Easy meal ideas for campers

Camping holidays are all about embracing the outdoors, and what better way to do this than cooking at your campsite? While there will be plenty of opportunities to enjoy Cornish delicacies while on your family holiday in Looe, you may also want to try a few fun recipes to get the true camping experience. Here, with the help of expert bloggers, we’ve found a selection of recipes that are both easy and extremely tasty. Go on, give them a go!

Greek Stifado

While this is a recipe that you’ll want to cook in preparation for your camping trip, it’s super simple to take with you and heat up on arrival. Check out pukka chef Jamie Oliver’s take on the recipe here.

“Our favourite camping recipe is one we make before we go. It’s a Greek stew called Stifado made with steak and a tomato-based sauce. We just add orzo pasta to the pan and heat it all up together to turn it into a one-pot recipe, adding extra water if more moisture is needed.” – All The Camping Gear

“Once we’ve prepped, we’ll cook and freeze some dishes at home such as a canvas casserole, for others, we’ll just pop the ingredients into food bags and plastic containers, ready to cook whilst we are away.” – Camping with Style

Fresh pasta

This may be considered a bit of a cop-out, but it’s almost impossible to go wrong with fresh pasta and sauce, and it’s a great dish to try for those that are new to camping. Here’s a BBC tomato and basil sauce recipe you can make from scratch.

“Our top cooking tip for camping is to have something fast for the first night when you’ve just arrived and need to unpack. We use the Stifado for this, but another staple for us is fresh pasta and a ready-made sauce.” – All The Camping Gear

‘Tent tea party’

Aptly named by Camping with Style, we think this is a great idea, as there’s no cooking involved at all. Buffet food always goes down well with children too, as they’ll love picking and choosing what to put on their plate.

“Crackers, bread sticks, cheese, dips and cakes makes for an easy peasy and fun meal” – Camping with Style

Breakfast burritos

As the most important meal of the day, especially when you have a busy day of exploring Cornwall ahead of you, you’ll want to make sure that it is one that is suitably filling. With ingredients that are all easy to fry in a pan, these breakfast burritos are the perfect solution, and will keep rumbly tums full until lunchtime.

“Fill a tortilla with scrambled eggs, onion, mushrooms, bacon and season with plenty of black pepper” – Camping with Style

Stir fry

This is one of the healthiest options in our list, and will take just minutes to cook and prepare. Vegetables and noodles will do just fine, but add a meat of your choice for even more flavour.

“Prawns, noodles, beansprouts and veg with a stir through of sweet chilli, easy, quick and delicious!” – Camping with Style

A camping holiday wouldn’t be complete without an obligatory barbie, and our expert bloggers confirm this below. With disposable BBQs for sale in most shops, even if you haven’t brought catering equipment along, you can still get involved with some outdoorsy cooking!

“We take essentials and then buy more when we arrive to save on space, often using a local butcher to get things for a BBQ.” –All The Camping Gear

“Big tasty chicken and salad burgers with homemade coleslaw are easy to do, plus, they’re filling and tasty too!” – Camping with Style

S’mores

It goes without saying that there had to be at least one dessert on our list, but in order to mix it up a bit, we’ve picked this top American treat, as it may be one that you haven’t tried before. With just three (naughty) ingredients, all you need to do is melt the marshmallows over a flame, before sticking your ‘sandwich’ together. See a step by step guide on the Girl Outdoors blog here.

“The three ingredients to a s’more are graham crackers, chocolate (preferably Hershey’s), and marshmallows. In addition, you must light a fire and forage for a proper roasting stick (set your eyes on a long and thin twig). Also, if you’re on a diet, forget it.” – The Girl Outdoors

Extra tips
Seeing as we’ve been in touch with the experts, we thought we’d ask for any further tips they could pass on to fellow happy campers staying at a Cornwall holiday park. Here’s what they had to suggest below.

“My final cooking tip when camping is about fridge space. We store drinks (not milk) and things like butter under our trailer tent as they stay nice & cool without being in the cool box. This would work equally well if you have a tent with a porch. (We chill beer this way too!)” – All The Camping Gear

“Our top tips are to plan meals ahead, invest in a good quality cool box (ours keeps ice for 5 days without needing power) and do as much food prep as you can at home.” – Camping with Style

Image Credit: the-contented, avlxyz, lablasco, gudlyf, saechang, kriztofor, quinnanya, indigoprime(Flickr.com)

This content was written by Alex Jones. Please feel free to visit my Google+ Profile to read more stories.