Camping Recipes Our Tried And True Favorites

For even more inspiration, check out all of our dinner ideas! We usually camp in the summer when it’s hot and dry and fire restrictions are in place. That means we often cook on the camp stove. But when we’re able to have a campfire, we take full advantage because campfires are AWESOME! A camping trip isn’t complete without roasting hot dogs over the fire. We love kicking them up a notch with some caramelized onions – you’ll find that recipe here. But even basic, fire-cooked dogs are delicious. When we go camping for multiple days, we always add a few vegetarian recipes to the menu. With only a cooler to keep things cold, meat doesn’t last as long when you’re camping; so it’s a good idea to have some vegetarian meals to eat at the end of your camping trip. Below you’ll find all of our favorite easy camping recipes from camping breakfasts, lunch, dinner, desserts, snacks, and even a few drinks that we like to whip up at the campsite. Chorizo Scrambled Eggs (you can skip the pesto or use store-bought) Chorizo Shakshuka (a family favorite!) Apple Pancakes – mix all the dry ingredients in a bag at home. Then when you’re at the campsite, mix in the eggs, milk, oil, and apple. Easy!

The easiest camping breakfasts

Making a few breakfast snacks before you head out on your camping trip will help make mornings run smoother. Some of our favorites to pack along are our healthy breakfast cookies, vanilla almond granola, and our egg sausage breakfast muffins. These are especially great options if you have a busy day of hiking, fishing, or exploring planned and don’t want to spend a lot of time cooking and cleaning up at your campsite. Camping lunches are usually simple for us. A sandwich, maybe some hummus we made at home (or bought in the store) and veggies, and a cookie to wash it all down. Tell us that you camp with cookies, too. If you’re glamping, make a batch of our gazpacho at home and pack it in your cooler. Then a delicious lunch is as simple as pouring yourself a bowl. We’ve brought this soup along on several camping trips and it’s a welcome lunch on a hot day. Here are a few other handheld camping recipes that we like to eat for lunch:

Grilled Cheese and Apple Sandwich with Sriracha Butter Roast Beef Sandwich Chicken Salad Sandwich BBQ Chicken Quesadilla Chili Dogs – this is our go-to when we’ve cooked a pot of chili the night before!

Tacos are another favorite camping dinner for us. These grilled fish tacos are perfect for the first night of your camping trip. (Fish doesn’t last as long as other meat so make sure you eat it on the first or second day of your trip.) And these buffalo chicken tacos and steak tacos taste extra good when made at your campsite. Stir-fries are another winning camp recipe. We like to make our ground beef stir fry or our pork chop stir fry. If you’d like, you can mix the sauce at home and bring it along in a mason jar. And no camping trip is complete without camping hot dogs with caramelized onions! One of our favorite vegetarian camping recipes is our black bean veggie burgers. Because they have a pretty long list of (kitchen-staple) ingredients, we mix them at home and pack them along in a bag. They’re more delicate than a meat burger so we form them at the campsite and cook them in a pan on the camp stove. A few of our other favorite meat-free camping recipes are:

Soy Ginger Noodles Chickpea Harissa Soup Coconut Red Lentil Peanut Soup Sweet Potato Chickpea Chili Thai Peanut Curry

Easy camping side dishes

If you need a side to go with dinner, keep it simple and choose cooler-friendly, heartier vegetables. For us, our creamy cucumber salad is a camping staple. But we also love our tomato cucumber salad, Greek salad, or sauteed green beans with garlic. Here are a few of our other favorite dutch oven recipes for camping:

Best Steak Chili – this one takes a while to cook so is perfect for those days that you want to hang out around the fire. Easy Turkey Chili Hamburger Soup Italian Sausage Soup

When we’re feeling adventurous, we’ll make our amaretto peach cobbler in a dutch oven. Simply add the tapioca-covered peaches to a buttered dutch oven, pour the amaretto over the top, then dot with the cobbler topping. Cover the dutch oven and let it cook for about 25-30 minutes.

Pound Cake and Berry Campfire Skillet No-Bake Apple Bourbon Cobbler Campfire S’mores Nachos

A mezcal negroni and tequila negroni are other favorites of ours. Sometimes we make a batch ahead of time so all that we have to do is pour a glass when we want one. But making them fresh only involves 3 ingredients and none of them need to be refrigerated. Simply pour over ice and sip! A fizzy lime margarita or a pink lemonade margarita are two other camping cocktails that we love to make. If you have a plastic pitcher, pack it along and make your drinks in that. Extras can stay in your cooler and be enjoyed all weekend long!