We stopped cooking on backpacking trips twenty years ago. Our no-cook menu has evolved over many iterations and is now finely tuned to what works for us. We share it here for others who want to try a no-cook trip and are not sure where to start.
We don’t cook on any of our hiking trips. This article includes the details of the menu we use for five to eleven day wilderness backpacking trips. On hikes of two to four days we carry heavier food such as hummus, deli salads, fresh produce, and hard boiled eggs. On hikes with grocery store resupply we supplement the menu with bread, fresh produce, yogurt, potato chips, hummus, and wine.
The amounts listed in the table are per person per day, and total of 25.5 ounce and about 3000 calories. The calories per ounce value shown is based on the items we are packing for our next trip. For each line item on the list the calories per ounce varies based on the exact selection, for example tuna packed in oil is more caloric than tuna packed in water.
We can increase the calories without changing the total weight by making minor changes, such as taking a little less dry fruit and a little more nuts. Our menu is tuned to what we currently find most satisfying, and we make minor modifications to it after each trip.
| oz / day | calories / oz | calories / day | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cheese | 3.0 | 115 | 345 |
| Meat | 1.5 | 85 | 128 |
| Tuna | 2.6 | 73 | 190 |
| Crackers, crunchy things | 2.1 | 137 | 274 |
| Cookies | 1.3 | 150 | 195 |
| Tang/Lemonade mix | 2.8 | 102 | 286 |
| Nuts | 1.8 | 170 | 306 |
| Dry fruit | 2.0 | 87 | 174 |
| Mumble bars | 7.0 | 120 | 840 |
| Dark chocolate | 1.4 | 175 | 245 |
| Totals | 25.5 | 117.5 | 2996 |
Notes about the menu
This menu was created through dozens of iterations and it works for us. We did not create it by doing any sort of analysis of calorie requirements or assessing health benefits. We don’t mean to imply that we think this menu is better than any other menu, however it might be a good starting point for somebody who has never taken a no-cook no-fuss trip.
Grayson Cobb uses a similar no-cook approach and provides nutritional analysis in his article and spreadsheet.
Cheese: we carry only semi-firm, firm, or aged cheeses. We eat the semi-firm cheeses like P’tit Basque in the first 5 days and the firm or aged cheeses, like our favorite Vella Dry Jack, later in the trip. Here is a good article about varieties that are appropriate for backpacking.
Meat: beef/pork/turkey jerky; smoked fish; or dry cured ham such as prosciutto, coppa, or speck. Dry cured ham can be stored at room temperature. My current favorites are Bacon Jerky and Del Duca Jamon Serrano. My local Cost Plus World Market occasionally has both products at reasonable prices.
Tuna in foils packs is available in several flavors, or unseasoned tuna packed in either oil or water. The highest caloric density is Tuna in Extra Virgin Olive Oil at 73 calories per ounce; the seasoned varieties are about half that.
Crackers and other crunchy things: in addition to traditional crackers we are fond of Trader Joe’s Inca Giant Corn Nuts, Pepperidge Farms Goldfish, and Sonoma Creamery’s Crisps and Mr Cheese O’s.
Cookies: shortbread cookies have high caloric density and are sturdy and compact.
Mumble Bars: Clif, Luna, NuGo, Zone Perfect, ProBar or similar. These vary in caloric density from 149 calories per oz (Kirkland Nut Bar) down to 104 calories per oz (Clif Cool Mint Chocolate).
We frequently carry a few Altoid mints and other hard candies, but they don’t add up to much weight or calories.
The menu is optimized for protein and calorie dense fats, compact packing, and flavor. Noodles, rice and potatoes are not calorie efficient at 4 calories per gram versus 9 calories per gram for fats, have little protein or fiber value, often require cooking, and we do not find them as tasty as crackers, which often have enough fat to raise their calorie density.
The process
We eat cheese, meat or tuna, crackers, cookies, and Tang or lemonade at lunch and again for dinner. Each evening we apportion the nuts, fruit, bars, and chocolate we plan to eat throughout the following day.
Our menu is not very diverse on paper, but by carrying different cheeses and crackers for each meal, and by mixing the meat selection, we don’t get too bored. We also carry five or six different varieties of dry fruit. Sitting down to a meal of prosciutto, Vella Dry Jack cheese, Trader Joe’s Raisin Rosemary Crisps, dry pears, and candied pecans is satisfying.
Amy carries all the food that needs to stay cool. James carries the food that can get warm. In the bottom of Amy’s pack is our down Love Bird Quilt. The food bag sits on top of that, with clothing surrounding it. In addition to her own clothes, Amy carries James’ down jacket, which gives her more insulation to work with. We never expose the core of her pack during the day. Each evening, we open the food bag and put the following day’s food into a separate ziplock, which we can then access without opening the main bag of cold food. We have used this process on trips of up to eleven days duration where daytime temperatures were in the 80’s and even into the 90’s, and still have kept the chocolate from melting.
Our entire kitchen gear is two spoons. In addition to the platypus bottles we need for water capacity, we each carry a wide-mouth Gatorade-type bottle to mix the Tang; the wide mouth is helpful for getting the powder in. We do not carry any cups or bowls.
Why we like it
When weather or mosquitoes are bad we can easily eat inside our tent.
We like to start hiking at sunrise. It is easy to eat a breakfast of bars and nuts and fruit while we walk instead of cooking oatmeal like we did on family trips when we were kids.
We reduce our pack weight by using a no-cook menu. The weight of the food in a no-cook menu is the same, calorie-for-calorie, as a menu that requires cooking, since cooking only adds heat and water. We do not have to carry a stove, pot, or fuel.
Cooking volatilizes odors, which is problematic where there are bears.
We are not affected when stoves are prohibited due to wildfire danger.
We sometimes opportunistically plan outings just two days before we leave based on a good weather forecast so it’s important to have a quick-to-assemble larder. We can quickly buy and package the food for a ten day trip.
Most importantly, we think it tastes a lot better than the freeze dried hot food we used to eat while backpacking.
Thanks for the post. I’ve been curious how you two do food. Recently I’ve been doing cold soak quite a bit and it works well for me- refried beans,cous cous, dried potatoes, oatmeal, etc. Cold instant coffee in the morning. I also really like real bacon bits sprinkled in with the food. Patti still prefers a stove though. 🙂
I am a convert to stove-less backpacking also. Here’s an example of the process: we did an eight day/seven night backpack in Kings Canyon two years ago stove free. Since I am a paleo nutrition type, we brought several types of dried meat, a variety of dried fruit, and lots of mixed nuts. A violation of paleo is that most dried meats have some added sugar, but that’s a small departure from paleo. Dried meats and dried fruit are typically 75 to 80 calories per ounce. Nuts are typically 165 to 185 calories per ounce. So to conserve pack weight, it pays to get a good share of daily calories from nuts. Although we didn’t do this on this trip, if one really wishes to conserve weight, I have brought olive oil in the past. At 240 calories per ounce, it is a real weight saver. The trouble is that try as one might, the oil tends to get distributed in more places than one’s mouth. I am also willing to stray from paleo to carry hard cheeses. They typically run 100 to 110 calories per ounce and have 10 to 15% protein and 85 to 90% fat. The good news is that they do not contain dairy sugar.
We pack the meat, fruit, nuts (and cheese) in Opsak bags and they go into a Bearikade or Ursak depending on regulatory requirements.
Like Amy, we take out food for the day also and each of us carries his share in a smaller Opsak in a location in the pack that is easily accessible. I have not fine-tuned the exact daily weight to the point that Amy has, but I usually figure a pound and a half per day per person, which is 24oz, almost the same as Amy’s calculation. If we eat 12 ounces of nuts a day and 12 ounces of meat and fruit, that’s 3,000 calories.
On the extremely important matter of coffee, I have developed a novel approach that I have truly come to love. In the past, as I made the transition to stove-less meals, I still required hot coffee in the morning. When I moved to dried meats and fruits, and nuts, I still carried a small alcohol stove to brew coffee in the morning. When I stopped carrying a stove altogether, I tried the instant coffee approach in cold water. I couldn’t make that work for me. Instead, I now carry whole coffee beans and I chew about twenty or twenty five in the morning. I love the sharp bitter initial coffee taste. I then add a piece of dried fruit and chew the mixture together. This creates a wonderful transition from the initial taste of the coffee alone as it moves so nicely to the sweetness of the dried fruit. It tastes much better (to my palate) than instant coffee. I have spent time selecting my choice of coffee beans for backpacking based on how it tastes un-brewed. I have learned that the coffee I prefer at home that I grind and brew is not necessarily the coffee I prefer while backpacking. I tend to like really dark roasts for brewing and something a little less darkly roasted for backpacking. Fwiw, I also carry beans during the day and will have them during lunch for a little pick-me-up if I am so inclined.
I really like this approach. It allows more trail time and less time consumed with meal preparation. If one takes the time to select a variety of meats and a variety of dried fruit (and cheeses) then each meal has its own uniqueness. It in addition to saving weight and time, one of the nice benefits is that one can hear the wind in the trees and not the harsh noise of the stove during mealtime.
Great! Thanks for breaking it down per day/per amount. (I would probably eat like this at home all the time if I were single/no kids and not cooking for anyone. Yum!)
I’m glad my post and spreadsheet could be of some use! Thanks for linking my site! I enjoyed reading your post.
I wonder what to eat instead of the dried meat if you’re vegetarian. I’ve used the instant meals for dinner, but I don’t really like them. If I only eat nuts and fruit I’m still hungry 🙁
I’m vegetarian and was in my late 40s when I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail. Many of the foods the 20-something vegetarians were eating (instant mashed potatoes, ramen, etc) were unappealing to me or seemed devoid of nutrition. My all-time favorite cold soak and no-cook items are dehydrated refried beans, hard cheeses, naan, Dave’s Killer bagels and cream cheese (no issues with the cream cheese for up to 4-day stretches), hummus and crackers, and nut butters (especially Justin’s individual packets).
Karin, good question about what to eat if you are vegetarian and want to go stove-less. Since I am not, I do not know the scientific answer except to say I am not surprised that you are still hungry if eating only nuts and fruit because your body may still be craving protein. I am assuming you would need to add grains and beans to get your protein? If that is the case, I guess there would need to be some way to prepare them and then dry them before the trip to prevent spoilage during the trip. Or if you are not vegan, what about hard cheese as a source of protein? Sorry, I just don’t have the answer.
Thanks for posting this Amy. Very informative.
Good Morning- My wife and I are going to try out the cheese/meat/cracker supper on our next outing. Can you tell me how you keep your crackers from breaking while they are in your packs?
Thank you
Chad
Chad,
At home, we apportion the crackers into single meal servings, wrapped in saran wrap or snack-size ziplocks. And then carefully pack those servings into a cracker box to provide some protection, such as a Trader Joes Sweet Potato Crackers box. The crackers sit on top of everything else in Jim’s pack. Since Jim carries the dense gear it leaves lots of room in his pack for crackers. I carry the double-quilt and both down jackets, used to insulate the keep-cool food, so my pack has no remaining volume for bulky crackers. Amy (and James too)
Thanks for the reply, it worked out great. We enjoy eating soaked oats in the morning so we decided to bring an Evernew 1.3L pot still so that we could soak them overnight. We put the crackers in the pot during the day and the oats in it at night. It worked great and will be doing the same in the Sawtooths next week.
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