Packing food for tramping

By pre-packaging your meals at home, you have full control over what volumes you are putting into each meal. This is very helpful in getting the recipe portions right and also helps you eliminate any waste of food in camp. Many trampers like to package their meals up in daily lots. This makes them easy to find in the pack. I however, like to have all my breakfasts in one bag, lunches in another and so on. It doesn’t matter what system you have, as long as you have a system.

In most cases all the dry ingredients in each recipe can go into the same plastic bag. Any special items that need to be added to the meal separately, like milk powder, cheese for garnish, etc, can be packed separately. Also, pack any foods that you are expecting to cook separately, like rice, noodles, etc, in different bags. I use a variety of plastic bags, the snap lock type are fantastic for foods you want to use more than once, but for one-off items, most of the meals, etc, I usually use the cheap (thin) disposable freezer bags and just tie a knot in the end. It’s really a matter of choice.

If you do a lot of tramping/camping you might like to consider buying a vacuum packing machine. They are not all that expensive and are just fantastic for packing food items that require longer term storage, as they remove most of the air and thereby reduce to chance of mould forming, etc.