Leave the Stove at Home This Summer, Give THESE No-Cook Meals a Try Instead!

Summer is officially here which means longer days, higher temperatures, and lots of rainstorms. I personally like to use this season as an opportunity to give no-cook meals a try. In this post I'll share a few reasons why I think Summer is the perfect time to leave the stove at home. At the end you'll find a one day menu with some of my favorite "stoveless" recipes. Although they were written with backpacking in mind, these recipes are great for long day hikes and car camping too. Be sure to download your free PDF copy before you go! If you want even more no-cook meal ideas, please check out my 3 day menu: "Stoveless Summer". It's one of many ways to support this blog / channel and help me keep doing what I do. You can find that at the hyperlink above or the button below:

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Now let's get into a couple reasons for going stoveless and trying no-cook recipes this Summer. I'll start with the obvious - Who wants a piping hot meal this time of year?! Warm food might be a comforting part of the outdoor experience the other nine months out of the year, but that's the LAST thing I want at the end of a long sweaty day in the sun. Especially here in the Southeast! I will never forget the backpacking trip that inspired this whole tradition. It was 4th of July weekend on the Foothills trail. I was pretty new to backpacking at the time. After nine long miles of battling spiderwebs and overgrowth, I finally arrived at camp. Even though it was so hot and humid that evening, I decided to boil water for a freeze dried meal. Because that's what you do. After waiting on it to cool for what felt like an eternity, I tore the bag open and plopped down on a rock. Sweating profusely, I shoveled molten hot mashed potatoes into my face. It was miserable, but I was too hungry to stop. From that point on, cold meals became my go-to on Summer trips.

Next, it lets you to focus your time and efforts elsewhere. No cook kit means one less thing to unpack and pack back up at camp. Time spent boiling water and waiting for breakfast to rehydrate and cool can instead be put toward getting an earlier start in the morning. The same applies to dinner. Rather than waiting until you reach your destination and going through the process again, dinner can be a quick pit stop along the way; allowing you to cover more miles in a day. It's true cold soaking does take significantly longer to rehydrate food, but a major benefit is it can be done while you're hiking. In general, no-cook meals require very little effort on the trail. With some all you have to do is combine the ingredients. Recipes like that were a life saver the Summer I was pregnant. Having quick and easy access to high-protein food was critical to staving off my morning sickness (aka all-the-time-sickness) on the trail. Although chicken packets were a staple of my diet on those trips, there was still a lot of variety in what I ate. Which brings us to the last reason.

Going stoveless provides an opportunity to get creative in the kitchen. While you technically can cold soak pre-packaged freeze dried meals, those textures and flavors were meant to be enjoyed hot. Be honest, does cold Mountain House Mac & Cheese actually sound appetizing? Coming up with your own no-cook recipes lets you tinker with ingredients to find what tastes good without the help of boiled water. It also encourages you to think outside the box and find ways to take food on the trail you didn’t think was possible. Like salad! Finding this article from Backpacker was a total game changer! After trying some of the recipes she recommends, I started coming up with ones of my own. My favorite of which is a backpacking-friendly version of the apple kale slaw at Tropical Smoothie. (Which you can find in my 3 day menu!) Is every recipe I make a success? Absolutely not. Some are downright awful. But figuring out what works and what doesn't is part of the fun.

Wait! What about saving weight? In my experience leaving the cook kit behind hasn't saved me all that much weight. It hasn't cost me much either. Most of the time, my food bag comes out about the same as if I had the kit. Together my kettle (5.2 oz), stove (3.25 oz), and a full fuel canister (7.5 oz) comes in just under 16 oz or 1 lb. By adding things like packaged tuna or chicken (2.6 oz each) and summer sausage (6 - 12 oz per stick) to my food bag, the weight I would have shed gets added right back. Condiment packets, though small, are also a contributing factor. I'm sure if all I ate was cold soaked ramen and knorr pasta sides for every meal, it would make a noticeable difference. I don't know about you, but I want flavor and variety in what I eat on the trail. And if that means incurring a small weight penalty, I'll take it!

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