I say it’s stupidly easy because it’s what I make on the first night of every camping trip. It’s a basic brown stew variation. When my boyfriend first asked me about making the stew I had to lookup recipes to see how I could modify them for a camping trip. You can’t have your whole kitchen out in the field, so prep work before you go is really critical.
Ingredients:
1 lb beef chuck stew cubes
1-2 large potatoes
2-4 small carrots
1/4 c chopped onion
garlic
water
butter/oil
bay leaf
flour
salt
pepper
spices (thyme, cumin, sage, pepper, cayenne, allspice, ground cloves)
rice or bread (optional)
cornstarch (optional)
Things to do before the trip:
1. Cut the stew cubes into small bite size pieces. (Cut everything small enough to fit on a spoon so you don’t have to use a knife while you eat.) Pack into a plastic bag and squeeze out as much air as you can and put in the freezer.
2. Cut up the carrots into small bite size pieces.
3. Chop your onion and box it. (Any extra onions you can use for breakfast eggs.)
4. In a small jar (old spice jar) throw in a 2-3 tablespoons of flour. Add in spices to your liking. I usually put in spices that taste good with meat like thyme and sage, but I add some clove and allspice because those were listed in a lot of stew recipes. Add the salt last because you’ll want to make it saltier than to taste since it’s only spice mix. (You’ll end up putting more salt into the stew anyway.)
5. Put one or two bay leaves into the spice jar if they fit without breaking.
6. Make some rice and cool it down enough to put into a plastic bag.
7. Pack your coolers in the morning, and don’t forget all your prepped food! (It’s been known to happen.)
On the trip:
1. Open the spice mix and set aside the bay leaves.
2. Open the stew cubes and toss in the spice mix. Shake the flour around to coat the meat.
3. Heat butter or oil in a pot on the camp stove. (Till the butter stops foaming) Sweat the onions and garlic.
4. Add the meat and brown on high heat. No need to shake off the extra flour. Just dump it in. Develop fond on the bottom of the pan for extra flavor.
5. Cut up the potatoes while the meat cooks.
6. Pour water into the pot, deglaze the bottom and scrape up the tasty bits.
7. Add in the potatoes and carrots and bring it back to a boil. Also drop in the bay leaf/leaves.
8. Boil gently till the potatoes are cooked.
9. If you want a thicker stew, mix a little cornstarch and cold water and pour it into a simmering stew.
Dish over reheated rice and/or serve with bread. This recipe is enough for 2-4 people. We always have extra so I’ll be taking only a 1/2 lb of meat from now on.
This can be done at home over the stove too, but this is pretty much the way I do it for every camping trip. (Boyfriend makes my life easy by letting me cook meat entrees when we’re camping. Upside on tofu is there are far fewer pathogens though.)
Related posts:
- No Spend Sunday and Other Weekend Eating Friday night: Boyfriend spent about $50 on dinner groceries. There...
- Itemized Grocery List for Camping Since people were complaining about what listed as the grocery...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Rather than the spice jar and onion box, you can use snack sized ziplocks. Smaller, lighter, more compactable when you’re done with them. And you can reuse them too.
Thanks for the tip Ted! The spice jar and box are also reusable and fairly light which is fine for car camping. I’ve got snack size ziplocs, but I tend to throw them out (v. bad I know!) which is why I stick to the jar and box. But certainly for backpack camping, I’d use them.