One pot meals simplify the scouting cooking process and are an easy way for younger scouts to prepare nutritious, filling meals in the outdoors while camping is the Scouting program.
Show Notes:
- Rising Star District Cookbook (PDF)
- Camping Food
- 20 Camping Recipes You Learned in Boy Scouts
- 6 reasons to cook one-pot meals + recipes
Transcript:
There is a lot of benefit to simplify the cooking process so that you are using one pot or pan to make meals. The first is the most obvious, that is that there is only one pot or pan to clean up.
One pot meals also simplify the timing of meals, as usually works a lot like dump cake, where you cook your protein and then dump a lot of other ingredients into it.
One of the bad things about this type of meal is that if you do make it like dump cake the kids who are not as adventurous may turn their nose up at it.
Each one pot meal has a base, a vegetable, a meat, a sauce, spice and topping.
For one pot meals to be truly one-pot it helps to use canned ingredients and do some preparation in advance.
So, lets start with the base. These are noodles, rice or potatoes, and form the hearty portion of the meal. All three can be cooked either in advance or on site. Noodles, more that the other ingredients can pre prepared in advance, and even frozen. Noodles stay well and if weight is not an issue, as in the case of backpacking, it reduces the prep time by at least 10 minutes as well.
Vegetables can be canned, freeze dried or frozen. While you do not need to cook these in advance, if you go with canned vegetables you can open the cans and place the contents in plastic bags, making it lighter, and reducing waste in the outdoors.
The protein, or meat use use is also a good candidate for cooking in advance, as most meats you are adding to a one pot meal will not be any different cooked on site verses being prepared in advance.
Chicken especially is one of the ones that benefit from preparing in advance, as you need to be careful when cleaning up raw poultry because of salmonella concerns, leaving you with a cutting board and knife to really clean well in the outdoors.
Chopped meat is probably the easiest to make in the outdoors, as it goes right into the pot to be browned with little need to prepare in advance.
If you are really looking to extract the flavor of meat in this meal cubed beef is best done on site, as if you do it right, the little bits that are left over when browning the beef become the rue that helps flavor the dish.
Sauce can run the gambit from a cheese sauce, to broth, to red or white sauce or even a can of mushroom soup mix.
Most of these items tend to be on the blander side, which brings in the spice part. Simple salt and pepper can usually suffice, but adding some chili powder, or meat seasoning packets can make it all come together.
While you’ll see some BSA documents touting the addition of toppings, I would generally leave that to grated cheese or bacon bits. Adding things like raisons or nuts is probably not the best of ideas.
One of the more popular ones I have made is the cheesey beef one pot meal. This one has ground beef cheese over pasta and a can of tomatoes. It’s thick and hearty, and has the simplistic flavors younger scouts are used to.
Other ones I have made have chicken and mushroom soup with rice or pasta. This does require a more adventurous crew as many think mushrooms are slimy and icky.
But this is what works for us.
Take what you like and leave the rest, and as we say in Woodbadge, feedback is a gift, leave yours below in the comments, with the hope we can all learn together.
I’m Scoutmaster Dave, and this was a one pot meals.
