Here are some camping cooking tips that I have for you from personal experience. I hope this helps you and I hope this gives you inspiration for your meal plan. As always, wash your hands and your utensils, pots, pans and prep area with hot soapy water. rinse well. Follow food safety guidelines for a happy, healthy Pennsic! I do almost all of my cooking at home, days or weeks in advance. I cook a turkey and seal it in a vacuum food sealer. I buy jarred pasta sauce. The only thing that I have found that does not freeze well are hard boiled eggs (they turn to rubber) mashed potatoes, and gravy tends to separate on me. Other things that I have made at home are pepperoni rolls without cheese, spiral sliced ham, boiled chicken which then can be used any number of ways. meat loaf freezes beautifully. This year my husband wants me to make meat loaf cup cakes. I will use a large muffin pan to shape the oversized meatloaf balls. plunk them in foil cupcake wrappers and bake them so he can have portable food while he walks to the battlefield. my typical meal list looks like this: **chicken fajitas (boiled chicken at home.) **sloppy joes (ground meat pre-cooked, unseasoned) **spiral sliced ham (ham is already pre-cooked, just packaged in smaller portions at home) **Pot roast (pre cooked at home) **Turkey, and then turkey sandwiches later (turkey purchased and kept in deep freezer from holiday sale. baked and vacuum sealed in my seal a meal) **hot dogs, hamburgers (burgers cooked at home) **pepperoni rolls (cooked at home, frozen in sets of two in bags) **Chicken stir fry (again, boiled chicken at home) **meat loaf (baked at home in small loaf pans) I have found that the frozen veggies in the store packaging does not survive the cooler. it is wise to re-package it in a vacuum food sealed bag. Pita bread and burrito shells freeze great. If you have the room, freeze your vacuum sealed bags of food FLAT. Once they are frozen, you can stack them like books in your cooler. DONT FORGET to label your bags for quick identification. I label mine Tuesday, Week 1- sloppy joes. Need ketchup! or Wednesday, Week 2 Ham. Make potatoes with. It may seem like a lot of work at first, but the days meal is right there on the bag. It also lets another cook (the husband) know what I was planning on making along with that food. Do not buy the cheapest vacuum bags. the heavier the better. The thin ones separate. Also invest in a good food sealer. I used to have a Seal a Meal brand but it wasnt very good. the sealed strip at the end of the bag was narrow and did not always seal. My FoodSaver brand does a better job with a wider band of sealing. They also have heavier bags. I have my little black heart set on a commercial sized vacuum food sealer. Another plus with heavier bags and a better sealer is that you can warm your food up while its still in the bag. I do this all the time to warm up my food. Then all I have is a pot of boiled water. I have had better luck with my FoodSaver brand sealer with dipping the bags in boiling water than I did with my Seal a Meal sealer. With the Seal a Meal sealer, the bags unsealed in the water. I also will seal up my sugar and rice. I ziplock anything that could be gooey or runny. I throw my eggs and carton in an extra large zip lock bag. I dont want them to crack open in the cooler. We have one cooler strictly for food and a second strictly for drinks, though we have moved away from pre-packaged drinks. Now we have a 5 gal water cooler with powdered gatorade or tea. I hope this helps and gives you some ideas. I do most of my shopping for big ticket items while they are on sale and stash them in my deep freezer. This also gives me a chance to test out recipes and see how well they do being frozen.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 20:43:43 +0000
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