Camping food

The primary differences relate to campers' and backpackers' special needs for foods that have appropriate cooking time, perishability, weight, and nutritional content.

Many campers prefer a ‘just add boiling water’ method of cooking, while others enjoy a more involved, and therefore often higher quality meal.

Backpackers, canoeists, climbers, and other outdoor enthusiasts often cover many miles every day, consuming thousands of calories to keep their energy levels high.

Because of the high levels of nutritional burn and emphasis on weight, backpackers monitor the ratio of calories to ounces that their food provides.

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.

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.

There is a large variety of camping stoves on the market ranging in specialty from being extremely lightweight to focusing on using very little fuel.

The ability to quickly adjust the flame to reduce from a boil to a simmer, for example, is considered invaluable to many campers.

While butane is the most commonly used fuel for camping stoves, propane is preferred in winter as it has a lower boiling point.

Campers have discovered methods of preventing this problem, such as coating the pans with cooking oil, to make the soot easier to remove.

Most solar cookers also provide the minimum required temperature during cloudy days to prepare food.