6 Steps to Easy Camping Meal Plans for a Stress-Free Trip
Eating a hearty meal around the fire with your family after an active and rewarding day outside is the ultimate camping fantasy.
Imagine the laughter echoing through the dark woods. The chirp of crickets. Maybe some owls hooting in the distance. The crackle of the fire. Bellies and hearts full to the brim.
Except…someone has the responsibility of being the one to plan, prep, and serve said meal.
That’s where the fantasy might start to fall apart. And chances are, if you are reading this, then you’re the one in charge of the camping meal plan.
And with limited space, no fridge, and potentially picky eaters, that responsibility can feel stressful.
I know for myself, I want as much of the meal planning done before camping so that I can mentally check out in nature and focus on enjoying myself.
I want all of my high-quality brain juices on reserve for creating awesome memories on my trip.
That’s why I meal plan!
Sure…you could skip meal planning and just eat pretzels, cliff bars, and hot dogs for 3 days…
But my bet is that you don’t want to sacrifice all of the healthy, mindful eating you do at home while you’re away.
(Besides, I’ve done the hot dog & pretzels thing before and it didn’t feel great! Do not recommend!)
After many camping trips, I’ve mastered camp meal planning and I assure you: it can be simple, healthy, and affordable.
This guide will make camping meal plans approachable, even for beginners. Camping with a meal plan in place will reduce stress, save you time and money, and ensures that you and your friends or family enjoy great food outdoors.
Let me walk you through my process. ✅
(Time-saving alert! Read through the end for a free 3-day sample camping meal plan!)
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Table of Contents
Step 1: Do a Brain Dump
This step is all about determining your needs and getting a sense of the big picture so that your camping meal plan feels personalized and manageable. I like to do this first step 2-3 weeks prior to my trip so that I leave plenty of time to execute the next steps.
Grab a pen and a pad of paper (or open a Google Doc) and take notes while you ask yourself the following questions:
What meals will you need to plan for while you are on the road?
Meaning: what do you want to eat in the car on the way to/from your campground?
If you are camping within about 30 minutes from home then it’s likely you won’t need a lot of snacks for your relatively short car ride. But if you are camping 60+ minutes away from home, get serious about some snacks! (And if you’re in the car at lunch time, you gotta consider meals, too!)
Packing your car, managing all the last minute to-dos for your trip, driving to camp, and then setting up is going to make you super hungry. Chances are that you will have to set up camp and unpack your whole car before you can actually settle in and cook a satisfying meal.
Avoid becoming hangry at camp by keeping your family’s favorite snacks handy in the car and enjoying them liberally. This way, when it comes time to cook, you’re not feeling desperate and running on empty.
You can alternatively/additionally plan to stop at a restaurant along the way to stretch your legs, let your kids burn off some steam, and eat a meal before you get to camp
Think about your return trip, too. How can you set yourself and your family up well to keep appetites balanced and spirits content while you are on the road?
Make a list of your family’s favorite snacks.
List easy to pack items that can be enjoyed in the car, around camp, or along a hike. (For my family, this looks like trail mix, roasted chickpeas, pickled veggies, muffins, and jerky sticks.)
Pro tip: Emphasize homemade items or food products with minimal packaging to eliminate trash at camp.
How many breakfasts/lunches/dinners do you need to plan for during your camping trip?
Another way of saying this is, how long is your trip?
For example: let’s say you are arriving at camp on Friday afternoon around 2pm and checking out on Sunday at 11am. This means you’ll be at camp for dinner Friday night, breakfast, lunch, and dinner on Saturday, and then breakfast on Sunday morning. That totals 2 dinners, 2 breakfasts, and 1 lunch at camp that you need to include in your camping meal plan.
List all of the easy family-favorite breakfasts, lunches, and dinners you might like during your trip.
You’re not committing to the meals you list right now – just let your creativity flow and get all of your thoughts onto paper so that you can organize them later.
Meals don’t have to be novel – embrace familiar recipes! It will make life easier and ensures your family will eat well (especially when traveling with wild card kiddos!)
How many people are you feeding?
Consider the size of your group (solo, family, friends) and account for portion sizes based on ages, appetites, and activity levels. (Plan a hearty meal after a long day out on the trails!)
Are there any dietary restrictions or preferences?
Discuss food preferences with your fellow campers ahead of time to avoid surprises. Identify allergies, vegetarian/vegan/gluten needs, etc., and factor this into your camping meal plan.
Step 2: Choose the Right Type of Meals
Review the list of easy, family- favorite breakfasts, lunches, and dinners that you made in the last step. Which of those meals align best with the guidelines below? Hint: those are the meals you should add to your camping meal plan in Step 3!
Stick to easy, practical recipes
Meals requiring minimal prep and clean-up work best. Choose recipes with few ingredients and fewer steps to eliminate stress from your camping meal plan.
Prioritize non-perishable foods
Canned goods, dry snacks, and shelf-stable options last longer at camp. Think pasta, rice, cereal, granola bars, nut butter, etc.
Plan a mix of hot and cold meals
Nothing feels better than a warm meal in your belly during a chilly morning at camp. Make sure your camping meal plan includes hot meals for mornings/evenings (oatmeal, chili, grilled meals) and cold or no-cook options for midday (sandwiches, wraps, salads).
Pro tip: Pack tea and coffee so you can enjoy warm beverages around the fire, too!
Include high-energy snacks
Life at camp is active! And an active lifestyle is a hungry lifestyle! Trail mix, jerky, dried fruit, and energy bars provide quick fuel. Your camping meal plan should include snacks that require no prep and store well in reusable bags or containers.
Keep portion sizes realistic
Avoid overpacking or underestimating how much food you’ll need. Err on the side of slightly more food for active trips.
Prep for easy clean-up
Opt for meal plan recipes that minimize dishes or pack disposable options responsibly. Bring trash bags for food waste and recyclables. (Remember to leave no trace at camp.)
Flexibility Is key
Build in some “mix and match” options if plans or appetites change. And remember: snacks can double as supplementary meals if necessary!
Step 3: Plan Your Meals by Day
Create a day-by-day menu
Assign meals/snacks for each day to avoid overpacking or running short. I like to populate the best meal options from my brain dump into a table to create a visual meal plan that is easy to reference.
This makes it easy to delegate, too! If someone at camp asks how they can help pack for your hike, show them your visual meal plan. They can reference it to organize snacks for the day ahead while you read a book in the hammock. That’s a win!
Sample Camping Meal Plan (3 Days)
Step 4: Plan Smarter
You now have an organized list of food that you want to eat while you are camping. Terrific! But now you need to know how to actually pull off your camping meal plan without stressing yourself out.
Unfortunately, the answer to that is outside the scope of this guide.
JUST KIDDING!
Below you will find important questions to ask yourself so that you feel prepared, along with some common guidelines you can reference as you make a camping meal plan.
But first, a helpful recommendation: save time planning your camping trip by snagging my free guide below!
[Click here to swipe my Ultimate Camp Packing List – all the essential gear in one place!]
My favorite way to plan anything
When it’s time for me to make a list or a plan for anything in life, I use the powers of visualization to gain clarity about the project ahead.
When I picture the plan, I can plan for the plan. (How’s that for profundity? 😉)
Let me explain. When I am designing a camping meal plan, I close my eyes and literally picture every step of the process to identify what tools I’ll use, ingredients I’ll need, backup plans I should I have, and more.
This is how I take ideas and turn them into actionable tasks.
Below I’ll teach you how to turn your brainstorming into an actual camping meal plan, too.
With that said, it’s time for another brain dump. Grab a pen and a pad of paper (or open a Google Doc) and take notes while you visualize these scenes and answer these questions:
Imagine yourself cooking and serving each meal.
*What bowls, pans, utensils, heating element, knives, cutting boards, rags, etc. do you need? List it all.
*What does your ideal set up look like? Sketch it out. Camp stove here, mixing bowl there. Spend time planning how to maximize limited space and resources to pull off camp cooking like a boss.
*What are you drinking or listening to in the scene? Make a playlist.
*How/what can you delegate during each meal? Take care of yourself. Make plans to offload some responsibility.
*What dishes will need to be cleaned up? List the gear you’ll need for cleaning at camp, and plan to delegate here, too.
*How can you minimize trash at camp?
*How can I weatherproof my cooking plans? Think ahead: do you need to install a tarp over your food prep area to protect from rain?
Find and review recipes for each meal.
*Do you need to print recipes, pack a cookbook, or make photocopies/take notes?
*What ingredients do you already own in your pantry? Shop at home first.
*What ingredients do you need to buy at the store? Make that list!
*What perishable items can you purchase from a market that is local to the campground? For example, when friends and I planned to slow roast a pork shoulder at camp, we opted to save room in the cooler (and save money on ice!) by buying the meat at a local butcher, instead of buying it at home and schlepping it with us. Planning a food shopping mission during your camping trip can be a fun way to connect with locals and lighten your load.
*Where can you buy stuff that you forgot to pack? Use Google Maps to search around for a grocery store near the campground now so that you don’t have to panic later.
How can you minimize prep at camp?
*What parts of your camping meal plan can you prep at home? (i.e. pancake mix, spice blends, cook & freeze meals, chopped veggies, grated cheese, marinated meat, etc.)
Pro tips: Pre-measure ingredients into labeled containers or reusable bags and keep meal components for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks together. Pack food in stackable, reusable containers or vacuum-sealed bags. Invest in a cooler and use frozen water bottles for dual-purpose cooling.
What’s your plan for when you arrive back at home?
*Will you serve leftovers from camping? Thaw something from the freezer? Order a pizza? Give this some thought before your trip because you might be too tired, hungry, and busy when you return home to think straight!
Pro tip: Schedule a grocery/Thrive Market order to be delivered right before/after your trip so you can return home to a well-stocked pantry. It will be one less thing to worry about as you transition from the wilderness to the real world.
Step 5: Make It Real
Now it’s time to put all of this insight from Step 4 into action.
Get out your planner or open your digital calendar and schedule the times ahead of your camping trip that you will print recipes, go to the grocery store, meal prep in advance, packing camp cooking essentials, etc.
Make sure that any action item you identified has a scheduled time to get done.
I don’t know who said it first, but there is a quote I repeat like a broken record in my household that I will attribute to Marie Forleo, because I definitely remember hearing her say it:
“If it isn’t scheduled, it isn’t real.”
We all know how it goes: you have great intentions, you have big plans, but then life happens and you get completely sidetracked. And sometimes you never find your way back to the tracks.
If you’re not careful, that can happen with your camping meal plan, too. But I’m here to offer you an alternative.
What if you made a commitment to yourself and your calendar to tackle your to-do list items well in advance, without lots of last minute stress?
That’s where the real simplicity of a camping meal plan comes from. It’s not that it takes no work. It’s that all of the hard work is done upfront, freeing you up to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Step 6: Assess Your Success
During and after your trip, spend just a few moments reviewing what parts of eating and cooking worked well and felt easy or rewarding, along with what parts didn’t work quite so well. (I.e. Did you have too much food leftover? Was there a piece of cooking gear you wished you had to make life easier at camp?)
Apply this insight going forward to refine your future camp meal plans so that your system gets better with each and every trip. This assessment is the key to mastery!
What’s Next
By organizing your meals in advance, you’ll save time and reduce waste while ensuring your camp crew stays well-fed. It’s all about keeping it simple, tasty, and practical.
But don’t stress if things don’t go perfectly – sometimes the most memorable meals are the ones that happen when you just roll with it. Relax, adapt, and keep the focus on enjoying your time in nature.
happy camping!
-Kristen
[Click here to swipe my Ultimate Camp Packing List – all the essential gear in one place!]
Pin one of the images below to your favorite camping board!
