Transcription
Easy camping food does not have to suck. Today, I'm going to show you four easy camping meals, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert that are easy and actually taste delicious. Let's get into it starting with breakfast.
Okay, so for breakfast, we are making blueberry pancakes with a twist. We're going to take the classic camping oatmeal and infuse it into our pancakes and make a delicious creation topped with a blueberry compote and some whipped cream cheese. This is all you're going to need. Pancake mix, whipped cream cheese, blueberries, oats, and water. This is just an instant pancake mix I bought at Walmart. Doesn't matter the brand, any will do. I also like to bring my pancake mix in a plastic container. That way I can just add water. Add your oats. However much you want. You can also do instant oatmeal packets that work really well. And you don't have to bring a whole tin of oats. Another option if you want to plus up your pancakes is some freeze-dried or dehydrated berries. They'll rehydrate in the mix and just add a little bit more brightness to the pancakes. This one, I believe is strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries. And now you just put your lid on and shake it up. There you go.
Grab our butane stove. These things are awesome and they're really cheap. And the refills are also cheap. These little gas containers, I think four of these is $7 or something like that. And I can't think of another stove that stores the gas inside one little system. So points for that. To the pan, we're going to add some spray olive oil. This is from Graza. It's very good. Highly recommend. Just enough to keep the pancakes from sticking. Got a nice thick pancake batter. You can see the oats and the berries in there. This is going to be delicious. Great way to tell if your pan is warm is just to smash your palm right down into it, and if it burns you, you know it's hot enough to cook. No, just hover it over. If it feels warm, if the oil starts to dance in the pan, then you know it's hot like it is right now, so we'll go in with our pancake batter. All the oats and the berries and stuff are going to make a very thick batter, so these are going to be heavy-duty pancakes. Once your pancake's in, you'll take some fresh blueberries, spread them out. You can also sub this with strawberries, raspberries, chocolate chips, bananas. You can also swap out different kinds of oatmeal, like if you want banana oatmeal pancakes, get some instant banana oatmeal, throw some bananas in there, maybe some brown sugar. Do a little bananas foster action, that would be really good. Personally, I really like blueberry pancakes, especially once the blueberries cook and break down. They're nice little pods of delicious goodness. That should be about good. Give her a flip. Hopefully do this gracefully. Oh, perfect. Look at the color on that. You guys can't smell it, but it smells amazing. Oh, it's beautiful. These definitely take a little bit longer to cook than normal pancakes cuz they're so thick and they're so dense, but it's worth the wait, I promise. You just got to keep flipping them back and forth. That way the crust doesn't get too dark on either side. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about with the blueberries. We're going to set our pancake to the side now that it's fully cooked. Get it on a plate. Let it cool down a little bit so you don't melt all your cream cheese.
While that's cooling off, we are going to make a macerated blueberry compote to go with our cream cheese. All right, so over a very low heat, you're going to add a small saucepan, a little handful of blueberries. That looks good. Add a little bit of water. That might be too much water, and we're going to add some palm sugar. Just a tablespoon or two is worth just to sweeten it up. Probably should have done this before I put it in the pan, but you're just going to squish the blueberries. So help them break down and turn kind of into a little bit of a thicker compote. I honestly probably should have added about half this amount of water, but I am human after all and I'm stupid. So I added too much. Mix that up. I'm actually going to turn the heat all the way up to get it to kind of steam off a lot of that water, evaporate it off, and I'll probably add some more of this mixed berry medley to soak up some of the water. You can start to see everything bubbling up. That's exactly what you want. All that sugar rendering down and turning this into kind of a thick syrup. Also, it's a lovely day here at Antelope Island. Holland is doing homework. Parks are having Starlink. While that's rendering down, I'm going to spread the cream cheese onto the pancake. Pancake's cooled off. It's not cold, it's just not super hot. I bought the whipped cream cheese. I'm going to go on with a healthy amount because this is YouTube after all and we got to sell it, baby. Also, if you've never had cream cheese on pancakes, it's delicious. Cream cheese and berries. There you go. That has rendered down nicely. Give it a few more minutes. Our compote is complete and then you're just going to go right over the top of your pancake. If you want it thicker, cook it longer. If you want it thinner, cook it not as long. But there you go. There is our protein oatmeal blueberry pancakes with cream cheese and berry compote. Let's give it a taste. There you have it. Very dense. Should be a good pairing of flavors. As always, the guest eats first. Oh my goodness. There's the bite. Yum. Yeah, that's awesome. That's really good. You could obviously do maple syrup and butter, that's classic, but this is a good way to plus up what would normally be a very ordinary meal in pancakes and or oatmeal and turn it into something extra. Something to wow your friends while you're out camping. Fantastic. I would give this a solid 8 and 1/2 out of 10. I would think maybe a way to make it better would be to fold in a little more sugar into the cream cheese. It's a little sweeter, but it's like a nice tart. It's not too sweet, it's not overbearing. So, we are going to finish eating this and then move on to the lunch, which is blackened fish tacos. Oh. Quite tasty.
So, lunch while camping. Usually for me, I want to do something quick and easy that doesn't take a whole lot of time, but that doesn't mean it just has to be Wonder Bread sandwiches. Not that there's anything wrong with those, but we can do better. So, we're doing blackened fish tacos with a green apple coleslaw. Let's make it. Man, this lighting is terrible. Apologies for the bad lighting. It is what it is. We're already out here. We're already going. For the tacos, you're going to need your fish of choice. This is Pacific cod that has been marinating in blackened seasoning for probably 2 hours now. Just bought this at Walmart. It's good stuff for fish tacos. Obviously going to need some tortillas. We're going with corn tortillas. Just what we prefer. Flour is just fine. You're going to need a green apple to go in the slaw, an avocado. You can make coleslaw from scratch, but since this is easy camping meals, we just went with a coleslaw mix from Walmart. Optional, couple serrano peppers to slice thin and put on top. And then to go with our coleslaw mix, we just have some mayo and some white vinegar.
So, we're going to start with the prep work by getting our apples diced up. So, the goal here is matchstick apples. They go in the slaw a lot better. Just a little more uniform, easier to eat. You want to cut it around the same size as what's in the slaw itself. That'll just make it a little bit more pleasing. We went with green apple. We just like that nice bright bite. Maybe a little bit of citrus kind of cut through. Little bit of sweetness as well. So, not exactly matchstick, but that will work. We're not Gordon Ramsay over here, okay? Feel free to roast my knife skills in the comments. I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah. Oh, that didn't work. All right, good enough. Hey, these ones are actually match stick. I can do it.
All right, so for our coleslaw since we are camping and we don't want to make a large mess, I brought a gallon ziploc bag and we're just going to mix it in there. So, throw all your apples in. Probably won't need to use all of this. So, we'll just throw a little bit coleslaw mix in there. This is the tri-color. We'll just go in with a scoop of mayo. I don't know where a spoon is, so we're using a fork. Couple tablespoons, just eyeball it. We're camping. We're outside. There are no rules. A little bit of vinegar goes a long way, so probably about there. Now, the fun part. Zip it up and shake it. AND THERE YOU GO. GREEN APPLE COLESLAW. PRETTY simple prep for that one. Next up, we have our avocados. Haha. Probably only use half. Just going to peel it off. Ta-da! Now, you want to do these thin satisfying slices to lay on top of the taco, like Food Network. We're just going to set that to the side for now. Throw a little salt and pepper on there and you're good.
It's time to cook our fish. Get the stove going again. Throw our pan down. Going to hit it with a little olive oil. Take our Pacific cod. We're going to do two tacos, I think. So, one piece of fish per taco should be perfect. You can use whatever fish you can find. Salmon, halibut, rock fish would be good. Cod is always good. It should cook fairly quickly. It's very easy to overcook fish. Yeah, beautiful flaky white meat. This is going to be good. Especially with that blackened seasoning on there. All right, fish is done. We're going to pull it off, set it to the side. Now we're just going to throw a couple tortillas in the pan to get them warming up. Always heat up your tortillas. They're so much better when you warm them up. All right, tortillas are nice and warm. Shut the heat off and we will assemble our tacos. It's very hot. Few more things. We're going to lightly slice just a couple sections of serrano pepper. This is totally optional. These are extremely spicy if you're white like me. Seeds and all, we're going for it, baby. There we go. That is more than enough. Also, little bit of lemon to go on top. It's always a good idea. You can also do lime. We just had lemons at the house, so that's what we're using. Our tortillas, our beautiful flaky fish. These are going to be big tacos. That's okay. Do a little green apple slaw on there. Well, I definitely won't get a job at Food Network for food whatever it is. The people that make the food look good. I don't even know what it's called. That's probably why I won't get the job. A very important step for your coleslaw is a little fresh black pepper. Goes a long way. Do you want serranos on yours? Yeah. Okay. Couple cute little serrano peppers on top that I'm very scared of. Hopefully will not hurt me. Couple squeezes of lemon. We'll do some avocado on there. Get that nice creamy texture that we all know and love. And there we have it. Blackened fish tacos with apple coleslaw, green apple coleslaw. Don't those just look delicious? And this took what? 15 minutes tops? Yeah, you were fast. Super quick. Fish cooks fast. Coleslaw, if you get the kit, super fast. Go ahead and grab your lemon. We'll squeeze a little on there. What? Good luck. Yeah, thanks. All right, cheers. There you go. All right, down the hatch. Yo. Wow. Ooh, there's that serrano in the back. That's perfect. It's a very thin little slice. The flaky white fish with the blackened seasoning, super good. You get the fresh freshness from the cabbage, a little bit of sweetness from the green apple, a little bit tart, a little bit of like bite from the serrano in the back. Those are fantastic. We're going to house these down and then move on to a perfect dinner, French dip sandwiches.
So, next up we have dinner. In my opinion, when you're out camping, this is kind of the star of the show. This is kind of like the biggest meal I cook during the day. If I'm with people, selfishly, this is where I try to wow people to try and go all out. So, we are making French dip sandwiches, but we are doing homemade bread from scratch using the Outdoor Boys bread recipe. It's really simple. Let's get into it. French dip sandwiches. You're going to need the bread. This is our Outdoor Boys bread. It's flour, water, and yeast. We mix this up 2 days ago and it's been sitting in the fridge fermenting ever since. It's easiest to do this before you go camping and bring it in a plastic bag. However, if you want to go camping and you forgot to do this ahead of time, you can mix everything in the bag when you're out there and just set it out in the sun somewhere warm and it will help kind of bloom and rise up. Next, we have our thinly sliced beef. Not quite as thin as I was wanting, but it's all grocery store had and it will work. You're going to have a onion that you're going to shave thin and saute down. We have our au jus, less sodium au jus. A lot easier than making it from scratch. If you want to make it from scratch, go for it. Knock yourself out. And then we have our provolone cheese. You will also need some Worcestershire sauce to help saute the onions and give them a little bit more depth of flavor. And then to go on your buns, I like to throw garlic aioli. It ties everything together. That's all you need.
First things first, we're going to get our bread cooked. For the bread, the trusty stove is coming out yet again. We're going to be pan frying our bread. If you happen to have a pizza oven, that would be the preferred method cuz it would actually rise a little bit better. Flatbread's going to work great though. In our pan, get some olive oil down and you're going to take your bread out of the bag. It's going to be doughy, it's going to be sticky, that's okay. I kind of just like to rip open the bag like a psychopath. Sorry, you probably can't see this very well. And then get in there with my hands. Oh boy. And I'm going to do my best to form this into a somewhat of a hoagie bun. And there you go. I got to wash my hands. I'm going to spray the top with a little olive oil. That way when I flip it over it doesn't stick. Oil is your friend when cooking bread in a pan. Ooh. That does that sounds lovely. Now you're going to have to flip this quite a lot and that's okay. Once you get the the crust going it's just about flipping it back and forth and getting it slowly golden brown while cooking through in the middle. But that's looking good. Try and flatten it out in the spots where it gets thicker like over here. That way it'll cook a little bit more evenly cuz if you have really thick parts it's just going to take a lot longer and you might end up with little doughy pockets. Once it's about flat and even though you should be good to go. Just keep flipping. Eventually you'll get all this golden brown on there. That's what you're looking for. Also, apologies again for the terrible lighting. I did not expect this but hopefully the video still turns out good and you'll still want to try these recipes. All right. I think we're done. There is our bread. Now we're going to set this on a plate and let it cool off while we get our onions sautéed.
The key to a good sautéed onion is to cut it as thin as humanly possible. In a perfect world you have a mandolin that you slide it on and it gets nice and thin. We don't have that so we're going to have to put our terrible knife skills to the test. All right, so we're just going to do little half moons. Try and cut them as thin as we possibly can. Nice and thin just like that. That's perfect. Just going to put a bunch of oil in our pan. Get the onions in there. Just kind of spread them all out. More surface area on the heat, the faster they'll cook. Let's bring out our handy dandy butane stove yet again, the star of the show. Get those onions going. Now, the Worcestershire comes in cuz it helps the onions saute a little quicker and it'll give them a really good flavor. So, we're going to throw that in and then go on with a little bit of salt and pepper. Now, the key is to go really high heat and you're going to want to watch these and just keep stirring them so they don't burn and they just render down a nice, beautiful, dark, golden brown color. And that's exactly what we want as a base for our French dip. All right, these onions are about done. They're nice and dark, rendered out. This is how I like them. You can obviously take them a lot further if you want, but those look pretty good to me. So, we're going to set these aside and get our au jus going.
For the au jus, just have a little sauce pot. You got a little packet. And you just add water. I think it's about three cups per packet. That looks good, I guess. I'll use a fork as a whisk because I forgot a whisk. We're just going to bring this up to a boil. Doesn't get much easier than this. Obviously, if you took the time to make your own au jus, it would probably be dramatically better, but you got to cut corners where you can when you're camping. Still going to be 90% as good, I would say. We're just about there with the au jus. Smells really good for a packet. Kind of surprised. All right, the au jus is nice and warm, so we're going to set it to the side and get our beef cooking. Going to get our pan down. Since it's a common theme, we're throwing olive oil in there. And we just have these thin cuts of steak. Preferably, you would do ribeye, but we're balling on a budget right now, so we just have I don't even remember what it's called. I want to say bottom round. Could be wrong. Going to throw our meat in. The thinner the better for this. We're just going to make do with what we got. Hit it with some salt and a little black pepper. Now, the goal for this isn't to cook it all the way through or do anything crazy. We're just going to get the process started and then get it in the jus so that it uh is kind of like a medium rare and uh it'll finish cooking in the jus. All right, now that the meat is mostly mid-rare, we're just going to transfer it all over to the hot jus.
Going to get our pan heating up once again and throw a tiny bit of oil in. And this is the secret weapon right here. We're going to throw our provolone cheese directly into the pan. You kind of need a nonstick for this. Or if you're really, really good at cooking with cast iron, go for it, but this will basically just mimic a broiler and it'll get the cheese nice and warm and melted like you would get with a French dip at a restaurant. So, while that cheese is melting, we're going to take our bread. It's a little big for one sandwich, so we're going to rip it in half and we're going to cut it in half down the middle. Just like that. Nice flat bread. And we're going to lay it directly on top of our cheese. Push it in there. Take the extra cheese, push it up against your bread. Get the whole thing moving around. Separate it in the middle. And then we're going to try flip it over. Oh boy. This is messy. But every French dip is, at least every good one that I've had. There we go. We got our melted cheese. And now it's time to assemble our sandwich. This one looks like a good bottom bun. Go on with a little bit of garlic aioli. There's our beef and our jus. Just going to layer that on there. Oh, perfect mid-rare. Got a little cup for our jus. It'll have all the drippings from the beef in there as well. We're going to take a big mound of those sautéed onions and just lay them all on top of that. And now for our top bun. Oh boy. There you have it. Outdoor Boys Bread French Dip with the jus. It's a two-hander. That is a two-hander. I mean, look at that bite. All right, we're going to dunk it. Oh boy. Cheers. What? That good? You have to try that. That was a spiritual experience. You scared me for a second. No, that is so good. What is in that sandwich? That is so good. The beef perfect medium rare. Those onions with the Worcestershire, super good. That little hint of garlic at the back. And the bread. It soaks up the jus, the provolone. Am I right? That is That is so so good. That is so good. It's just falling apart. Oh my gosh. That is a masterpiece. French dip, absolute success. See you next for dessert where we're going to Thailand.
So, last but most definitely not least, we have a little bit of a spin on a traditional Thai mango sticky rice. Instead of mangoes, we are using peaches. Hard to find good mangoes here in Utah. Should be really good. It's one of my favorite things to make. It is easy once you have the right equipment. I will put that caveat on. If you don't have a steamer basket, it makes it a little bit harder, but they are on Amazon and I will link them below if you want one. Let's get into it. For this dish, you will need sticky rice or sweet rice, and it does take a little bit of preparation because you do need to soak it in water for anywhere from 6 hours to 24. This has been soaking overnight, and it helps to put it in just a little plastic jug. That way you can keep it soaking and bring it out camping. Like I said, we're doing peaches. We're just doing canned peaches. It isn't quite fresh peach season in Utah, but canned peaches are always good. You will need some coconut cream, some palm sugar or white sugar. It doesn't really matter. We just like this. You'll need some toasted sesame seeds. You'll need a steamer pot, and you'll need a steamer basket. This is made out of bamboo. The rice sits in there. Then you'll need a cotton towel to cover the rice. That way it'll help it steam.
First things first, let's get our rice going. We're back at it with the trusty stove. Oh, yeah, that's almost gone. Going to do a quick butane swap. I'm doing a lot of cooking. Lock it in place. Get it going. Super easy, that's why I love this stove. And take your little pot. We'll get you up high so you can see this. And you're going to put probably 4 inches of water in the bottom of it, and you're going to get that going up to a boil. It doesn't have to be boiling to put the rice in there, so you're going to get your steamer basket. Fits down in there perfectly. We'll get you even higher so you can see. You're going to take your rice, water and all, it doesn't matter. It'll just help it steam. And you're going to pour it down into the basket like that. Get it to settle in there. You're going to take a cotton towel, you're going to get it wet, and then set it on top. Getting it wet will help it not stick to the rice. Nice and wet. Just set it down on top, and there you have it. Now we wait for a while. So, that's all you really need to do. This does take probably a half hour once the water's boiling. It just depends on your stove. The butane stove, while it's very convenient and nice, doesn't put off a ton of heat when there's a little bit of a breeze, so could be a minute, but it's worth the wait. You can take this time to decompress from that delicious French Dip sandwich. This little awning is really cool. Okay, so it's been a while, for sure. See all that steam coming off? It is done. Let me show you what it looks like. Okay, so when you pull it back, you see how the rice is no longer that chalky Oh. No, you don't. It's covered in steam. I don't know if you can tell. The rice is no longer that chalky white color and it's kind of like that translucent standard color of rice. That is what we want. We are going to set it to the side and start getting our sauce made.
You are going to need a small saucepan and primarily this. This is coconut cream and we are going to need a can opener which hopefully I remembered. Aha. All right, thank goodness. Didn't want to destroy yet another pocket knife of mine in a video. I'll do it again. Just going to crack this sucker open and we'll pour that much. Now, it's really simple. You just need coconut cream and some kind of sugar. We have this palm sugar. I really like the flavor of it. I'm going to try and keep the clumps out. Just get grains in. You're going to want a decent amount in there. You You want to turn this into like a almost like a sweet and condensed milk, but coconut flavored if that makes sense. So, now that we have that, we're going to take out the stove. It's been putting in a lot of hard work today. And get this reducing over I would say a medium to high heat. You just want to make sure you don't burn the sugar on the bottom. The cool part about using the palm sugar compared to normal is it will make it look kind of like a thick caramel sauce where traditionally I think you know, regular Thai sticky rice just uses white sugar, so it's doesn't quite have the same look, but this stuff is really good nonetheless. Let that heat up. That's good. Give it a try. It's like a caramel coconut. And it's just palm sugar. Make sure when you're using coconut cream to scoop out the actual cream part to get it incorporated cuz that is the best part. And with the heat, it'll loosen up so there's not all those clumps. Just keep stirring it.
So, these are peach halves. We need them cut into small chunks. I'm going to show you a good way to do that while you're camping so you don't have to get a cutting board all covered in this syrupy peach stuff. Open up the can like so. And while your peaches are in the can, you're just going to slide your knife in. And cut them all up like that. Now you have chunks of peaches in a can. Super easy. Our mixture is nice and warm. You don't really need to reduce this. You just need to get it hot. Coconut cream, based on its name, is obviously creamy. So, reduce it more if you want. We want sticky rice. So, we're going for it. It's time to assemble our bowls. Take two of our little enamel bowls, set them down. Here's our basket of sticky rice. You can tell why they call it sticky rice cuz it sticks together. Very delicious stuff. We're going to take a a good little dollop in each bowl. Don't do this with your bare hands. I am a psychopath and I'm a sucker for pain. It's very hot and hurts really bad, but I got that dog in me. All right. Ow. There is our sticky rice. Pour some of our coconut cream palm sugar mixture on top. And we're going to layer some peaches on there. And last but not least, toasted sesame seeds. A little bit on top. Let's give it a try. Oh, this looks so good. I'm so excited for this. And there we have it. A fantastic dessert. A little bit time-consuming, but honestly, super easy. Like we just hung out, talked, had a good time, listened to all the birds. So, here is the bite. Sticky rice, peaches, toasted sesame seed. Cheers. Cheers. Mhm. Every time. So good. Every time. Every time. Simple, easy, delicious. Sticky rice has like a nice little bit of chewiness with it. And it pairs with sweet stuff really well. And then obviously have the fruit kind of cut through the sweetness. Really well-balanced dessert.
So, there you have it. Four easy camping meals that are not a pain to make and better than dehydrated food and oatmeal and jerky and peanut butter wrapped tortillas. Whatever weird stuff you guys are eating out there camping, you can do better. Comment down below which one was your favorite and also comment what I should cook in future videos. I'm always looking to try new things. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it. Thank you for watching. And uh we'll see you at the next one. Peace. So many dishes. That's okay. It's good though. Very good. Mhm. Very good indeed. You're welcome. Very much yum yum. Yum yum yum. Yum.