Ingredients
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To prepare meals that work well outdoors, campers employ a variety of techniques. Campers are advised to prepare meals that are made of easy-to-prepare ingredients.
Freeze-dried ingredients[edit]
Freeze-dried foods, such as this bacon bar, are considered superior in camping applications.Freeze-drying requires the use of heavy machinery and is not something that most campers can do on their own. Freeze-dried ingredients are often considered superior to dehydrated ingredients because they rehydrate at camp faster and retain more flavor than their dehydrated counterparts. Freeze-dried ingredients take so little time to rehydrate that they can often be eaten without cooking them first and have a texture similar to a crunchy chip.
Small amounts of freeze-dried ingredients are sometimes available for sale from emergency supply outlets or stores specific to camping. Freeze-dried ingredients that have not been combined into a meal are often hard to find and thus tend to be sought out by campers.
One of the first freeze-dried camping foods companies was Backpacker's Pantry in 1951, originally named Dri-lite Foods, invented after an ill-fated Girl Scout camping trip by Anne Benedict, becoming the first adventure food on the market.
Dehydrated meals and ingredients[edit]
Dehydration can reduce the weight of food by 60 to 90 percent by removing water through evaporation. Some foods dehydrate well, such as onions, peppers, and tomatoes. Dehydration often produces a more compact, albeit slightly heavier, result than freeze-drying.
Full meals or individual ingredients may be dehydrated. Dehydration of individual ingredients allows the flexibility to cook different meals based on available ingredients, while precooked and dehydrated meals offer greater convenience. Several cookbooks and online stores specialize in dehydrated foods.
Pre-prepared contents[edit]
Contents of a Meal, Ready-to-Eat field ration
Field rations are sometimes used by campers. These meals contain pre-prepared or precooked foods in shelf-stable packaging, are designed to provide enough calories and nutrients to sustain an individual for a full day, and often come with their heaters, making them ideal for use in camping.
Canned foods and instant foods are also sometimes used.
Common ingredients[edit]
The final type of ingredients available to campers are those that are typically found in the grocery store. Some examples of these types of food are polenta, grits, quick-cooking pasta (such as angel hair pasta), ramen, instant potatoes, dried soups, jerky and pouch meats such as tuna, Spam or salmon.
When using these common ingredients, campers often repackage them to reduce packaging or combine them into a meal-ready package, therefore reducing prep time at camp. The main requirement that campers look for in these types of ingredients is the cooking time with 20 minutes being the longest amount of cook time that most campers will tolerate.
