Camping food with no fridge and no flame: what to pack

The food box: what keeps without cold

On a campsite, in a van, at a festival or on a long drive, most of a fridge-free box comes off the supermarket shelf. The USDA’s list for trips of more than a day is ordinary shopping: shelf-stable meals, peanut butter in plastic jars, tinned tuna, ham and chicken, dried noodles and soups, jerky, dehydrated food, whole or dried fruit, nuts, powdered milk.¹² Tins are safe, it adds, but heavy.

Eggs are the one shelf item that catches people out. In the EU, shops sell them unchilled because the law says so: a cold egg left in a warm room sweats, which can help bacteria grow on the shell. The same law puts a line on every box telling you to keep them in the fridge once bought.³ Without a fridge, they belong in the cool box or on the first day’s menu.

The clock: two hours out of the cold, less in the heat

Anything that normally lives in the fridge runs on a clock once it leaves the cold, and each food agency sets its own. Go by the one where you are; if you don’t know the temperature, go by the shorter time.

The cool box (cooler, or esky in Australia) only counts while it’s cold. The USDA says leftovers in a cooler are safe only if there’s still ice in it, and a block of ice keeps food colder for longer than cubes.¹² SA Health suggests two boxes, one for drinks, which gets opened all day, and one for food.¹³ Opened tins go out of the tin into a closed container and into the cool box.⁴¹²

Read the Catalan figures for what they are: how long food stays fine after its best-before date when it has been kept as the label says. They aren’t a promise about a car boot in August. The longer version, for the cupboard at home, is the non-perishable food list, and the same clock governs a lunch box at work, which lunch at work without a fridge works through.

Meals that take water and nothing else

Four pouches for a trip without a flame

Pouch	Water	Hot water	Cold water
Porridge & Fruit	250 ml	5 min	about 20 min
Chicken & RiceLarge	370 ml	8 min	about 20 min
Thai Beef & Prawn Noodle SaladLarge	520 ml	5 min	about 20 min
Guacamole	120 ml	Cold water only	5 min

Four pouches for a trip without a flame

• Porridge & Fruit

  Water

  250 ml

  Hot water

  5 min

  Cold water

  about 20 min

• Chicken & RiceLarge

  Water

  370 ml

  Hot water

  8 min

  Cold water

  about 20 min

• Thai Beef & Prawn Noodle SaladLarge

  Water

  520 ml

  Hot water

  5 min

  Cold water

  about 20 min

• Guacamole

  Water

  120 ml

  Hot water

  Cold water only

  Cold water

  5 min

With cold water, most of our mains and breakfasts take 20–30 minutes depending on the meal. The Guacamole only ever takes cold water, about 5 minutes, and the Thai Beef & Prawn Noodle Salad is a salad that wants cold water first; if you do warm it, warm, not boiling. Meat and potato stay a little firmer made up cold, and a spoonful of liquid may be left at the bottom. Leave two at home on a no-flame trip: Porcini Mushroom Risotto and Mashed Potato are hot water only. The method is in freeze-dried meals with cold water, and what else soaks without a stove is in cold soaking.

Make a pouch up when you’re ready to eat it, not before. Once the water is in, we treat it as prepared food, and the clock above applies.⁶

Three days, meal by meal

One person, fresh food first:

• Day 1, lunch: bread, tomatoes, cheese and sausage from the shop on the way.
• Day 1, dinner: Chicken & Rice, about 20 minutes with cold water, and the guacamole beside it.
• Day 2, breakfast: Porridge & Fruit, made up with cold water, about 20 minutes.
• Day 2, lunch: what’s left of the bread, a tin of tuna, a tomato.
• Day 2, dinner: the Thai Beef & Prawn Noodle Salad, about 20 minutes.
• Day 3, breakfast: a Strawberry Shake, shaken in a bottle, and sliced bread.
• Day 3, lunch: crispbread, peanut butter, a tin of sardines, an apple.

Water for that menu is your drinking water plus what each pouch asks for, and nothing for washing up. Don’t count on a lake or a stream for drinking, cooking or cleaning, however clean it looks, says the USDA;¹² if you have to, how to make water safe to drink has the methods.

Stoves and fire: check the rule where you are

There’s no single rule, for Europe or anywhere else. The USDA’s line for the US is that many camping areas prohibit campfires, so check first.¹² Scotland’s Outdoor Access Code asks for a stove rather than an open fire, and no open fire at all in times of high fire risk.¹⁶

Spain is the strict case. In Andalusia, from 1 June to 15 October, no fire may be lit to prepare food on forest land or within 400 m of it, and that includes picnic and camping areas, even those set up for it.⁷ Gas stoves appear in that order only as an exception for authorised tourist accommodation, with permission from the province in advance; on a campsite, ask at reception whether it covers theirs.⁷ The end date moves: in 2025 the period ran to 31 October,⁸ and every Spanish region sets its own dates.⁹ In a van, Spain’s traffic directorate says parking isn’t camping, as long as nothing leaves the vehicle’s outline: no awning, no table, no chairs.¹⁰ Put them out and you’re camping, which Andalusia’s campsite decree allows only on licensed campsites as a general rule.¹¹

On foot the same sums apply, and food for a multi-day hike builds a menu round them, by the gram.

From our range

Thai Beef & Prawn Noodle SaladLarge

Beef, prawns and glass noodles: a salad made with cold water.

€21.90€109.50/kgHear from us before the shop opensSee the salad