![Real Turmat Pulled Pork with Rice (L,G)](/tiedostot/1/kuva/tuote/350/12840775.jpg)
The best thing about trips is food.
A normal peaceful moment outdoors turns immediately to a trip when you unwrap your packed lunch or start making afternoon coffee. For a brisk day trip, you can cook or heat up a meal and put it into a food or normal thermos at home, then enjoy a warm lunch in nature and continue your journey well eaten.
On the other hand, if you have a long hiking trip in front of you, you probably want to have your food as light, dried and nutritious as possible. In this case, camping food is the best possible choice (or if you want, you can dry food yourself. You can find tips for drying food and good ensembles in Finnish here). If your trip is shorter in length and in time and you do not need a lot of other equipment with you, we recommend taking some of your favourite dishes with you and have an amazing lunch outdoors. In addition to the seasonal food you find in grocery stores, take into consideration also the possible gifts of nature that you can use to raise your gourmet experience to a whole new level. Thinking of mushrooms, always take some butter, salt, (pepper) and onion into the forest, if they are not already a part of your basic outdoor equipment (for many of us they are).
What food to bring on a hike?
On a hike, you carry all the food on your back, so the weight of the food and the space it takes in your backpack are essential things to think about. Camping food is nowadays so well packed/dried that only by adding hot water and with a short wait, you get a meal that tastes pretty much homemade. Depending on the duration and hardness of your trip, don’t forget to take care that you bring and also eat enough food in relation to your consumption, not to mention hydration.
The website luontoon.fi presents a rough calculation on the energy consumption during hikes:
“On a long hike with a backpack, it can be over 4,000 kcal in a day. A man of 75 kg whose backpack weighs 22 kg, the daily consumption on a hike is 3,600-5,500 kcal. In challenging and cold conditions, the consumption is even higher.”
Source: https://www.luontoon.fi/retkeilynabc/retkiruoka/energiantarve
Carrying water is a whole other story. In Finnish nature, you can take water in many spaces for cooking without worries, especially when you boil the water before the use to eliminate bacteria etc. If you do not have possibility to boil the water, water purifiers and water purification tablets are excellent solutions for a safe use of water (for drinking per se, for example).
There are over 100 different camping foods in Varuste.net selection, from Real Turmat, Blå Band, LYO Foods, Trek’n Eat and Tactical Foodpack. There are great options for everybody, meat eaters, vegans, and vegetarians.
As mentioned, you do not need any massive hiking adventure to eat outdoors. Lunch or dinner in nature brightens up your everyday life with ready camping food, homemade packed lunch, or a meal picked and made completely in nature, or you can just spend a relaxed weekend in good company with delicious food.
Depending on the duration, weather, length, etc. of your trip, you can vary your trip menu without limitations. On long hikes in the wilderness, some people base their menus solely on camping food, or partly or completely on food they have dried themselves. For short glamping-type leisured trips, on the other hand, you can take something heavier and fresher with you. If you go on canoe camping, you can even have a gas fridge that keeps for example sushi and champagne at an ideal temperature. Imagination and conditions are the only limits, so get creative and unleash your inner gastronome.
Summer night gourmandizing in the Repovesi national park: you can carry fresh ingredients for a trip of one or two nights. We have talked a lot about the versatility of the food thermoses, and here is another one: pork fillets marinated at home with oil, lime, coriander, garlic, and ginger. The fillets have been packed in a tight plastic bag and let to rest in a fridge before the trip. In the morning of the trip day, the cold, marinated delicacies packed in the bag are put in a food thermos (still in the bag), and you can also put a single-use ice cube bag in the thermos to keep the fillets nice and cold during the whole summer weekend. We still recommend cooking the most sensitive ingredients first. As the accompaniment, we have summer season delicacies, sweet mini peppers.
Once again: a short one-night trip and food according to it. One portion of potatoes was cooked with a Jetboil very quickly. Salad made at home and packed in a lunch box was seasoned with wild herbs in the nature and with the dill brought for the potatoes. Accompanied with a food as simple as mustard herring. The glass jar doesn’t weigh too much if you don’t have to carry it for weeks.
A wonderful summer day snack consisted of mini broccoli and pimientos padrons grilled on a camp gas grill (oil and light seasoning done at home and grilled at the destination), beetroot hummus (made at home, packed in a lunch box) and baguette bought in a grocery store – quite a simple set but it brings some luxury for the afternoon.