5 fuss free camp dinner ideas + cooking tips - thanks to Our Cow

Quick, easy, fuss free camp meals are a huge hit for us. Anything you can throw together into one pot or over the fire equals less stress, less mess and more time out enjoying fun adventures, I’m sure you are the same. We have found a little prep and pre-planning before your trip goes a long way to help everything run as smooth as possible.

Here’s a few camp dinner ideas + cooking tips we wanted to share –

1. Meal plan

When we can, we like to think ahead and plan our main meals for each day. This ensures we don’t over pack food and ingredients and there’s no last minute stress over what we are having for dinner after a big day of adventures or travel.

Is there anything better? Hanging out together and having a yummy dinner cooked over the fire

2. Vacuum sealed meat

We like to buy our meat vacuum sealed which is awesome for 2 main reasons: 1. It saves on space in the fridge as it sits nice and flat with no extra waste and bulky packaging, and 2. It has an amazing shelf life as it can last a lot longer in the fridge fresh AND even longer when frozen.

We’ve been using a company called Our Cow who offer their produce all vacuumed sealed and even better, it’s home delivered to your door. You simply order online and build your own box. It’s a paddock to plate concept where you receive premium quality meat, from happy animals (free-range & grass-fed) while supporting hard working Aussie Farmers, it’s a win-win! We love knowing where our food comes from, it even has the name of the farm on each packet, how cool is that!

The vacuum sealed meat from Our Cow is our favourite, love all the info on each label too.

We love how the vacuum sealed Our Cow meat stores so well in our car fridge

3. One pot wonders

Anything you can pop into one pot is always a winner, our favourite one pot recipe is Mexican Mince (see it here). You simply throw it all together and serve it how you like, in tacos, in wraps, in a bowl with corn chips or even in a toasted sandwich the next day. It stores well frozen too and I often pre-cook this and take it ready for our first night away, so after a long drive we can simply re-heat and tuck in!

Other one pot meals we love are Stir-frys, curries and pasta bakes (without the baking) as well as our yummy breakfast bacon and egg tray (recipe here).

4. Cook over the fire

We love cooking over the hot coals of a fire. It’s a super easy way to enjoy a meal when camping with the family or larger groups of people. A fire is a great communal place to gather so if you are all hanging out together, why not pop something on to cook.

If you have never tried cooking on an open fire, don’t be scared off, the main thing we like to do is create a good fire, with quality dry wood and let it burn down to hot coals and then cook over the coals (not the flames). We try to keep another section or a few logs still burning to the side so we can add or remove logs to control the heat.

We separate the fire into 2 when cooking – hot coals and flame so we can adjust temps when needed

A few handy fire cooking items we love and use are:

Oz Braai – this is perfect for grilling smaller meats like sausages, steaks, seafood and chicken skewers.
Camp Oven – this is great for longer slow cooking like beef brisket, stews, roasts, nachos and even damper.
BBQ Hot Plate – we simply pop this over the open fire.

We also recommend getting a pair of heat gloves and long handle tongs to keep your hands safe.

Our Camp Over and Oz Braai in action – we love cooking over the fire

5. Plan to have leftovers

When out and about and even at home we like to grab lunch on the go and there’s nothing better than a cold sausage or a roast meat sandwich. We often purchase a little more meat when planning our meals to ensure there are left-overs for us to enjoy the next day.

The trick here, I have learnt, is to dish this up into a container or plate and pop it away before hubby (or the kids) get sight of it. Otherwise, they just go back for seconds and it’s all gone!!

Leftovers for lunch on the go is the best

Hope these tips have helped and inspired you to get planning for your next adventure. If you wanted to try out Our Cow yourself, you can check them out here. Jump on and build your own box, you can create a once off order or subscribe to get FREE bacon! We have a cheeky code for you too, for 10% off use ‘Blondies10‘ at the checkout.

Cheers legends,

We’ll see you out there!