Travel food: what to bring? What to take on a hike from food - tips for choosing What fats you need on a hike

01.07.2022

Hello friends!

As you already know, I love mountains very much. Fortunately, I live in Almaty, at the very foot. In winter, however, I’m not a big fan of mountain exits: when it’s -25 outside, I almost don’t leave the house at all. Fortunately, my freelance business allows this.

Just recently I bought it in a fresh puff, I froze my hands to glory. A good reason to write a useful article while waiting for the season. This time about what to take from food to a mountain hike.

3 main principles: ease, benefit and satiety! Moreover, it doesn’t matter: I’m going for one day or on a multi-day expedition to. I think that carrying heavy cans of stew is not necessary at all (except maybe a couple ...), and a couple of onions can turn any tourist brew into a feast of the gods.

On the first day of the trip, you can also boo with tomatoes

I will say right away that I do not adhere to any special science in degramming and I buy all products based on an inner feeling and a scheduled menu.

talk with the participants of the campaign about the peculiarities of the preferences of each
write a menu for each day
at the rate of 2 large meals and 1 snack per day
so that it was tasty and interesting, I repeat 1 dish 1 time in 3 days.

In the menu, I definitely include carbohydrates, sweet, fatty and vitamin. For in the mountains the body plows for wear and tear, and the only joy of the flesh for it is to eat deliciously. For the sake of the latter, I do not hesitate to wrap even a head of hard cheese in a rag.

Products for breakfast

I love hearty breakfasts, whether I'm on a hike or at home. Apparently, the hiking habit makes you eat tightly in the morning. In progress are:

Kashi "Bystroff". 2 packets per person (1 packet is a mockery) with condensed milk and a handful of raisins.
Cocoa with condensed milk (tasty and nutritious).
Salted sushi with a piece of cheese or smoked sausage (even in the days of vegetarianism in the mountains, I turned into a meat-eater, because I don’t care)
Instant noodles (1 pack per person) with chopped pieces of smoked sausage. In our area, the fast-cooking “lagman” is miraculously sold, which is widely sold in supermarkets. Of all the "noodles" presented, it is most like food: with meat, vegetables and spices.

In a saucepan - wild mushrooms (pasture), on the burner - mustard)

afternoon snack

In the afternoon, at 12 o'clock, we usually stop for a short rest for tea and a small snack. During it, the following are actively involved:

Salty dry (instead of bread) with sausage, cheese and other variations (lard or, for lovers of Central Asian delicacies, kazy)
Rarely canned fish. They should be carefully washed down with hot tea. For after them you want to drink strongly.
Pate from bird parts (it is wonderful to spread on salted dryers)
If you don’t want to carry bread with you, it’s better to take a dense Borodino. It is great for long-term storage and upstairs in the mountains, it goes with a bang.
A couple of sweets (kozinaki, halva, chocolate)
and a lot of tea (this is the main must-have for me on any trips)

For dinner

Dinner, like breakfast, is plentiful and tasty. I do not share the ascetic aspirations of some adherents, to take food on mountain trips to a minimum. Still, the body must recover and nourish itself.

For dinner I prefer to cook soup! This is where pre-stocked onions come in handy. And here you can safely throw a jar of stew in advance in a backpack into the soup.

Options for a group of 4 people:

Soup from a pack (2 packs for four), a can of stew and 1 small onion. If you believed me and did not take the stew with you, then without the stew. The meal is wonderful! Liquid, hot in the mountains goes with a bang
Puree (only not rollton in a jar, but fast food in a pack), 2 packs per person. 2 cans of canned fish. This is only served in 1000+ star hotels near glaciers and mountain passes.
Buckwheat (Wheat or Barley groats) with stew and onions. If it is also sprinkled with spices hidden in a backpack, it will be quite cool. True, I stopped carrying buckwheat with me. Even in the hungry time does not climb. Therefore, I found an alternative in the form of wheat and barley porridge. Alternatively, some pasta.
Ready mixes, such as "bulgur with vegetables", "masurdal", etc. A very tasty and nutritious alternative to endless tourist hell in the form of buckwheat.

Drinks on mountain hikes

There are wild mountain tourists who basically drink water from streams and eat two Snickers for 3 days. I do not share this approach. Still, I like to go to the mountains with the arrangement.

From drinks I take:

Cocoa. A wonderful energy drink (especially with condensed milk), especially in the morning
Herbal preparations: specially brought sagan-dali and good willow-herb. But I also love to pull mint with darling along the paths.
Shu-puer. I'm a big fan. Of course, in the mountains there is no time for tea ceremonies. But to cook good black pu-erh for good people, especially during the day, is a great joy.
Traditional tea bags. I drink it exclusively in the mountains, so I usually take the one that is more expensive and tastier. Black (delicious to brew with milk) and some kind of fruit (I especially like Greenfield's Summer Bouquet).

Plus, I always take 2-3 lemons with me on a long hike. In a bite and in tea they are divine! Yes, and help keep the body in a combat-ready state. Vitamin Ce, after all.

Mountains and Chinese - one of the most harmonious combinations in the universe

Alignment for one-day routes and PVD

Everything is easier with day trips. Food for the hike is taken from home: boiled eggs, sausages in pastry from cooking, cheese cakes, chocolate, apples, tea (pu-erh, herbal or ginger). If you are a vegetarian, try lavash rolls with cheese and vegetables.

For PVD (Weekend Trek), you can partly take provisions from home with you + add some delicacies cooked on a burner: porridge with Adyghe cheese and crackers, some vegetables, and a lot of tea goodies.

Not so long ago, a pattern break for me was a basket of fried wings from KFC. It's really delicious))) Except for the plastic cooled french fries.

Other life hacks and amenities

Spices and Maggi cubes. With them, any camping brew turns into ambrosia! As an alternative to regular table salt, take Svan. It wonderfully complements any buckwheat / pasta / cereals.
You can eat ALMOST everything with ketchup! What is not eaten with ketchup is seasoned with mayonnaise and eaten. That. if you take with you a plastic pack of ketchup and the same pack of mayonnaise, you can eat EVERYTHING with them!
Ginger ! A wonderful remedy for maintaining vitamin deficiency, good mood and pleasant warmth from the tea consumed.
Mustard. In our area (Kazakhstan) there are very tasty seasonings "3 wishes". Their mustard is very vigorous and at altitudes of 3000m it goes like a special delicacy.
Coffee . I myself do not like coffee, but in the mountains I can knock over a cup of some instant version. Hot and warm wonderfully.
Gummy bears, like gelatin bears. Under conditions of constant stress on the knees, this product becomes not only tasty, but also very useful.

To be honest, even after 10 years, the question of what to take from food to hiking in the mountains continues to be relevant for me. Sometimes I follow the beaten path, sometimes I improvise. So, several times it was possible to eat overseas dishes in the form of sublimated products. The solution is quite interesting, but not too budget.

The issue of food is generally resolved in the bud. You go from village to village and eat the traditional Nepalese dal-bat.

I myself am not a supporter of total restriction. For, as I said, food on a mountain hike is not only about weight and calorie reserves. This is a whole ritual that can bring happiness and unite any even the most diverse group. Therefore, it is necessary to improvise, look for options. Everything is eaten with great appetite in the mountains! And some, especially advanced ones, are not too lazy to even drag watermelons with them to the peaks.

I myself, of course, did not carry watermelons, and there is little that can inspire me to stuff such a berry into a backpack. Everything here is very individual. Therefore, try, improvise! And let your trips be not only beautiful, but also tasty.

Good weather and good digestion!

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Camping food, despite the individuality of the variety of taste preferences, should fulfill the task of saturating the traveler and restoring the expended strength. At the same time, it is important not to overload the luggage and choose such products so that the food on the trip does not deteriorate. They should have a long shelf life, light weight and good nutritional value. Therefore, we change food to dried, fast-cooking and with a decent supply of storage.

Usually, on a hike, they take enough food so that they are enough - based on its duration and the ability to replenish supplies. The size of the group, the presence of children, their own taste habits are also important - someone likes sweets, someone likes meat, someone likes porridge or vegetables.

Between the group, you can distribute luggage so that the weight for each adult is approximately the same. It’s better to get together ahead of time and decide what food to take on a hike for each participant, so that it doesn’t happen that you have to carry extra food, and there won’t be anything important by the middle of the hike.

What is better to take on a hike from cereals and how to pack them

Many experienced tourists are advised to replace those cereals that are cooked for a long time with cereals - buckwheat, wheat, corn, oatmeal. Boiling water is enough to turn them into a full-fledged porridge. Flakes weigh less and cook faster, and in terms of calories and taste, such food is not inferior to traditional cereals. You can grab muesli - there, in addition to cereals, there are nuts, dried fruits.

The exception is rice and legumes, they should be included in the list of products - they perfectly satisfy hunger, saturate a tired body with proteins, carbohydrates and trace elements. Yes, and there are no problems with cooking lentils, soybeans and rice - it is enough to fill a bowl with a dry product with water in the evening, and bring it to a boil in the morning to get a full breakfast.

When packing before a trip, do not rely on a single bag, otherwise the crumbled grits will have to be collected along the bottom of the backpack. There should be at least 3 layers of polyethylene, ideally it is better to stuff all this into canvas bags later. So the cereal will not spill out and will not become damp. Another great option is to fill plastic bottles of 0.5, 1 or 1.5 liters with a bulk product and transport it in this form.

A great way out is packaged noodles, soups and instant cereals.

In cereals there is milk, sometimes pieces of fruit. If children go hiking, they will appreciate these cereals.
Soups in bags are calculated for 1 serving, in briquettes - for several. A variety of flavors will help dilute a boring camping diet.
A bag of noodles soaked in boiling water becomes either a side dish or a kind of soup in 3 minutes.

But traditional pasta, dry and hard, experienced hikers are not advised to put in luggage - packages are torn from them, they are poorly saturated and troublesome to prepare.

Advice! An important aspect - what food to take on a hike, should not be decided in a hurry, it requires a responsible approach so that hunger pangs or a poor diet do not overshadow the joy of hiking adventures.

What to take with you on a hike from meat, fish and dairy

When you have to walk for a long time, canned food in jars, popular with tourists, should be abandoned because of its decent weight. It is better to stop at dried meat, dried and smoked fish, salted lard, raw smoked sausage.

Ready cuts in vacuum packages will help out - sausage, fish. They are easy to carry, satisfying and versatile - they will go to soup, to the main course or to sandwiches for tea.

If the trip is short, then canned food is quite appropriate - they are added to porridge, first courses, eaten as an independent product.

Advice! Stock up on dry broth - even with crackers, a cup of hot hearty drink will satisfy hunger, warm and restore strength without overloading the stomach. Based on it, you can make a delicious soup.

If you plan to go to nature for a short time to take a break from the bustle of the city, and dream of a picnic, then you can’t do without marinated meat - what is a picnic without barbecue?

As for dairy products, only hard cheese and powdered milk or cream are allowed in field conditions. The rest of the products, even for a short outing, are unsuitable - they deteriorate too quickly.

What fats do you need on a hike

Oddly enough, you can do without fats even on a long hike - food is fried on an open flame or cooked in a pot, that is, you don’t have to fry food in a pan. However, adding fat to soup and porridge will not be superfluous. Therefore, you can take a bottle of vegetable oil and salted lard with you, but there is no point in dragging butter - it will go rancid, melt, spread.

Lard, so as not to carry a glass jar, can be packed in several bags, preferably from foil.
Vegetable oil should be poured into a small plastic container.

There is no desire to carry oil on yourself for kilometers of the way? Then when deciding what to take with you on a hike from food, grab fat-containing foods - lard, fatty meat in dried, dried or smoked form, dry broth, raw smoked sausage with bacon, powdered cream. These products will cover the need for fats.

What to take from vegetables and fruits for a hike

This question depends on the length of the hike. If it is long, then you should look ahead of time in stores for a mixture of dried vegetables, in extreme cases, dry it yourself, cut into thin slices. If it is short, then it is permissible to take fresh, but not perishable.

It is difficult to do without potatoes and onions on a hike. If possible, it's a good idea to grab carrots and cabbage. But tomatoes and cucumbers are suitable for a weekend picnic, because they crumple, choke, and deteriorate.

Fresh fruits should be replaced with dried or dried foods - they can be a good snack, because it is a storehouse of glucose, trace elements and vitamins, or you can cook compote from them.

Advice! Do not refuse raisins, dried apricots and prunes - these dried fruits will not take up much space in your luggage, but they will give you the energy that is so necessary on a hike.

What spices do you need on a hike?

The staples of the hike are sugar and salt. In order not to carry a supply of sugar, you can replace it with xylitol, which is many times sweeter, or a tablet substitute. This will save space in your backpack and make it easier to carry.

Some take a bottle of vinegar essence, but it can be replaced with a bag of citric acid, poured into a convenient plastic container.

The rest of the spices - pepper, seasonings, bay leaf, so that they do not become damp and crumble, are recommended to be packed in small plastic jars for a trip, for example, from under a photographic film. After all, once an opened bag is difficult to protect from spilling the contents, and moisture will penetrate.

Bread and sweets on the trip

Bread, if there is a long way to go, is replaced with dried bread and crackers. Dryers, crackers, waffles are taken from cookies.

Sweet-toothed people in the campaign are helped out by caramel, kozinaki, roasting, nuts, toffee - that is, solid, non-perishable, satisfying, sweet foods. It is better to refuse chocolate - it melts in the heat, weighs a lot, causes thirst.

What to drink on a hike

Campfire tea is a classic of camping romance. Take packaged so as not to mess with tea leaves. Coffee lovers should grab one-time sticks designed for one cup - they are easy to transport without worrying about the dampness and integrity of the package, and they weigh little. Coffee sticks 3 in 1 will solve the problem of milk and sugar during the campaign.

It is also worth taking cocoa on a hike - with powdered milk or cream, this will be a nutritious chocolate drink. Children, if they go with you, will also enjoy kissel - the product is sold in bags for 1 serving and is instantly prepared.

But the main component of quenching thirst in a campaign is water. Take care of its sufficient reserve, and additionally do not forget the reagents for turning low-quality water into clean drinking water.

Catering on a hike is a whole science. The layout (as the meal plan is usually called) depends on many factors: the nature of the trip (hiking, horseback, water, mountain), its location, the climate on the spot, the number of days, the composition of the participants, and so on. What to take on a hike from food is one of the main issues that should be decided long before the hike itself. After all, the more food you take with you, the heavier the backpack, and the less food, the higher the likelihood that the food will end at the most inopportune moment.

When choosing food to take with you on a trip, you should take into account a number of factors:

Location of the trip;
The climate is in place;
The nature of the trip;
The number of participants in the trip;
Tourist preferences.

When compiling a list of food for a hike, you should immediately decide who will cook it, how many meals a day are planned, and then schedule food for each day and for each meal. Usually on a hike, they eat three times a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Breakfast on the hike

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. You need to stock up on strength, so morning: buckwheat, rice, oatmeal, wheat, etc. To save time, you can purchase instant cereals or cook them yourself.

Do not forget about something sweet in the morning, because the level of glucose in the body should be at the proper level. Jams and jams are suitable (you can season porridge with them), cookies, crackers, condensed milk, dried fruits.

Lunch on the hike

Lunch on a hike is usually more like, because you have to continue until sunset. Everything that can be cooked very quickly is used, preferably without a fire: canned food (meat, fish, pate), sandwiches, vegetables and other “cold” dishes.

To save time, if you want to dine on something more substantial, you can prepare the meat and sauce in the morning and eat them cold, or make other preparations. You can also prepare the dish in advance and put it in a thermos if you take it with you on a hike.

Dinner on the hike

The main meal of the trip is dinner. The main, most interesting and delicious. Dinner on the hike is already set up for the night, so you have enough time to prepare a full meal. For example, it can be soup, porridge or pasta with meat, pilaf, baked potatoes or barbecue.

During a camping dinner, food must be hot and hearty, because if you go to bed hungry, a cold and sleepless night is guaranteed.

Don't forget your bedtime tea, which can be brewed with herbs and leaves you've picked along the way.

Food on a one-day hike and food on a two- or three-day hike are completely different foods. Gathering for just one day, you can get by with just dry rations, or, conversely, just have dinner, but arrange a grand meal with several dishes. After all, you won’t be particularly hungry in one day. Another thing is a few days.

Here is an approximate list of products for one person on a trip that lasts a week:

Buckwheat, rice, oatmeal, wheat and other cereals - 1 kg;
Canned food - 2 cans;
Stew - 1 can;
Meat or fish - 200 g;
Dried vegetables and mushrooms - 300 g;
Nuts and dried fruits - 300 g;
Tea coffee;
Sugar;
Sweets;
Spices.

When making a list of products for a hike, do not forget about water! Not always in the campaign there is a reservoir in which you can collect drinking water. It is best to find such places on the map in advance, mark them on your route and find out how suitable the water is for drinking.

Remember that any hike is a pleasure, new beautiful landscapes, pleasant company and good mood. Therefore, food should only complement it, and not be the main purpose of travel. And do not forget - everything that you want to take on a hike, you will have to carry on yourself.

First of all, this article will be of interest to those readers who go on independent hiking or cycling trips and want to somehow diversify their diet. At the same time, they are not ready to shell out a lot of money for special factory concentrates and dry mixes, and they are not too lazy to do something with their own hands.

The complexity of catering in field conditions is due to several factors at once.

Food should be of high quality, that is, nutritious, healthy, rich in vitamins. During a hike, the human body experiences extreme physical exertion, so it is very important to fully replenish energy losses. Otherwise, a person very quickly begins to feel a breakdown and deterioration of the emotional state.
Products should be light enough. You can, of course, come up with arbitrarily varied dishes for yourself, but it is worth remembering that you have to carry all the ingredients for them on your hump.
Supplies need to be secured. This is especially true for travel during the hot season, when some products can go bad in just a few hours.
Food should be varied. Agree that eating only cereals and sandwiches for a whole week or two does not bring much joy.

Finding products that meet all these conditions is not easy, but still possible. Especially if you make a little effort and take care of everything in advance. Here's what you can do while preparing your hike to be able to prepare delicious and healthy meals for yourself.

Vegetables and fruits

Not all even experienced tourists pay enough attention to vegetables. And completely in vain. From my own experience, I can say that it is vegetables that make camping food healthy, tasty and varied. As soon as you add a little onion, carrots and greens even to the banal Mivina, it turns into a pleasant homemade soup.

Of course, I do not urge you to carry bags of carrots, potatoes and onions with you. You just need to dry the required amount of vegetables: they will become almost weightless and will take up five times less space. For example, an average head of cabbage after cutting, drying and packaging will be comparable in size and weight to a tennis ball.

You have to finely chop the necessary vegetables into slices, slices or straws, and then put them in a thin layer on a baking sheet and send them to the oven. For 6–10 hours, it is necessary to maintain a temperature of about 40–60 ° C in it and ensure constant air circulation, for which there is a special mode in modern electric ovens. If you are using a conventional gas oven, leave the door ajar. And don't forget to stir the vegetables from time to time.

Cabbage, onions, carrots, peppers, beets ideally tolerate drying and are reduced in size by 3-5 times, while maintaining taste and vitamins. On a hike, you just need to put a pinch of dried vegetables in hot water, and literally before your eyes they will be saturated with water, swell and become almost indistinguishable from fresh ones.

Stew

Stew is an indispensable product in any tourist destination. However, the options offered by stores have recently deteriorated so much that it has become simply impossible to buy them. Most often, under the guise of canned meat, we are offered a hellish mixture of tails, hooves and internal organs of unknown animals, which has no right to be called the proud name of "stew".

There is only one way out - to cook canned meat yourself. I do this in an old pressure cooker, but you can do the same thing in a modern slow cooker. Depending on the machine you have and your tastes, the recipe can vary significantly, so I think it makes no sense to give a step-by-step guide here: there are enough detailed recipes on the Internet. The main thing is that the pork, beef or chicken stew you cook will definitely be of better quality, tastier and more natural than the one sold in stores. And much cheaper.

Particular attention should be paid to the packaging of the finished product. It is clear that glass jars are absolutely not suitable for a hike. Therefore, homemade stew should be packed in plastic containers with tight-fitting lids. Their volume should be small, since in an already opened can, canned food deteriorates very quickly in the heat. If the lid is hermetically sealed, then your stew will definitely survive until the very end of the campaign.

Biscuits

If you go to a sparsely populated area, then sooner or later you will run out of bread. Homemade biscuits will be an excellent substitute for it. To prepare them, you will need to grind one pack of creamy margarine or butter with flour. Then add a little water or sour cream to make a cool dough. Roll it out thinly and cut into squares. Bake in the oven until golden brown.

Energy bars

Energy is an extremely convenient tourist food that will come to the rescue in those moments when there is little time or laziness to cook. They are easy to make, take up little space and are very, very tasty.

To prepare them, you will need, first of all, dried fruits (prunes and dried apricots), as well as nuts and seeds (walnuts, almonds, peanuts, cashews, sesame seeds, and so on). The bar can contain any of the listed products in any possible combinations and proportions: do not be afraid to try different options. You need to grind all the ingredients you have in a blender, then add oatmeal, condensed milk to this mixture and mix. The resulting pasty substance is laid out on a baking sheet and sent to the oven for 20-30 minutes. As a result, it dries up and hardens. Then you need to cut this cake directly on the baking sheet into bars weighing about 100 grams and pack.

combustible mixture

This is the name we gave to the nutrient mixture of our own production for its extraordinary properties. It consists of exceptionally useful and rich products, thanks to which it perfectly replenishes strength in moments of fatigue.

To make this magical elixir of vigor, you will need prunes, dried apricots, walnuts, honey and lemon. All this is crushed in a blender and mixed. The result is a brown goo that doesn't look very appetizing but tastes great and is great for snacking.