pot, msr, jetboil, whisperlite

Id: noCk7-jb3CI

Length: 22min 33sec (1353 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 16 2019