Backpacking Recipes:
What's for Dinner?

Take your time exploring this page. You'll find a large collection of trail-tested backpacking recipes to help you eat well wherever your adventures take you.

These dinner backpacking recipes are my favorite trail meals from the Appalachian Trail. The dried ingredients are healthy, and they taste great. Because the backpacking meals are dehydrated, they weigh a fraction of what fresh backpacking foods weigh, plus they won’t spoil on long hikes. They rehydrate on the trail as easily as store-bought freeze-dried backpacking meals, for a lot less money.

Food Dehydrating Options for Backpacking Dinners:

• Cook a big pot of chili or stew, dehydrate and divide into individual servings.
• Dehydrate vegetables, meat, beans, and starches separately and assemble into meals.
• Enhance store-bought boxed meals with additional dried meat and vegetables.
• Create saucy backpacking meals by blending and dehydrating starchy foods like potatoes and beans into bark.
• Dehydrate tomato sauce for Italian style meals.

Readers' Choice Backpacking Recipes

Based on letters from readers, these are the three most favorite backpacking dinners enjoyed on the trail:

Beef & Bean Chili

Cook a big batch, dehydrate, and divide into meal size portions.

Mexican Beef & Rice

Ground beef, beans, peppers, onions, tomatoes, and rice in a zesty cheddar cheese sauce with taco seasoning.

Unstuffed Peppers

Ground beef, bell peppers, and rice in tomato sauce.

Backpacking Mac & Cheese Recipes

Macaroni and Cheese Recipes

Macaroni and Cheese with added meats and vegetables. Ham and Cheese, Kickin' Veggie Mac & Cheese, Taco Mac 'n Cheese, Tuna Mac & Cheese, and more. Plus instructions for dehydrating macaroni.

Backpacking Rice Recipes

Backpacking Recipes with Rice

Curry Chicken & Rice, Curry Shrimp & Rice, Easy Cheesy Rice & Beans, Hawaiian Shrimp & Rice, Ham with Rice & Vegetables, and more. Learn how to dehydrate rice for flavorful meals.

Ramen Noodles Recipes

Ramen Noodles Recipes

Seafood Raminara, Cheese-O-Rama, Ramen Noodles & Kraut, Vegetarian Ramen Noodles, and more.

Easy Backpacking Meals

Easy Backpacking Meals

Add dried veggies and meat to popular boxed products from Zatarain's, Near East, and Annie's Organic. These enhanced backpacking meals include Spanish Rice with Beef & Tomatoes, Red Beans & Rice with Vegetables, Pine Nut Couscous with Meat & Vegetables, and several Cheesy Pasta backpacking recipes.

Vegetable Stew Recipes

Ratatouille

This French summer vegetable stew combines eggplant, zucchini, peppers, onions, and tomatoes with garlic and herbs.

Root Bark Stew

Heat and eat for dinner or munch out of the bag while hiking. This backpacking recipe features yams, parsnips, turnips, and rutabaga with Moroccan spices.

Backpacking Recipes with Tofu

Tofu Recipes

Learn how to dehydrate tofu with seasonings. Recipes include Tofu Noodles with Vegetables & Rice, Tofu Vegetable Soup, Spicy Tofu Tortillas, and Curry Tofu & Vegetables.

Bark Recipes

Bark Recipes

Blend and dehydrate starchy vegetables and seasonings into bark, and use it to make flavorful, saucy backpacking meals such as Mashed Potatoes with Meat & Vegetables, BBQ Beef Stew, Sweet Potato Porridge, BBQ Bean Bark Stew, Black Bean & Salsa Bark Stew, Corn Bark Stew, Crab Chowder, and more.

Backpacking Recipes with Tomato Sauce

Tomato Sauce Leather Recipes

Italian-style backpacking meals like Pasta & Cheesy Tomato Sauce, Seafood Raminara, and Unstuffed Peppers.

Learn how to make tomato sauce leather and tomato powder using sauce from a jar or with Chef Glenn's homemade tomato sauce recipe.

Reader Shared Backpacking Recipes

Best Shared Backpacking Recipes

Explore over 50 recipes shared by BackpackingChef readers.

If you have a good one, there's a form for you to share it.

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Add to your backpacking recipes collection with Chef Glenn's books and guides.

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In Chef Glenn's free monthly newsletter, you will receive new backpacking recipes and food dehydrating instructions. When you subscribe, you will also receive a free e-book, Home & Trail: An Introduction to Drying Food. Subscribe to Trail Bytes

Recipes for Adventure II: The Best of Trail Bytes

Recipes for Adventure: Healthy, Hearty & Homemade Backpacking Recipes

Action Guide: Dehydrating 31 Meals

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Home & Trail: An Introduction to Drying Food

1001 Miles on the Appalachian Trail

From the Mailbag:

"My husband and I hiked the John Muir Trail during the month of September and before our trip I had purchased your cookbook so that I could prepare most of our dinners. I trusted your basic ingredients and straight-forward approach and prepared many of your dehydrated recipes. I had friends ask if I was going to taste test the meals first and I said no. My logic was that we would be so hungry that anything would be edible. Well, we were very hungry and it`s true that anything is edible but we looked so forward to having our "homemade" meals in the evening... they were so filling, healthy, and extremely tasty! Thank you so very much for sharing your knowledge and recipes." - Patty