- Hey friends, I'm Miranda.
What are we...
Hold on.
That part I've got down.
Hold, please.
So we've gotten a lot of requests
to do a video on how to make your own backpacking meals.
Here are some suggestions for meals
that you can make with ingredients from your pantry
that require basically no prep
and are healthy and have whole ingredients.
Let's do it.
(playful music)
This is my show, gosh darn.
So, this is all the stuff that I got
from the grocery store as well as some things
that I just had in my house.
Anyway, all of this will fit down into these bags here,
and this is enough food for me
for two nights or two days of backpacking.
I've packed all of my food
into these reusable silicon bags.
I've chosen to use these instead of the single-use
plastic bags because they're reusable.
So, what are we making?
For this, we actually have three fully cooked meals.
On the menu on the trail.
For breakfast, I have oatmeal with some trail mix-ins.
For lunch, we are making a peanut noodle.
And for dinner, we have a lentil and vegetable mix
with couscous.
The reason that I've chosen this as my menu
is that I have a lot of redundancies,
so my trail mix gets mixed into my oatmeal,
some of the dried stuff from my other snacks
get mixed into my lunch and dinner.
Let's go ahead and cook it.
So we've just woken up, it's time to eat breakfast
and we're having oatmeal.
And what we're gonna do is actually cook two different meals
at once.
So, we'll be using the oatmeal,
but we'll also be prepping our peanut noodles
for lunch time, all using the same water.
What I'm going to do is put these pasta noodles
into my pot with some water,
and then I'll bring that water to a boil
and set it aside and cook the noodles until they're done.
Then I'll use that same starchy water
that I cooked the noodles in to make my oatmeal
and to make my instant coffee.
Let's make pasta.
This cup is dirty.
It's camp clean!
So we're going to measure out about
3/4 cup of pasta.
In the pot.
Help.
So we'll do 1/2 cups of water.
That's enough to boil pasta,
make oatmeal, and coffee.
And now we wait.
So our noodles are about done cooking here,
so once they are finished,
what I'm going to do is just strain this water
into my cup for coffee,
and into my bowl for my oatmeal,
and then I'll leave the noodles in this pot
while I eat my breakfast
because I'm going to eventually
put the noodles into this bowl for my lunch.
I have about a half cup of oatmeal in here
and it's just half of my mixture there
and then my brown sugar and cinnamon are already mixed in.
I'm going to pour my water into here,
close this up while I drink my coffee,
wait about five minutes or so
and then I'll add my mix-ins to that bowl.
Pot grabber.
Leave that there to stay hot.
We're gonna seal this up and wait for them to cook.
So, any extra water that I have in this cup
is what I will use to make my cup of coffee.
So I've got a little bit more water in here from noodles,
put that in here, add in my instant coffee,
and then just drink my coffee while I'm waiting
for my oatmeal.
Oatmeal is done.
So we're gonna add our mix-ins now.
I am going to use, yummy,
this trail mix.
And that is breakfast.
Oatmeal's so good!
I'm getting it camp clean.
Now it's clean. (laughing)
No shame, people.
Now we're ready to make our peanut noodles.
So I'll take these noodles,
dump them into my bowl,
my very sparkling clean bowl.
Here we go.
If you are using powdered peanut butter,
you need a little bit of liquid to rehydrate it,
so that is what the soy sauce acts as.
You could also add chicken or, I don't know, meat.
I find that the peanut butter is plenty of protein for me.
Also I don't eat meat, so I don't do that,
but feel free to customize.
And then from here,
I'm also going to add some of my crispy onion.
Yeah, that's perfect.
Now I'm gonna store this until lunch time,
so I'll put the lid on, seal it up.
This seals up pretty nicely.
I do try to keep this upright in my pack,
so I'll put it in the lid or the brain of my pack,
but if you're concerned about it leaking,
you can always just wrap a headband or bandana
or something around it,
and then this is ready to go at lunch time.
So just a quick recap, this has all happened
at breakfast for me.
I've made oatmeal,
I've had coffee, I've cleaned my bowl once,
and then I've made my lunch in here and stored it for later.
Now I'm ready to hit the trail for the day.
So now that I'm at camp,
I've had my breakfast, I've had my lunch,
we are going to make dinner.
And for dinner, we are using the lentils
and the couscous.
I have extra lentils and extra couscous.
It's a really good idea to carry extra food with you
just in case you don't make it back when you planned to.
Let's make some lentils!
One important thing to keep in mind
is that I have split red lentils in here.
Split red lentils cook pretty fast,
whereas other lentils don't,
so make sure that you're buying quick cooking lentils
instead of the ones that take like an hour,
because then you'll waste all your fuel,
and don't blame me for that one.
And now, we wait for the couscous to get soft.
This will probably take roughly 10 minutes,
but you can probably let it sit in there for longer
if you want.
While you're waiting,
now is a great time to make sure your tent is set up or
crack a beer.
Couscous, baby.
Sweet, that is done.
(laughing)
I mean, that's dinner.
This makes enough food for me for two days of backpacking.
It adds up to be roughly 2,350 calories for a day.
That's a lot more than I eat on a day-to-day basis,
but it tends to be enough for me for backpacking.
Spork.
I don't eat meat or dairy,
but you can add any other kind of cous...
I don't know.
- [Man] Let's just do that one more time.
- I don't eat meat or dairy,
but you can add jerky or packaged meat into your dinners.
(burp)
Hopefully this video has been helpful
in giving you some suggestions on how to make your own
backpacking meals.
If you guys wanna see another video
that talks about how to dehydrate
your own backpacking meals,
let me know in the comments below,
and if you have your own suggestions
on a favorite backpacking meals,
I would love to see those as well.
As always, if you've enjoyed this video,
hit the like button, go ahead and subscribe.
Now get out of here,
and I will see you outside.
(playful music)