The Best Camping Meals are healthy, too!

Looking for camping meals that are easy to prepare, easy to clean up, and taste amazing?

When creating a weekend camping menu, we try to create or source easy recipes that are simple enough for the kids to prepare themselves (I don’t want to do ALL the cooking) and yummy enough to feel special (most of the time).

The delicious camping meals listed below are relatively healthy and primarily meat-free.

If you’re looking for the perfect grilled burger or chicken kabobs, you won’t find them here. Fortunately, the internet is full of great resources for those types of meals!

What to Look for When Sourcing the Best Camping Meals

We want easy. We want yummy, and we don’t want to worry about keeping meat cold to prevent contamination or illness.

I’m always tweaking and experimenting with different camping recipes at home so they’re easy to prepare when I finally make them at camp.

Here’s what we look for when figuring out our car camping meals:

• Nutritiously balanced meals (we’re not saints, but we try to provide some nutrition).
• Ingredients that are available at most supermarkets across the country.
• Recipes that use only small amounts of perishable ingredients. Mostly, we stay away from meat, dairy, and leafy greens when camping because we don’t want to deal with constantly buying ice for the cooler. Our exceptions are hard cheeses, yogurt, pepperoni, and other dried meats, which can take short periods of less-than-ideal temperatures.
• Recipes that use one or two pans are easy to clean up.

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Want to read about how we organize and pack our car camping kitchen?

Check out: Your Amazing Car Camping Kitchen

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We keep our camping kitchen packed and ready to go during the camping season, so when the time comes, we just have to add our recipe ingredients and hit the road. 

We love cooking over the campfire, but for the most part, these meals are prepared on our trusty two-burner camp stove. It’s just easier that way! If you pack a cast iron skillet for your camping trip, you can choose how you want to cook your camping meals.

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Do you bring a spice kit when you go camping?  Here’s an overview of our homemade spice kit for camping.

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Easy Camping Dinners

Dinner is the most time-consuming meal of the day, but it’s also the one we’re most likely to enjoy together while relaxing after a long day.

These car camping dinner ideas come together pretty quickly, so you can maximize your family time.

Loaded Baked Potatoes for Camping

Potatoes are the perfect camping staple. They are both easy and filling, require very little prep time, and taste awesome over a campfire.

Our kids love having crispy loaded baked potatoes at least once during every camping trip. As a bonus, there’s very little clean-up with this one. Here’s how to make this easy camping dinner.

1. Make a fire and let it burn down to glowing coals. These campfire potatoes will take about 45 minutes to cook thoroughly, so give yourself plenty of time. Now is the time to pull out a deck of cards.
2. Wrap big russet potatoes in two layers of aluminum foil and place them over the coals.
3. Chop a head or two of broccoli and mix with olive oil and salt/pepper. Wrap in foil and add to the fire after the potatoes have been on for about 20 minutes.
4. Chop some cheddar cheese into bite-sized pieces.
5. When the potatoes are ready, cut them into them on your plate and top them with broccoli and cheddar.
6. If we can’t have a fire and have to use a camp stove, we make chop the raw potatoes and stir-fry them with the broccoli, but it doesn’t taste as good as the fire-roasted potatoes.
7. Optional: Add chopped pepperoni, tuna fish, or another protein for a well-rounded dinner.

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Spicy Peanut Noodles for Camping

This is our go-to peanut sauce recipe for camping. Make it at home before you leave for your camping trip. You can keep it at room temperature, and the quantities in the recipe are the perfect amount for a pound of pasta.

When you get to camp and start cooking, you can thin out the sauce with the pasta cooking water.

Here’s how to make peanut noodles using a camping stove:

1. Get a pot of water boiling in a 4-quart pot to cook the pasta.
2. In your frying pan, stir-fry either broccoli, asparagus, or snap peas (our favorite when we can find them) in a bit of olive oil.
3. . When the pasta and veggies are cooked, drain the pasta, leaving some cooking water behind with the noodles.
4. Add the peanut sauce and the veggies to your pot of pasta.
5. Enjoy! This is one of the easiest car camping meals for your first night at camp.

Campfire Pizza Quesadillas for Camping

If you asked my kids what their favorite camping meal is, they would say pizza quesadillas.

We make them in a frying pan on our camp stove, but you can also wrap them in foil and put them over the fire. Here’s the easiest way to make them:

1. Spread flour tortillas with canned tomato sauce.
2. Top with grated or chopped cheddar, which keeps better than mozzarella outside of a cooler.
3. Add chopped onions, peppers, and sliced pepperoni.
4. Fold in half and fry in a bit of olive oil, or wrap with foil and add to hot coals.
5. Serve with a green salad or sturdy chopped vegetables.

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Little Quinoa Patties

Quinoa is a great grain for camping because it is very high in protein and cooks quickly. It’s perfect for vegetarians. These patties do require eggs, which keep really well in our camping pantry or cooler.

You’ll want this egg carton so that you don’t have to worry about your eggs breaking and making a mess!

Our recipe for quinoa patties is really versatile, and in the past, we’ve omitted the onions, used powdered garlic, and made them with parmesan instead of cheddar.

They always come out amazing, especially when served over a salad with honey-mustard dipping sauce. I still consider this an easy camping meal, but it’s more complicated than the other camping recipes on this list.

This is my favorite way to eat quinoa, so even if you’re not a fan, try it!

It’s a favorite vegetarian camping meal that even meat-eaters love!

White Bean Tomato Soup for Camping

We make some version of this white bean and tomato soup fairly often when we go camping, but of course, we make a loose version using whatever veggies we have on hand, usually potatoes, carrots, garlic, and onions.

We love using fresh greens in this soup when possible, but we only add them if we’ve been to the store that day. Otherwise, we either skip the greens or forage for wild greens like dandelion, violet leaves, or plantain. 

This soup is a one-pot camping meal, and it’s such a versatile recipe that as long as you’ve got the beans in your camp pantry, you can add whatever else you have on hand, and it will still taste delicious.

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Panzanella: A No-Cook Camping Meal (Vegetarian Too!)

At the height of summer (camping season), nothing beats this Panzanella, a spin-off from one we found on Smitten Kitchen years ago. I could eat this every day of the week in August. It’s perfect for those hot days at camp when you dread the idea of cooking.

Panzanella is especially remarkable on a camping road trip after stopping at a side-of-the-road farm stand. Pick up tomatoes, cukes, peppers, and red onion, and whip up this colorful but simple one-pot meal with burgers over the fire.

It’s heavenly!

Campfire Polenta

Creamy polenta with charred veggies and a slab of cheese is about the best thing every on a cold night around a campfire! And it’s another versatile recipe that you can make with whatever veggies or meats you have on hand. Here’s how we do it:

1. First roast your veggies by either wrapping them in foil and putting them over coals, or sauteing them in a cast iron skillet. I like use veggies that soften up to create a bit of sauce (mushrooms, peppers, onions, and tomatoes are my favorite).
2. Cook the polenta according to the package directions (I add a boullion cube, lots of pepper, and parmesan cheese to mine).
3. Add a slice of mozzerella to each bowl, top with polenta and roasted veggies.

Tip for easy clean-up: Polenta will stick to the pot like crazy, so after we empty it out, add cold water and set it on the edge of the campfire to warm up. Much easier to clean that way!

Easy Camping Breakfasts

Our car camping breakfasts don’t change much on the road. We have four standard meals that we love to cook, and for really hot, rainy, or busy days, we make do with PB&Js, granola bars, and fresh fruit.

Here are the four basic breakfast meals we rotate throughout our camping road trips.

Camping Oatmeal

Before leaving home, I mix up an instant oatmeal mix consisting of:

• 2 cups old-fashioned oats
• 1/2 cup dried milk powder
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup coconut flakes
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• pinch of salt

This oatmeal recipe can be easily doubled or tripled depending on your needs.

At home, I whirl this in a food processor for just a few seconds so it cooks faster when we’re camping.  At camp, I add 1/2 cup of whatever dried fruit and nuts I have on hand. I mix our camping oatmeal mix with water in a pot, cook for a few minutes, and serve. Easy-peasy.

Read Next: Tent Camping Tips for Women

Camping Pancakes

We’re Vermonters, so if we have room, we always have a jug of real maple syrup with us. Not only do we use maple syrup in coffee and on pancakes, but we’ve also traded syrup for car repairs in a pinch.

Once you’re out of the north country, the stuff is in demand!

Anyway, pancakes are versatile and perfect for camp cooking. I try to make a nutritious mix before leaving home:

• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 cup buckwheat flour,
• 1 cup almond flour
• ½ cup of dried milk powder
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• a pinch of salt

If I don’t have time to whip up the mix above, I make do with Kodiak High-Protein Pancake Mix, the best pancake mix I’ve ever tried. At camp, we add eggs if we have them (they’re not necessary), a tablespoon of oil, and enough water to make a loose batter.

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If we’re feeling adventurous, we like to create some of these incredible pancake variations. We eat them fried and smothered in syrup.

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Cheesy Egg Quesadillas

These egg quesadillas are so good after a night under the stars!

Scramble a bunch of eggs in your frying pan (over a camp stove or a campfire), and add chopped cheese, salsa, and drained black beans (optional). Fry in a pan and serve on tortillas. This is one of the easiest and most delicious car camping meals. This a great pre-hike meal because it keeps you full for a long time and provides extra protein for long days of adventuring.

Yogurt and Granola

One of our favorite quick car camping meals in the morning is a simple bowl of yogurt and granola.

For the most part, we try to avoid dairy products while traveling, but a quart of yogurt will keep in a cooler without ice for several days as long as nobody eats from the container (then it spoils quickly).

We make granola before our trip or buy it on the road, making this a super easy camping breakfast.

So there you have it, our best camping meals for the whole family.

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Want to read more about how we prepare car camping meals? Check out these posts:

• Our Favorite Hot Drink Recipes for Camping
• Planning a Picnic for Your Next Road Trip
• Your Amazing Car Camping Kitchen
• How to Wash Dishes When Camping

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