Three Square
Camp recipes: simple meals for the trail and the campsite
Halloumi Breakfast Sandwich
If you’re gonna go for broke with a meal when car camping, make it the first morning’s breakfast. You’re kicking off a weekend in the woods, why not get things started with a bang? Bacon and eggs, flapjacks, french toast are all great classics, but here’s something unique.
This meal gets its production value from all-star ingredients: Hawaiian sweet rolls, grill-able halloumi cheese, and Sriracha mayo. It’s sweet, savory, and spicy in each and every bite. The preparation is pretty simple and takes just a few minutes to go from setup to sandwich—especially if you have a two-burner stove. The best part after the eating part: These sandwiches should be consumed in hand, so there’s no mound of dirty dishes waiting for you at the end of it.
- 1 large Hawaiian sweet roll (use the sandwich buns if you can find them)
- 1 tablespoon butter or oil, divided
- 2 oz halloumi cheese, sliced
- 1 egg
- 3 tablespoons mayo
- 1 tablespoon Sriracha (more or less depending on your heat preference)
- 1 scallion, sliced or julienned
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Prep the spicy mayo. In a small bowl, mix together the mayo and the Sriracha. Set aside.
- Toast the sandwich buns either in your skillet or over a grill. Set aside.
- Heat half the butter or oil in your skillet over medium high heat. Once melted, add the cheese. Fry on each side until golden brown in spots, about three to four minutes per side. Set aside. This step could also be done on a grill if you have one hot. In that case, skip the butter/oil, and place the cheese directly on the grill.
- Heat the remaining butter or oil over medium heat. Once melted, crack the egg into the skillet. Totally optional step: Once the whites begin to set, you can use a fork to mix up the yolk a bit so that it gets distributed throughout the egg, so there will be yolk in every bite. Cook the egg for about four minutes, or until they are cooked to your preferred doneness.
- To assemble, spread the spicy mayo on each cut surface of the buns. Layer on the grilled halloumi, egg, scallions, and salt & pepper to taste.
Trail Mix Fig Bars
More than once when packing for a long hike, we’ve thought how great it would be if all our meals came in bar form. For economics of space, accessibility, and ease of storage, nothing beats a neat little stack. There are heaps of prepackaged protein bars, of course, but making your own isn’t as difficult as you might imagine.
Figs and bars just seem to go together, but we wanted to up the nutritional impact so we started tinkering with some creative ways to pack in the protein. We settled on almond butter as the binder, added chopped almonds and hazelnuts, and sprinkled in a medley of seeds for good measure. To give the bars a signature flavor, we used a touch of cardamom. We highly recommend making a large batch ahead of time, otherwise they’ll be gone before you even make it out the front door.
- 2½ cups rolled oats
- ¼ cup seeds (flax, chia, hemp, or any combination)
- ½ cup chopped figs (6 fresh figs)
- ¼ cup dried blueberries
- ¼ cup chopped almonds
- ¼ cup chopped hazelnuts
- ½ cup almond butter
- ¼ cup brown sugar
- ½ cup honey
- ½ teaspoon ground cardamom
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon canola, grapeseed, or other neutral flavored oil
- In a large bowl, mix all ingredients until thoroughly combined. Cover and let the mixture chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour to allow the oats to absorb some of the liquid (this will help them stick together).
- Pre-heat oven to 350°F. After the mixture has rested, oil the bottom of a 9×5 pan. Press the mixture into the pan in an even layer.
- Bake at 350°F for 20 to 25 minutes, until they are just starting to turn golden.
- Remove from oven until cool to the touch. Cut into six bars, wrapping each in parchment or wax paper to keep them from sticking together. Can be enjoyed immediately or stored in a ziplock in the fridge for a few days.
Not Your College Ramen
There’s a reason ramen is a dorm room classic: It’s cheap, easy to make, and is totally filling. The only problem is the prepackaged version contains virtually zero nutrients and has as much sodium as a salt lick. Savory, yes. Healthy, absolutely not. Still, done right, ramen has the potential to be a great one-pot backpacking meal. The ingredients just need to be revamped for post-dorm life.
You wouldn’t know it from eating Top Ramen, but traditional Japanese ramen is actually served with sliced pork. Since there’s no way we’re hauling a cooler of pork chops up the side of a mountain, we opted for Teriyaki seasoned pork jerky instead. We also went ahead and swapped out the noodles. Instead of processed flour noodles used in the instant versions, we went with high-protein buckwheat soba noodles instead. Add in some dried mushroom, freeze dried vegetables, and a reasonable amount of soy sauce, and you have a fully loaded ramen that’s worth writing about in your field journal.
- 3.5 oz soba noodles, broken in half
- ½ cup freeze dried vegetables
- 2 oz pork jerky
- 4 dried shiitake mushrooms, quartered
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
- 1 teaspoon Sriracha
- At home: Place the noodles, vegetables, jerky, dried mushrooms, and salt into a ziplock bag. Combine the soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, and Sriracha in a small sealable container (easily found at REI).
- At camp: Remove the sauce container and jerky and set aside. Empty the rest of the ingredients into a pot. Add 2 cups water. Bring to a boil. Cook until the noodles are tender, about 5 minutes.
- Remove from heat. Stir in the jerky and contents of the sauce container. Enjoy straight from the pot!
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