How to Camp Cook: Finding a Balance Between Ultralight and Car Camping for Your Family
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Besides being a soccer player, growing up in New Mexico, I was also a nerd. As such, I took Latin in high school, in order to help me with my college entrance exams (I wanted to be able to recognize word roots and the like). One of the things that stuck with me from those classes was that my Latin teacher once told us that the word “comrade” (a companion who shares one’s activities or a fellow member of one’s group) comes from the Latin “comedere” (to eat something solid, especially food).
It turns out that is probably wrong. I believe the commonly accepted etymology for “comrade” is from the French “camarade” which, in turn, comes from the Latin “camera” (meaning “chamber”.) The idea being that comrades are people that you are “enclosed” with (through your home, your work, your barracks, etc.).
But the idea of unifying and building community through the act of eating has always stuck with me. And social science research has underscored the importance of sharing food with those we care about, including the rather startling observation that “a path analysis suggests that the causal direction runs from eating together to bondedness rather than the other way around.” In other words, we eat with people and then come to bond with them; it’s not that we choose to eat with those to whom we already feel bonded.
Simply put, eating together brings people together - and in more ways than just co-locating around a table.
For example, one of the best pieces of advice I got as I planned my unguided trip to the summit of Denali (20,310’), was to make sure that the climbing team had a few meals together where we cooked. The average duration of a climb up Denali is 17 to 21 days, according to the National Park Service. That’s a long time to eat freeze-dried food. Plus individualized, freeze-dried meals don’t create any need to bring the team together around the stoves; it is just must easier to boil your water, rehydrate your food, and eat while sitting in the vestibule of your tent. But cooking becomes a community endeavor. So, balancing the weight demands of food preparation with the need to have these morale breaks, we brought food for 21 days but made sure to have 6 meals that would require some collective cooking. The quick segment in the video of a group of us all sitting in front of a snow wall is at 14K Camp on Denali, and we are melting snow for water while sharing one of our cooked meals.
And now we are living during these times of social isolation in response to a global pandemic. Does anything feel quite as lost as this shared experience over the life-sustaining activity that is cooking and eating?
So, it has always been important that, while camping with the family, we “share a good meal” - just as important as when we are at home, in fact. But especially now.
Having kids, though, means that a “good” meal is a multifaceted definition. “Good” means having some nutritional value. “Good” also means bringing a spark of joy (we always do s’mores). “Good” means being efficient enough that our kids aren’t dreading the meal times because they take them too long away from their exploration of our camp and the surrounding area. That’s a lot of things that can be in tension with one another, so our meals become balancing acts. We want to spend “enough” time cooking to have it be a shared experience. We want the food to be nutritious “enough” that it compares favorably to the salt-drenched freeze-dried foods that so often make up the alternatives. We want “enough” flavor to be satiating and enjoyable.
It’s worth getting - not just meals - but meal experiences right. And when you are out and away from all your normal conveniences, schedules, and rituals that surround eating, it takes some forethought to do so. But it’s forethought well worth it.
So, how do we do that? How does our family makes sure that we can get out into nature (which as I’ve mentioned in many other locations, has become a key to our mental health), and still cultivate these shared meal experiences?
Well, we need food that we can pack in but also not have to truly labor over. And, therefore, we also need equipment with us that makes this type of “cooking-light” possible. Those two things are really what the video is about.
In the video, we went over a lot of different stoves that serve a lot of different types of trips. Except for the two that I mentioned on the “extreme” end of the cook-system spectrum, I have extensive experience with all of them:
For car camping: JetBoil Genesis 2-Burner Stove - I have not used this, but is a “Top Pick” from the people over at Outdoor Gear Lab (who I highly trust). They talk about its strong portability (by car camping standards), simmer control, and smartly designed hookups to your fuel source. They do talk about it lacking a good windscreen, but that this is something pretty easily overcome if you have a vehicle - with all of its bulk - around camp.
For the most ultralight of ultralight: Andrew Skurka provides instructions on making an alcohol stove out of a cat food tin. This is about as light as it gets. I haven’t used it, but if it’s good enough for hundreds of meals by a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, then it’s probably pretty good.
Almost indestructible, high-frequency and volume: MSR XGK-EX and the liquid fuel to go with it - I took this to Denali, amongst other trips. We brought a mix of liquid fuel stoves and cannister stoves (two of each, actually), so as to have backups of each type but also differentiation in case cold weather played havoc with either type. (Ccanisters can be really hard to light if they get too cold; liquid fuel is more reliable but require priming and are bulky). So, for me personally, this stove has cooked for six and in the most extreme of conditions.
Highly portable and convenient but with the ability to do real cooking: Snowpeak GigaPower Stove and the canisters (4 ounce) (8 ounce) to go with it - This was my go-to stove before my wife and I had kids. Before kids, we would tend to move camps more frequently, rather than stay in one place, and so weight was important. But we also (again) weren’t thru-hiking, so we still brought real food to actually cook. It’s not the lightest of the more minimal types of canister stoves, but I haven’t found anything lighter that has both simmer control and can take on a wide-based pot. And, it’s stood up for years - over a decade, at this point.
Water boiling machine: MSR Reactor and the canisters (4 ounce) (8 ounce) to go with it - Again, a stove that went with me to Denali, as well as many other alpine climbs. This is not a multitool. It does one thing and does it very well: in windy conditions, it boils water faster and with less fuel usage than anything else out there. As an integrated canister stove (where the pot connects directly to the stove with no air between the two), it’s too bulky to be a backpacking stove (although, it’s small compared to family camping stoves). It’s a stove for alpine missions. If you are in the mountains and need to melt snow into water to either drink or rehydrate food, this is the thing that does it the very best. It isn’t a great cooking stove, however, as the pot choices are limited and it doesn’t do well when turning the burner down. But for what I do when I’m not being Dad, this stove is great. I’ve been carrying mine for nearly a decade.
The family camping stove: MSR DragonFly and the liquid fuel to go with it - As I said in the video, this is what we usually take on the family camping trips when we want to actually cook. I would go with something lighter for backpacking adventures. But for being in camp and doing some cooking, the simmer control, sturdy base, and self-cleaning jet make it just what we need for these camping (rather than hiking) outings. I used it a little before the kids were born. I’ve used it a lot since then!
…And once we’ve eaten, we need to have the right way to clean everything up. In the video, I mentioned our super-simple cleaning kit:
A Cotton Handkerchief/Bandana, or that super-absorbent Multi Towel for longer trips
So, that’s the equipment side of the equation. What about the actual food? What do we like to bring with us?
As I mentioned, above, we like to do s’mores with the kids. Camping trips are an “occasion,” and we like to celebrate those occasions with them. But beyond that, we talked about wraps and grilled sandwiches (and our boys’ favorite: grilled cheese). Those are pretty simple, and I don’t think need a lot of explaining except for maybe a couple of things:
When we make breakfast burritos, after we scramble our eggs, we like to make sure to strain those eggs. The eggs can retain a lot of liquid, and that can eat away at the integrity of your tortilla before they get fully frozen (assuming you put them in the freezer; it’s even worse if you don’t freeze them). So, when you reheat, you end up with mushy and leaky burritos.
Also, when you are making grilled cheese, you don’t need to spread the butter over the bread, you can just stick a pat of butter in the center. The butter will melt and spread across the aluminum foil wrapper you are grilling the food inside of, and will fairly evenly coat things without the extra work.
Now, we also did want to mention a few specific recipes that maybe you noticed in the video, and which we pulled from a couple of our favorite resources, Fresh off the Grid and Ambitious Kitchen:
So, that’s our how-to manual on making our camping meals experiences that bring our family together over good (and not pre-packaged) food during these times when bringing people together is more important than ever. Now keep on getting more out of that Big Outside… Camp Kitchen!