Off-Road Gourmet: Simple Yet Satisfying Meals from the Back of Your Rig

Forget Fast Food or Gas Station Munchies

Journey with me into a memory as I paint a picture likely not unfamiliar to any off-road or overland traveler; you’re on the sixth hour of a multi-day drive, approaching the entrance gate for the BLM land on which you plan to set up camp for the night. Only about twenty more minutes of driving up a solemn dirt road, and you’ll reach your targeted coordinates and begin to set up camp.

Now if you’re anything like me, after hours of sitting in the driving seat, two things are battling for dominance in your mind—getting out and stretching, and actually cooking your next meal. While a PB&J can go a long way in times of desperation, few meals compare to those prepped upon arrival in the great outdoors. With just a little pre-planning, even twenty minutes of effort combined with a few simple ingredients that are easy to keep on hand can yield tailgate cuisine that won’t disappoint.

To prove my point, I’m going to run you through my simple yet satisfying menu plan from a recent overnight outing. This consisted of dinner on arrival, breakfast the next morning, and a late lunch before my return drive back to the unfortunate reality of an upcoming work week.

Before we get to the menu, let’s first talk about the tools of the trade – what I use to feed myself out of the back of my rig. My camp cooking setup consists of the following:

• My stove is a tried-and-true Coleman Classic 2-burner camp stove I got from my grandmother for my 17th birthday.
• Propane comes from an Ignik 5-lb mini-tank mounted to my swing-out rear tire carrier. It’s refillable and also fuels my ammo-can burn-ban-compliant campfire, which eliminates the waste of those little green bottles!
• For cookware, I have a couple of thrifted but reliable cast iron pans and a Dutch oven.
• I also thrifted a Stanley stainless French press for boiling water and making coffee. Multipurpose pieces save space!I keep my food in a Dometic CFX35 12V fridge, powered by a 150ah Optima Lithium battery and charged by a 130w solar panel.
• I couldn’t camp without REI’s $5 plastic egg crates.
• I keep my basic dry food in my rear compartment cabinets, but you could use an insta-crate or even old milk crates.
• I also keep a sharp knife, a set of utensils, and Ziploc bags to store all the food I will be preparing or for any leftovers.
• My dishes are Gerber’s ComplEAT nestable 9-piece tableware set. They clean easily and pack down into a small space well.
• I carry water in a 2-gallon RotopaX also mounted to my swingout for cooking, plus more in the Dometic for drinking. )The tire carrier, a RIG’d UltraSwing, is fitted with a stainless steel UltraTable, as well as an all-weather cutting board that slides out from underneath.

Coming in for the Landing – A Solid Supper Before Settling in

Back to our narrative! So, you’ve pulled in, you’ve deployed your rooftop tent, (sorry ground dwellers. You may be a little late to the party) and it’s time to make the most of the molars God gave you. That’s right- we’re talking steak—good old-fashioned American USDA Prime beef. One of my favorite meals when I go camping, especially if I’m only going for a day or two, is a cast iron seared ribeye steak cooked in rosemary butter with fried asparagus, sauteed mushrooms, and garlic mashed potatoes. Not only is this meal fulfilling after a long drive, but the aromas are simply perfect when blended with those recently arrived, lung-saturating breaths of non-citified air. Here’s what it looks like from the back of my ride at dinner time (by the way – if you’re vegan, you can likely stop here. Sorry.)

First, I’ll prep my ingredients:

• One ribeye steak – 12-16 oz.
• One cube of butter from the fridge. Cut ¼ cup, return the rest to the Dometic.
• Pull out the fresh rosemary – 2 sprigs should do it.
• While you’re in there, grab the Ziploc of 8-10 stalks of washed and trimmed asparagus you prepped before you left, and the bag of washed mushrooms you coarsely chopped (or do it now!)
• Pull out the 4 oz packet of Idahoan roasted garlic instant mashed potatoes that you keep on hand for such a time as this(come on, you know you do.)

Set up the cooktop, light the left burner for boiling water and the right for the cast iron Dutch.

• Grab the coffee pot, pull the French press filter, and fill the stainless pot with 2 cups of water; start to boil.
• Make sure the Dutch is clean, spray a light coating of oil, and put on the burner on high. Add the butter.
• Lightly season the steak. I prefer simplicity – garlic powder, Tony Chachere’s Creole salt for a little heat, and fresh ground pepper is my go-to trio.
• Strip the rosemary from 1 of the 2 sprigs, chop fine. Chop the other sprig coarse. .
• When butter is melted and just starting to bubble, add the mushrooms and a bit of the rosemary. Stir to coat, then cover for about 2 minutes. Grab your steak.
• Move the slightly sauteed mushrooms to the perimeter and drop the steak in the center of the pan. Immediately surround with the asparagus and remaining rosemary. Add the cover but be ready. If you like your steak rare to medium rare like me, this won’t take long – maybe 2-3 minutes.
• Pull the lid and flip the steak. Stir and toss the asparagus. Return the lid for a few more minutes.
• By now your water should be boiling. Grab a bowl and pour in the instant potatoes. Add the water, stir, and cover with a plate.
• Pull the lid on the Dutch and either flip your steak again, or plate it. Your call, just please don’t ruin a good steak.
• If you want your asparagus softer, quickly throw a 1/4 cup water into the Dutch and cover to steam them. Or you can plate them as-is. I prefer them a little crispier. Either way, save any butter/sauce/rosemary still in the pan for your potatoes (adding the water will almost make gravy, and eases cleanup!)

Now all that’s left is to select your beverage of choice, pull up a chair, maybe play some dinnertime tunes off a speaker, and enjoy!

Breakfast – Arguably the Most Important Meal of the Day

Whether the day’s agenda entails simply chilling at your campsite or embarking on a full day of exploration, if you’re like me, nothing starts until I’m on the other end of a morning cup of coffee (or three) and plate of solid food. My feed-me-first formula for success is simple, and yet oh-so-satisfying.

After rolling back and forth about twenty times in my rooftop tent and mustering up the courage to turn off that fourth alarm and get up (and collect myself enough to find my glasses), my first priority is to make coffee. I’ll once again light the trusty Coleman from the night before, pull my manual coffee grinder from the drawer, and deposit the fruits of my effort into the French press that I got for $9 at a sporting goods thrift store on a recent stop in Boise. With the water for my coffee beginning to boil, I can begin to turn my attention to a simple and consistent breakfast for the day – bacon, eggs, and avocado toast – my breakfast holy trinity.

Prep is relatively straight forward, and includes only a few items:

• 2 eggs from the REI travel vault
• 2 pieces of bread, soon to be transformed to toast
• ½ of the avocado that I’ll keep in a Ziploc bag (keep the pit still in it so it lasts longer!)
• 3 strips of Costco pre-cooked bacon from the Ziploc I packed before I left (you can make your own, but this lets me eat sooner, and as you’ve likely learned by now, that matters to me – a lot.)
• Salt, pepper

By now, water is boiling on the burner. I can pull it and use that burner for the cool little toaster tent I found at REI. I’ll also start heating my cast iron skillet for the eggs.

• When the toast is done on one side, flip. Prep the cast iron with a little butter, crack the eggs, and season as desired.
• Since the bacon is cooked (in my case), it won’t take long to heat. Place it alongside the eggs at some point.
• As the eggs are cooking, slice the avocado and spread it on the toast. Top with some salt and cracked pepper

Once your eggs are how you like them, you’re ready to rock. Stir and then press the French press, pour your coffee, and enjoy! While this simple breakfast isn’t going to win you any Michelin stars, it’s also not going to take you an hour to clean up, so take your wins and go embrace the day! After all, isn’t that why you got out and away in the first place? Game on!

Quelching the Midday Munchies

Though many may simply pack a brown bag lunch to eat on a hike, I’m more inclined to return to my food stash around noon or 1 to ingest additional sustenance of the prepared kind. Again, nothing super crazy, but I do fancy a nice grilled ham and cheese, with perhaps a sliced apple and some peanut butter. Wash it down with a tall cold hydration supplement and you’ve got yourself a suitable energy injection to hold you over till either the next dinner, or Heaven forbid, the drive home.

Here’s how break this one down:

• 2 slices of bread, 4 if it was a big morning or you skipped breakfast
• 4-5 slices of ham, and at least 2 pieces of cheese per sandwich
• Condiments optional, but I do like deli mustard sometimes
• Butter (yep still using it!) to grill the bread

Now I always thought everybody knew how to make grilled cheese, but then I went to college and got a roommate who didn’t even know how to wash a knife on his own, so I digress. For those of you who’ve led entirely too sheltered of an existence, here’s the step-by-step.

1. Heat a pan or skillet to medium-high heat. As it’s heating, grab two pieces of bread.
2. Butter only one side of each and place them BUTTER SIDE TOGETHER back on a plate.
3. On the top piece of bread (non-buttered side), place enough cheese to cover the bread.
4. Cover the cheese with 4 or 5 slices of ham. Now cover that ham with more cheese.
5. Separate the bread with the ham and cheese from the other piece of bread, placing the top piece WITH THE HAM AND CHEESE butter side DOWN on the hot pan. It will start grilling!
6. Top the sandwich, butter side OUT with the second piece of bread. It will go butter side DOWN on the pan when you flip it.
7. Watch for the bottom bread to become golden brown, flip, and repeat. You can now make a grilled cheese.

All joking aside (and yes, I did actually have a roommate who had never cooked for himself before), this is a great and satisfying camp lunch, especially paired with either fruit or some granola, or even chips. Just remember to drink plenty of fluids and stay away from sodas. I like to take hydration packets lLiquid IV is a go-to) and add one to about 12 oz of water at lunch, even if I’ve been staying fairly well hydrated during the day.

Well, there you have it. No, not sage advice from doctor-sharing peer-reviewed research on nutrition—just a 19-year-old, high metabolism outdoor enthusiast sharing my go-to recipes for non-boring nourishment. Cooking outdoors is a big part of why I enjoy overlanding and camping as much as I do. Cooking, like I’m learning about many things in life, doesn’t have to be complicated to be good. In fact, keeping it simple can often make your chances of success go up! Plus, and I truly believe this to be a part of the equation – everything just tastes better when you cook it off your tailgate, and nature is on the ingredient list. If it’s been a while since you’ve taken a bite beneath the stars, perhaps it’s time to grab a plate, get out there, and refresh your palate. Bon Appetit!