[Closed] bikepacking cooking

Search for freezer bag cooking, and do that.

APF

There's some recipes on bikepacking.com.

I tend to go with the dehydrated foods but not the "outdoor" specific ones, things like noodles and couscous are easy to do. You don't need to keep them boiling or even simmering to cook, pour in the water and wrap with something to make a cosy, it just takes a little longer. The flavoured couscous are effectively "boil in the bag". Similarly with rice - get the pre-cooked packs when you shop and just add enough water to heat them up

If you do want to go down the "I'll cook it from fresh" route then do as much as you can at home, chop things like onions and veg beforehand and put into freezer bags.

The advantage with the boil water and rehydrate stuff route is that you've virtually no washing up! Soft bread is a good mop 😉 then heat a little water in the pan and a quick rinse round.

I never quite saw the appeal of the dehydrated stuff - seems to need the weight of fuel/water that you save by dehydrating in the first place.  I wonder if curry and stew might take a lot of cooking?

My recent trips have included stir fry (tesco £5 deal gets you noodles, veg, pork/chicken and a packet of sauce).  Easy enough and doesn't use tons of fuel.  Other consideration for me at the time was minimising waste, so cans and jars were out.

Simple pasta stuff can be quite tasty too - i tend to find I want a bit more seasoning than I do at home for some reason.  Again packet sauces are easy and don't generate much waste, but maybe you'll be limited by what you can pick up along the way?

Couscous (plus the obligatory chorizo) works well as a lunch - boil a little water, chuck in couscous let that sit while you prepare the sausage (fnarr).

brekkie tends to be porridge: bag up pre-measured oats and powdered milk (but a week of that would be heavy and dull).  eggs bacon and black pudding for a mid trip treat?

Kit:

jetboil and trangia sound ideal to me.  keep the rest of it simple - opinel for chopping, spork for stirring/eating, or find a stick.  washing up with sphagnum or a handful of grass.

edit - hadn't really thought of couscous as a dehydrated food, but see your point.

I just carry a knife and use it to start fires, fashion tools and build shelters as I go which allows me to kill, cook and eat whatever prey I come across. It's the ultimate in lightweight travel. Try it.

I never quite saw the appeal of the dehydrated stuff – seems to need the weight of fuel/water that you save by dehydrating in the first place.

Usually available en route.....

It really depends on why you are bikepacking. If you're doing it to cover longer distances in a short period of time then cooking - and cleaning - is a time-sink. If you're doing it for long relaxed evenings in the outdoors then this is less of an issue.

Don't forget to take into account the weather and the local insect life. Sitting round chopping veg and cooking in the pissing rain and/or in the middle of a midge cloud will soon spoil your day.

Make sure you go by a couple of pubs! 😆

Pub

Too slow...

Chippy?

Cusscuss, noodles or spaghetti. Cooks quick. Use a pot cosey method (I tend to use my beanny).

Cupasoup added to cusscuss makes a good sauce.

Tomato paste mix's well with pasta.

Chorizo or similar dried meat works well to chop in.

Omlettes work well if you are prepared to carry eggs, can usually be picked up on route so makes life easier.

Next time you are at a motorway services pick up some of the salt and pepper sachets, there may also be mayonnaise, ketchup and brown sauce sachets freely available.

If you try and replicate how you cook at home then you'll need a lot of fuel and potentially a lot of kit so you need to look at things differently. To do a curry or stew from scratch will need a lot of fuel plus something like a Jetboil is a deep tall pan and food can be prone to sticking unless you are very careful and constantly monitoring it.

For things like porridge we use the Readybrek type packets - we've Tesco's Golden Syrup Easy Oats in the cupboard at the moment - a couple of sachets each is filling. Pour into bowl and add boiling water, use fingers to clean the bowl.

My breakfast is regular porridge oats, chopped nuts, dried fruit and milk powder whizzed up in a blender then portioned into pour'n'store bags. The blender makes the oats quicker to reconstitute and the bags mean no cleaning up. Just pour in boiling water, stir/squidge for a while and leave in a cosy until ready.

Boil water in mug and rehydrate things in pour and store bags, usually -

noodles with spice, nuts etc added

smash potato with whatever

beanfeast with stuff added

cous cous, dried veg, nuts

bagged up ready brek and sugar

always cooked in bags so no washing up, usually take a few spare bags with me for whatever else I pick up en route

eat straight out the bag with long handled spoon and lick it clean, throw bag away at next bin

Good on you for giving it a go but 5 nights for your first trip is biting off quite a lot. Surely you'll be passing by some pubs/towns for a cooked meal anyway. Hard to spend that long in the wilds in the UK! (assuming you are in the UK of course). 5/6 days of food is a fair load to be setting off with.

Porridge with freeze dried raspberries for breakfast , try and get a second breakfast in a cafe and pub of a night or if I didn't get as far as I'd like then super noodles in pour and store bags with a bit of chorizo for flavour ,trangias are great cookers but very bulky to try and get packed neatly and secure on the bike , when the youngfella comes with me I take a trangia triangle and a primus litech pot it has a little frying pan for a lid , combine this with a windshield made out of a disposable roasting tray and you get a fast fry without using too much fuel and the triangle packs flat at about 10cm long  and 3mm thick

Last trip we went on, i took a pack of pork loins, cooked on a metal tray over some bbq coals.

They were ****in delicious!!

boil in the bag type meals are, ok ish.

batchelors super noodles.

remember you don’t need to carry the full 5 days worth, you’re bound to pass a shop every day.

packs of pork pies, energy dense, tasty, easy to carry.

Like thecaptain says, 5 nights for your first trip?  I'd be looking at a single night or perhaps two 🙂

I'd be going for the advice above about packing and prepping in bags where possible and minimising the faff and extra gear. You'll also leave less of a trace behind, assuming you'll be wild camping. Definitely think of cooking differently than at home, it's just about getting some warm calories inside you, and it'll taste good because you're outside on an adventure.

I'm doing my first proper overnight in a long time this weekend, and i'm just taking homemade pre-cooked mac n cheese style pasta in a bag and some porridge sachets, cooked in single pot/mug that the gas and stove fit inside.

Good on you for giving it a go but 5 nights for your first trip is biting off quite a lot. Surely you’ll be passing by some pubs/towns for a cooked meal anyway.

remember you don’t need to carry the full 5 days worth, you’re bound to pass a shop every day.

To do a curry or stew from scratch will need a lot of fuel

It really depends on why you are bikepacking. If you’re doing it to cover longer distances in a short period of time then cooking – and cleaning – is a time-sink. If you’re doing it for long relaxed evenings in the outdoors then this is less of an issue.

I don't like the idea of the pour n store bags (single use plastics etc) but I see what you're all saying re. the convenience of it!

Last trip we went on, i took a pack of pork loins, cooked on a metal tray over some bbq coals.

Yeah bikepacking, well sort of, i use a combo of bikepacking bags along with a rear rack and 2 panniers.

We carried a 3kg bag of coals and a metal cooking tray.

We had space/weight to spare, as my mate took his own homemade water system with him, so we didn’t need to carry any more than 1 bottle of water with us.

we camped half a mile away from a wee loch, so it was 1 trip up there to fill up, treat/filter the water.

I’ll be doing it again.

have previously just taken tinned food, bit heavy but dead easy.

Only downside is you still need to carry the empty tin until you see a bin.

https://flic.kr/p/27g5Uhj

baked tattie in foil.

FWIW I wash and reuse the PnS bags. Not exactly eco but I can get half a dozen trips from each.

Aaagh! "open" fire in countryside = fail. A good example of how to p*** landowners off and make things difficult for everyone else. If you must bring out your inner Ugg then use a firepit.

And breathe 🙂

Just scrape leaves and general debris back to soil, light bag of coals and you’ll be good to go in 30 mins.

obviously, you need to make certain they are out before you leave the area, these were still surprisingly hot the next morning.

woodgas stove works really well too, can be run on wood pellet cat litter, that burns really well, and is cheap/convenient.

too bulky to use as only fuel source of course, but is handy for a quick cuppa.

for firelighting we use cotton wool balls rolled in vaseline.

remember also, you don’t necessarily need a stove each . . .

knowing how to use a simple tool properly, beats having a fancy gadget every time.

like a knife, for example.

there’s no definitive right or wrong way to do it.

for example, many people will extol the virtues of a lightweight tent, whereas i prefer a hammock/tarp setup.

Whitestone, when we left there was no evidence at all that we were there.

it should go without saying that no fire can be left unattended.

Oh FFS!

FWIW I wash and reuse the PnS bags. Not exactly eco but I can get half a dozen trips from each.

Just scrape leaves and general debris back to soil, light bag of coals and you’ll be good to go in 30 mins.

Seriously? Open fires in the countryside?

On top of Whitestone's comments:

What about up here in Scotland where much of the land is peat and (until recently anyway) bone dry - you'll quite quickly set the ground beneath your feet on fire too...

Been doing it for decades, never had a problem.

It is in Scotland.

I can't decide if you @martymac are trolling or are genuinely serious about this.

Scotland? As in the country that introduced the most progressive access rights in the UK? The Scotland that then introduced a ban on wild camping in parts of the Lomond and Trossachs National Park because of open fires and general misbehaving? That Scotland?

Did you miss the bit about free and responsible access? I don't remember it including a scorched earth (buried) clause.

As above, plastic cooking bags. I also Re use them. Always porridge for breakfast and pre measured.

I buy on route to save weight and just make it work with what ever I can get. Dried food is great but remember you need a lot of water, (cooking, washing, brushing teeth, drinking etc) . I always carry a sawyer water purification kit in case I run out.

I always take 1 army ration for emergency. I buy them off a great seller on ebay. My favourite is pasta, chicken and bacon. You are supposed to place it in boiling water to heat but I've found its better to pour the water in and make a broth and soak up with bread (less waste). It's also quite edible cold straight from the packet if you are too tired to cook.

I've been caught out before with mechanicals, not making it to destinations or bonking etc, shops closed, sold out, shuts at 8pm.

Having one emergency meal just in case is worth 300g in my opinion, I'm sure others would disagree.

Not trolling.

been doing exactly the same thing since the 80s.

never had any kind of a problem, but obviously it has to be done carefully.

in 30odd years I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve even seen anyone.

it should be clear by now that I don’t go camping next to loch lomond or anything crazy like that.

the only way anyone could possibly know I’ve had a fire is if they saw me.

or if they randomly dug a hole in that exact spot.

the only way anyone could possibly know I’ve had a fire is if they saw me

Or if you set fire to half a forest.

By your own admission you have "space to spare" so why not take a portable fire pit and thus avoid any damage to the countryside?

Leave No Trace does not mean  sweep it under the (figurative) carpet.

Well I’ve been doing it for more than 30 years, so I’ll take my chances.

ive been wild camping for decades before it was legal as well.

slightly off topic but can anyone recommend a good instant coffee that can be drunk black.. I bought some hazelnut stuff last night and I cannot taste the bean at all...ughs

Coffee Bags for Convenience, better than instant not as good as real. Or an AeroPress and some ground.

Coffee? Got to be cowboy coffee,

https://driftaway.coffee/how-do-you-make-cowboy-coffee/

APF

Thanks Mickey might just look at the coffee bag thingy... unf. I left my aeropress back in Vancouver last year much to my brother's delight!

youse are missing half the point of camping of youse don't make fires! 😆

Coffee and bikepacking - it seems to have evolved into a style statement, so take your pick:

Tin mug (dangling annoyingly from a bag) and Mocha with 'the best' grounds = Pro (see Pannier.cc for details)

Aeropress/folding filter, grounds, Ti mug = Insta-cool

Cowboy coffee, grounds = knowing nod

Coffee bag = tea gone wrong

Instant = penniless dirtbag

I'm happy enough with instant black, because a hot drink on the hill tastes good if it's posh or poor. Current instant of choice is something from Cafe direct. Advantage of instant is you don't have grounds to dispose of or wash out of your mug/coffee device. Very minor, but adds to the sense of leave no trace. Or just burn the grounds with all your litter on the big coal fire you made! 🙂

My cookery is inspired by  that survival  bloke off the telly.

It's actually quite difficult to grill a bear.

I use a single cup metal drip filter with ground coffee. Bulky but light. Good coffee. Nothing to throw away.

I must admit there is nothing better than good food eaten in fresh air some reason.

If i am just going for the night or a few days, then as i cook curries or a chilli i save portions of it in these freezer bags from Lakeland (or similar):

https://www.lakeland.co.uk/10914/20-Soup-n-Sauce-Press-Seal-Freezer-Bags-1L

The bags are good in that they stand up on their own, and i simply drop the bag in boiling water to reheat, then once hot use the water for coffee (i really like the Taylors Hot Lava Java bags).

Supplement the above with calorie dense food like chorizo, a bag of nuts or one of the roll tubes of peanut butter and then wash it all down with homemade sloe gin or damson vodka...

And how the hell do you get the bag of coal on the bike...............?

I’d be worried about bpa in those bags, better to get a vac sealer and some quality bags designed for sous vide, useful for batch cooking as well as for bikepacking meals.

https://www.foodsaver.co.uk/vacuum-sealers/

<div class="bbp-reply-author">perchypanther
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It’s actually quite difficult to grill a bear.

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You're asking it the wrong questions

Edit: It also appears quite difficult for me to just quote someone's post...

Don't copy the user name and status, just the content of the post. Like this:

You’re asking it the wrong questions

Edit: It also appears quite difficult for me to just quote someone’s post…

Test

[QUOTE=WHIESTONE]Don’t copy the user name and status, just the content of the post. Like this: