It’s camping season in Australia and I’ll be camping for the first time on Keto later this month.
I’m planning to cook a bunch of meals (slow cooked pulled pork, lamb chops, etc.) and freeze them before I go, but has anyone here gone camping on keto? What food did you take? What snacks did you take, if any? How did you go with keeping the meals cold and also dealing with limited cooking tools?
I haven’t done camping on Keto, but I have done a lot of camping and I have camped on Whole30. I anticipate we will be camping this summer as we do camp every year. I see camp food on Keto being so much simpler!
We have a propane camp stove that I use to cook our food. Cast iron skillet. A camping pots and pans set comes along, I usually only use the kettle. I typically bring a french press for coffee, but this year I may just bring my Aeropress as I am the only one who drinks coffee.
My best advice is to plan ahead as many meals as you can, two a day. Breakfast for us typically camping is bacon and eggs, so that’s covered!
You could make pulled meat of some sort ahead of time and bring along for quicker meals, put them in meal sized freezer bags.
Burgers are delicious and easy. Prepare the patties ahead of time.
Chili is also a camping favorite of ours. Again, could make ahead of time and keep in a freezer bag.
We always have two coolers, one for food and one for drinks. Sometimes I will freeze milk jugs full of water and stick a couple of those in the cooler so we don’t have to buy ice all the time.
For snacks I would pack things that don’t need refrigeration: jerky, canned fish, nuts.
A tip for storing food in bags: always put the bag inside of another bag. That way if there’s any leaking, you have two layers of bags to protect the food.
I got shelf stable cheese sticks, salami sticks and cheddar cheese. I put these out in cups for the kids to snack on with a bowl of nuts- Macadamia nuts, pistachios that the kids love, each day.
Unless you’re out bush, we had a camp fridge, and also an Esky, and changed the ice daily in that. I got trays of snags and bacon, labelled for each day and packed them accordingly closer to the bottom! We aim to shop locally, but it was Xmas craziness at Victor Harbor when we were camping last. And, in no way did we go through the planned food, apart from when the kids knicked the cheesesticks to feed to the darn seagulls! Argh!
If you’re out bush, more jerky too? I also had a stash of tuna, some SPAM and corned beef in a can in case of backup.
Yes! One of my new favorite hacks is to make ahead a pile of fathead flatbreads. I left them neutral in flavor and used them for:
The “tortilla” for taco Mountain pies
Sandwich bread
In place of grahams for smores with dark chocolate (no marshmallows)
We have burgers and dogs which are easy to ketofy. Breakfast foods. I make ahead hard boiled eggs. Bring precooked bacon and sausage patties.
I used to go backpacking while doing Atkins (over 10 years ago now) and I would take Atkins meal replacement bars, assorted nuts, dried jerky, tuna, and cheeses. I would mostly go in the winter when the low temp meant that I had natural refrigeration. I probably did not have enough fat in my diet then and am still trying to work out other ideas for a more keto appropriate load.
This is all good stuff!
Genius. I’m totally doing this.
Yeah I’m a big fan of prepping a whole bunch of frozen meals before I go. Camping for us is about taking a break, and I don’t envy watching others trying to cook up a storm on a tiny propane stove or finding they’ve forgotten one crucial ingredient.
Good idea. Thanks for reminding me of how awesome chili is.
My meal plan is pretty much compiled now, although it doesn’t translate well into plain text from Google Sheets, but here goes anyway:
Day | Meal | Food
Monday | Dinner | Fathead Pizza (reheated)
Tuesday | Breakfast | Bacon & Eggs
Tuesday | Lunch | Fathead Pizza (reheated)
Tuesday | Dinner | Lamb Chops
Wednesday | Breakfast | Bacon & Eggs
Wednesday | Lunch | Cheese & Cured Meats
Wednesday | Dinner | Steak
Thursday | Breakfast | Bacon & Eggs
Thursday | Lunch | Pulled Pork on Fathead Flatbread
Thursday | Dinner | Chili
Friday | Breakfast | Bacon & Eggs
Friday | Lunch | Burgers
Friday | Dinner | Sausages
Saturday | Breakfast | Bacon & Eggs
Saturday | Lunch | Lamb Chops
Saturday | Dinner | Steak
Sunday | Breakfast | Bacon & Eggs
I highly doubt we’re going to eat 3 meals a day (I don’t normally), but I’m planning for the worse case scenario or for unprepared guests.
Get yourself a vacuum sealer from aldi or wherever and precook a lot of meals. You can then just thaw them and heat in hot water while still in the bag. We took smoked brisket and roast turkey left overs from last Christmas and it tasked just as fresh as freshly cooked.
Tip for vacuum sealing foods with liquids/sauces is to use a sheet of kitchen paper towel folded and placed near the seal, it helps prevent the liquid coming out during the sealing process.
Snacks we took lots of pork crackling and some nuts, we didn’t have lunch very often. Don’t forget lots of water if you’re going remote.
Cooling we have portable fridges, one for food, the other for drinks.
Good tips here. Clearly it can be done, happily.
In August we did 5 days on the Pacific Crest Trail in WA, and perfected our keto hiking food system. Begin the day fasting and hike until about 10 am. Stop and make coffee and eat a hard boiled egg, nuts, maybe jerky. Lunch is more of the same, maybe with some cheese, a small amount of dried fruit. Dinner is cooked dehydrated vegetables, a fish packet (tuna or salmon) , with a good drizzle of olive oil. At this point you are not at all hungry but you can have 90% Lindt chocolate with Justin’s almond butter if you want.
This was the first fairly long trip in which we actually left the woods with a lot of food left over, like 2 big chocolate bars that we didn’t eat because we were not hungry. We hiked 12-15 miles/day, about 15,000 ft climb total. Fairly tough stuff but we had plenty of energy.
We plan to eat the same way next time.
I would love to see this in infographic form next time you do it, how you stored and prepared stuff. Awesome.
Some great tips here. I am also going to take lots of Gimme Seaweed with me for some green snacks. And making Gazpacho and storing in glass jars.
We’re going camping this weekend and oh my, what a difference there will be in the food this trip! Started keto 9 weeks ago, so have a handle on what I want to bring – so far doing great avoiding the carbfest that would normally happen. Since we have a fridge now (used to have a popup) I am already stocking it with goodies: eggs, bacon, cheeses, heavy whipping cream, ground beef patties, hot dogs, almond milk, butter, sausage…the only things I’ve caved on are some milk for my husband and a Digiornos pizza to put in the freezer, figure we can scrape the toppings off. Boiling a few eggs, making some chili ahead tonight and some keto cookies too. For snacks bringing peanut butter for him, almond butter for me. Nuts and pork rinds also. Some baby spinach, onion, and tomato for veg. Am I forgetting anything? It’s so funny, before keto I hated thinking about getting food together for a trip. Not this time!
Went camping a few weeks ago and cooked all on fire, the food was fantastic. We stopped at a country butcher on the way and got locally produced beef steaks, Had bacon, sausages, eggs for breakfast and pre marinated meat for kebabs.
Some other suggestions :
Jamon soaked in olive oil.
Hard boiled eggs. Should last a day if properly stored.
Unfortunately, I’m allergic to eggs, so they’re out. Also, we go remote - no mown grass, no nice grills to use, and lots of carrying(even when canoeing, since we go from lake-to-lake). We can take jerky, pemmican, hard cheeses, but no cans and no glass. I think we’ll have to plan to fast at least some of the time, but it might be best to just fast the entire time!
We’re keto camping for the first time. Just wanna share what we did in case someone needs ideas for your own keto camping trip! 
Lunch: deli meat roll ups with cheddar/jack/or Colby jack slices around pickle spears
Snacks: macadamia nuts, almonds, Duke’s meat sticks. (Not pictured, I’m sure you get the idea…)
Dinner: thick cut ribeye, roasted cabbage with bacon and butter, grilled mushrooms and onion, Caesar salad.
Keto camping day 2!
Breakfast: duh…bacon, eggs, and avacado!
Lunch: same roll ups from yesterday along with cut up fresh veg like celery, cauliflower, and cucumber. Anything we could fit in our cooler while we stayed on the lake all day fishing and running around. Also nuts and meat sticks as usual.
Dinner: thick cut pork tenderloin chops; cauliflower/broccoli salad with bacon, cheese, and ranch; and green beans with…you guessed it…bacon!
And in lieu of s’mores…Lily’s dark chocolate with almonds!
Looks great! We’re about to head out remote canoe camping, and we will be portaging, so weight is critical.
We just found a new company called Next Mile Meals that makes keto freeze-dried meals. I ordered several today. I’ll report back here on them when we get back,
Can’t wait to find out how it went. My husband wants to do a trip like that.
