The Best Camping Food Ideas – How To Eat Well While Camping

One of the best things about camping is enjoying amazing food. But with your full kitchen left at home, this can be tricky to achieve! With a little bit of preparation, I promise you can move beyond cans of beans and prepared oats and actually have some great food while you’re out in the great outdoors. In this blog post, I’ll give you some ideas on how to make the most of your camping meal experience. Read on for all the info!

My family LOVES camping! Ever since we bought our first RV in 2017 we’ve been hooked. Now, we have a bigger RV that’s perfect for our family of five. We’ve even taken it on a 2 1/2 week road trip with 64 hours of driving down to California!

After many camping trips, I have a system for our meals. Good camping food is essential for a comfortable experience, and we definitely have some tried-and-true favourites! These camping menu ideas will work whether you’re tenting or have an RV – just make sure to pack a camp stove. I like this one with a grill on one side and a burner on the other. You’ll also need a cooler with a ton of ice or an RV fridge & freezer.

Create a camping meal plan

The first and most important tip to making the best camping food is to create a meal plan and a grocery list to ensure you have everything you need while you’re away. This is the simple meal plan we typically use for a 3-night camping trip:

Simple Camping Meal Plan

• Day 1 Supper: Hot dogs, chips & s’mores
• Day 2 Breakfast: Pancakes & fruit
• Day 2 Lunch: Ham & cheese sandwiches & veggies
• Day 2 Supper: Hamburgers & salad
• Day 3 Breakfast: Breakfast scrambler
• Day 3 Lunch: Charcuterie (sliced ham, cheese, fruit, veggies)
• Day 3 Supper: Steak & salad
• Day 4 Breakfast: Cereal & fruit
• Drinks, snacks & desserts: pop, milk, juice, water, fruit, veggies, muffins, s’mores, granola bars, tortilla chips, peanut butter energy balls, pre-made apple/fruit crisp

Sample Grocery List

• Hot dogs
• Steak
• Hamburger patties (or ground beef or chicken for DIY burgers!)
• Sliced ham
• Bacon
• Shredded cheddar cheese
• Eggs
• Hash browns
• Chips
• Marshmallows
• Chocolate & shortbread cookies for s’mores
• Pre-made pancake mix or ingredients for DIY mix (see below)
• Favourite fruit (apples, oranges, melon, grapes etc.)
• Favourite vegetables (carrots, cucumber, broccoli, avocado, tomatoes etc.)
• Baby potatoes
• Dips for fruit and vegetables
• 2 bags pre-made salad or the ingredients to make salad
• Hot dog buns
• Hamburger buns
• Small boxes/bowls of individual cereal
• Butter or margarine
• Milk, juice, water, pop
• Muffins (or ingredients to make muffins)
• Condiments (ketchup, mustard, relish, steak sauce)
• Seasonings (steak seasoning, salt, pepper – look for a multi-spice container)
• Coffee & tea

Hot Dogs & S’mores

I love having hot dogs, chips, and s’mores on our first night at the campground. We light a campfire and get the roasting sticks out. This is one of the easiest camping meal ideas and perfect for when you are hungry and need to set up camp! To make an easy s’more, buy cookies that are already dipped in chocolate and use them to surround your toasted marshmallow. We like the Celebration-brand cookies. Feeling extra fancy? Level up your s’more with a dollop of peanut butter and thank me later!

Pancakes

Making pancakes from scratch while camping can be awkward and I don’t always love the taste of store-bought pancake mix. Making your own pancake mix is a great option for a classic camping breakfast. I make some and put it in a lidded bowl for camping, and then I simply add some eggs, butter, and milk to complete the batter when we are ready to make our pancakes. Here’s a DIY pancake (or waffle!) mix recipe that I use.

Easy Camping Lunch Ideas

Our camping lunches are usually the same – we pack sandwiches and bags of fruit and veggies. A variation of this is packing a charcuterie inspired lunch – a tray of cold cuts, fruits, and veggies. We’re usually out hiking or exploring during the day, so healthy on-the-go lunches like this are perfect. Baking muffins before the trip is also helpful since the muffins can be used as an easy breakfast, snack, or lunch addition.

Camping Breakfast Scrambler

Next, we have our ultimate favourite camping meal idea! Fry bacon in a pan and place it to the side. Fry hash browns, scramble some eggs, and mix them into the hash browns. Chop and then put the bacon back into the pan and add shredded cheese and seasonings. I like to pack pre-shredded cheese to make this meal even easier to put together. Pack some tortilla wraps and sour cream, and you can turn this scrambler into breakfast burritos in no time flat! The kids will love it!

Fancy Steak Supper

We like to have at least one “fancy” meal when we’re camping, and for us that’s a steak dinner! I like using a couple of tin foil cake pans (you can also use a foil packet or iron skillet), a multi-spice container, and bagged salads to make things easier. Cut baby potatoes in half and place them in a cake pan with cubes of butter and some diced onions. Cook the potatoes covered with tin foil on the camp stove while grilling the steaks beside them. Serve the potatoes and steak with a quick bagged salad, and you have a delicious meal. If you would prefer a fresh cut salad check out my tips for making salad that is not boring.Who says you have to leave the flavours at home while you’re camping?

Desserts

S’mores are always our go-to dessert for camping BUT you can pre-make things like crisps and pies to cook on the camp stove. To make a rhubarb crisp, put the wet ingredients in the bottom of a tin foil cake pan and put the dry ingredients (the “crisp” part) in a bag. I assemble the crisp just before I cook it on the camp stove so it’s not soggy.

More tips for camping meals

• Pack extra snacks – you just never know how hungry everyone will be 
• Prep as much as possible in advance (chop veggies & fruit, shred cheese, do some baking etc.)
• Have some “emergency” packaged food in case cooking a meal goes wrong (like canned soups, packaged pastries etc.)
• Don’t forget to bring bags and containers for packing your lunches on the go
• Tasty, fresh water is an essential. We either fill some clean milk jugs with water from home or buy a big water bottle to bring along
• Some freshly ground coffee and an Aeropress is a great way to make coffee during a camping trip! Boil water in a kettle on your camp stove for coffee or tea

I hope you enjoyed these easy camping meal ideas! Let me know in the comments below if you have any further suggestions for simple and yummy camping food.

Pin me!