Health On The Go
Healthy Cooking over a Campfire
It’s not always easy to hold yourself accountable while on a diet, and that holds especially true when you’re out of your normal element, like on vacation, being sick, or staying somewhere besides your own home.
I’ve found that this is even harder to uphold when your typical cooking tools and means of cooking are stripped from you. Overall, this all adds up to it being very hard to cook healthy while out in the woods camping. I mean, you have to have certain foods with you in the first place that are likely processed more compared to other fresher variants. You’re also probably around a campfire drinking soda, so you’ve thrown caution to the wind on healthy eating. And finally, you’re grilling simple dishes over a somewhat hot fire, meaning it’s tougher to gauge when something is finished or not.
This seems like a recipe for a diet disaster, especially if you’re going camping for an entire weekend or longer. But fret not! We’ve come up with a few cooking ideas that can allow you to stay on your healthy diet even while out in the wilderness.
Veggies grilled over the fire
Kabobs are a fan favorite when grilling out in the summer at home. But why not take this a step further and do it over the campfire? Whether you have a grating to lay the kabobs on top of or you just wanna stack them on a weenie roasting stick and sit back, it’s a great way to get some veggies and chicken “grilled” up nicely while still cooking in the spirit of the great outdoors.
We recommend trying to do at least a 2:1 ratio of veggies to meat if you’re going to go for kabobs. After all, the veggies are the healthiest part of the meal!
“Hobo dinner” foil packets
I don’t know who first told me about hobo dinner packets, but these little meals have been a godsend whenever I’m camping with friends. Basically, you throw some oil in some tinfoil, and then add chopped up potatoes, carrots, zucchini, lemon, and your favorite choice of meat (ground turkey, chicken, and fish are better than red meat here), and toss it in the coals of the fire to cook.
The key here is making sure your potato chunks are small enough to cook as fast as the other components of the packet. Just as well, make sure to keep the packets close enough to the fire for heat but not so close that everything is charred once you take it out. These can take 15 minutes or longer, so make sure to check every 5 minutes after that point to avoid overcooking.