So grab your tent and sleeping bags and get ready to enjoy the great outdoors. Just because you won’t be in your kitchen, doesn’t mean you can’t eat well.
Easy recipes like Breakfast Blueberry-Oatmeal Cakes (for breakfast, of course) and Camping Chicken Quesadillas (for lunch or dinner) to keep you energized for your next camping trip.
When choosing these outdoor cooking recipes, we looked to nutrition, taste, and easy-to-pack ingredients, or the possibility of doing some advance prep for breakfasts, lunches, and dinners.
The energy bites and bars recipes can be prepared one week in advance and make great portable snacks for hiking, fishing, and canoeing, or for simply munching while enjoying a long scenic drive. And all of them can be just as satisfying to eat at home.
Healthy Camping Foods for You
Here are the best healthy camping foods:
1. Grilled Salmon with Sweet Peppers
At first glance, it might sound counterintuitive to begin with the fish skin-side up. But when you turn it over, the fish skin snags the juices as it finishes cooking, which provides you with a dish that is saturated with flavor.
Serve with chimichurri (recipe follows).
2. Grilled Vegetables in Foil
Grilled Vegetables in Foil is an easy recipe to use when camping or cooking over an open fire, and yet it’s delicious on your backyard gas grill as well.
Here, we cook asparagus, mini peppers, and zucchini spiked with garlic and butter. Delicious!
3. Grilled Beef & Vegetable Kebabs
Not only are these simple grilled beef & veggie kebabs delicious—they’re economical too. Tri-tip is an inexpensive and delicious cut of beef that works great over an open flame.
Then thread it on skewers between pretty veggies, marinate it (up to eight hours), and cook it (on the grill or over your campfire) to smoky, perfectly spiced perfection. Either way, it’s a refreshing and delicious summer dinner.
4. Freezer Friendly Bean and Cheese Burritos
These are the perfect meal prep copycat store bought frozen burritos recipe.
Make a large batch to keep in your freezer for healthy, packable lunches or an instant campsite meal.
5. BBQ Carrot Dogs
Amaze everyone with this recipe for veggie dogs that taste like hot dogs. They’re an incredible (and healthful!) meat-based hot dogs with a vegan option for you.
Then serve on whole-wheat hot dog buns and top with all of your favorite toppings — sauerkraut, relish, ketchup and mustard — for the ultimate weeknight barbecue meal.
6. Garlic Butter Campfire Corn
This delicious corn might be the easiest thing you can make.
Just coat the ears of corn in a fast garlic-and-chive-infused butter, wrap them in foil and they’re ready to be tossed on the grill at home or over coals at the campsite.
7. Camping Chicken Quesadillas
Genius campfire dinner to make ahead? These quesadillas. Put them together and wrap them in foil at home, and then toss over coals once at camp for an easy camping meal.
8. Sausage, Pepper & Potato Packets
Whip up a whole meal in one foil packet with this easy recipe full of seasoned sausage, peppers and potatoes. This quick dinner isn’t just perfect for grilling at home, it’s easy to prep ahead for camping, too, to cook over the coals.
9. Breakfast Blueberry-Oatmeal Cakes
This oatmeal-meets-muffin-tin cake is a great portable breakfast to make during the week. Make a big batch on the weekend and stash them in your freezer.
To make the oatmeal cakes portable, reheat in the microwave for about 40 seconds for a grab-and-go breakfast.
10. Quinoa & Chia Oatmeal Mix
With this healthy recipe option, you’ll never have to buy hot cereal again. It keeps, just cook as much as you want when you’re in the mood for a hot breakfast.
With 6 grams of fiber per serving, one bowl of the warm cereal is almost a quarter of your daily quota for the day.