Arrowhead Provincial Park 451 Arrowhead Park Rd Huntsville, ON P1H 2J4

[two_third_last][/two_third_last]

We often make meals to take with us on our camping trips. It allows us to bring some of our favourite dishes without the extra work, equipment and time needed to prepare them on a camp stove or over a campfire.

At Arrowhead, our second stop on our epic 38 day camping trip in the summer of 2015, we had two very delicious, make ahead meals that you can try on your next trip.

BBQ Chicken over basmati rice

BBQ Chicken over basmati rice.

 

Before heading on our trip we made this juicy, flavourful BBQ chicken in the crockpot. It’s very simple. Just cut each chicken breasts into four fairly equally pieces. Place in crockpot. Pour either home-made or store bought BBQ sauce over chicken (enough to coat and a bit more), add a bit of water to create more of a sauce and cook on low for 6-8 hours. Then package up a serving for each person in a ziploc bag. Make some of your favourite rice at home and package up a serving for each person into a separate ziploc bag. Don’t forget if you’ve doing a lot of hiking you are going to need larger portions! Place the two bags in your cooler. (Tip: every meal that you make ahead can be frozen first if you aren’t planning on eating it the first or second day. We don’t usually freeze rice or potatoes though).

There are a few different methods we have used for heating up these meals. Chitra has found that steaming the rice is very good and keeps the rice moist. She just used one of those old metal steamers. The other way to heat both packages is to submerge them in hot water and heat them through that way. If you’re planning on using this method, you might consider using freezer bags instead of a basic sandwich bag. I have also put the chicken in an aluminum foil container and heated it over the campfire.

Korean chicken with vegetables served over rice

Korean chicken and vegetables over basmati rice.

 

This is a take on Korean bulgogi, which uses beef. The seasoning is basically the same and then I add mushrooms and carrots to make sure we get our vegetables.

This is another recipe that can be done in the crockpot. Search online for crockpot recipes for korean bulgogi recipes. You can either use the chicken, like we did, or you can go traditional and use beef. We always like extra sauce so I usually double the sauce part of the recipe. Adding fresh scallions at the end gives a nice flavour and freshness to the dish. Use the methods above to heat up each of the packages and you have a super easy but amazing meal. We often get fellow campers asking what we are eating since the smells drift to surrounding campsites.

For this dish I would using cook Korean rice (medium grain white rice) and add barley and green peas to it. However, when you’re camping you have to make a few sacrifices, so we decided to only pre-make two different kinds of rice. Sad but true.

Up-close of Korean chicken dish.

 

Don’t forget that you are eating outside. Keep your camera and binoculars close at hand because you never know what may visit your campsite!