On a trip where there are significant distances to cover with some rock scrambling, you may select a lightweight menu. Whereas on a casual car-camping trip, where the pace is slow, and you can carry lots of different ingredients in by car, you may decide to cook a far more gourmet menu. There’s no right or wrong here, just different options depending on the style of trip you are planning. We’ll work through the pros and cons of various menu types (summarised below) to help select something suitable for your trip.
Meal type: Lightweight, dehydrated meals
Pros: Good for long trips where you need light meals
Cons: Can be hard to eat this kind of food for long periods of time; often can contain high preservatives. Expensive if you buy; cheap if you do yourself (but time-consuming)
Meal type: ‘Just add boiling water’ (e.g. Maggi noodles)
Pros: Easy, minimal washing
Cons: High in preservatives, not a balanced with protein and vegetables
Meal type: One-pot
Pros: Minimal washing
Cons: Restricts what you can cook
Meal type: High-energy
Pros: Great for long trips burning a lot of energy
Cons: You can get fat…
Meal type: Camp oven
Pros: Fun
Cons: Time-consuming, heavy
Meal type: Base-camp
Pros: Lots of heavy stuff
Cons: Heavy, might need Eski too
Meal type: Freezer-bag cooking
Pros: Easy
Cons: Lots of packaging. Need to prepare beforehand
Meal type: Cold meal (‘no cook’)
Pros: Minimal prep
Cons: Hot meals can be nice