Yes, you can cook delicious food while camping

Apr 15, 2023

A really creamy spinach dip that features in the book Cook it Wild by Chris Nuttal-Smith.Maya Visnyei/Clarkson Potter

Let's begin our discussion of Chris Nuttall-Smith's new cookbook, Cook It Wild: Sensational Prep-Ahead Meals for Camping, Cabins and the Great Outdoors (Penguin, $40), with a brief appreciation of quartermasters.

In a land army, the quartermaster is the soldier who supervises supplies and provisions. On a canoe trip or a hike or a back-country ski trip or even an RV excursion, the quartermaster/mistress is the hard-working keener who organizes the food. They are detail-oriented and can be punctilious. You don't want to be the camper who forgot the valve for the WhisperLite stove when you’re halfway down the Alsek River in the middle of the Yukon's Kluane wilderness in a torrential downpour and the quartermaster wants to make tea. Not to mention any names or anything.

Nuttall-Smith, a highly accomplished journalist, food writer (formerly restaurant critic at The Globe and Mail) and resident judge on Top Chef Canada, qualifies as an ultraimaginative quartermaster, and even an easy-going one – as long as you don't keep opening and closing his all-important drinks cooler, thereby melting the ice that is preserving the slushy negronis he made back in the city and hauled all the way up to God-knows-where.

The central premise of Cook It Wild is deceptively simple: anyone can eat fabulously in the wildest of places, as long as you prepare ahead of time, thereby reducing the work you have to do fireside after a long day of paddling/skiing/hiking/driving. There is nary a hot dog nor can of baked beans nor freeze-dried giblet to be seen in Cook It Wild. Its "empowering make-ahead, prep-ahead system," as Nuttall-Smith describes it, is based on five key principles: Chop Ahead, Mix Ahead, Cook Ahead, Seal Ahead and Freeze Ahead, in that order. Eggs on a camping trip? No problem: whisk them at home and freeze them; they’ll last two days in a cooler. (Or pack them in doubled-up egg cartons, and don't freeze them.)

To help you achieve these noble, clarifying goals and eat like a fireside trencher, the first third of Cook It Wild is devoted to extra-culinary tricks every camper needs to know. These include how to properly pack a cooler (block ice on the bottom, and fill the air gap under the lid with a towel or refreezable ice packs); how to light, build and manage a cooking fire; how to make excellent coffee on said fire; which cheeses travel best; how to string your food in a tree, etc., etc., etc. Nuttall-Smith even provides diagrams of "the one and only knot you need to know." He's the greatest Scoutmaster who ever lived, except that, unlike any of the scoutmasters I ever knew, he's also a terrific chef.

Each recipe lists special equipment needed and the number of people it serves – standard cookbook fare – but also the weight of its ingredients and an emoji-like symbol denoting the kind of camping for which the recipe is best suited (whether it's winter camping, roadside in an RV or glamping in a yurt). Nuttall-Smith aims to demystify the daunting food organizing that scares so many off camping, while maximizing your holiday leisure, whether you are scaling Mount Robson or picnicking in your backyard.

Of course, as a quartermaster at heart, Nuttall-Smith is occasionally a stickler, as he should be. He insists you buy a fine mesh strainer (and then cut off its handle, to save space) for filtering food scraps (which you must pack out) from your dishwater. He doesn't insist on his packing plan, as long as you have one, but he clearly favours packing by meal type (all breakfasts in one bag, ditto lunches and dinners, cocktail snacks in another, and so on) rather than by day (which entails more cooler opening and closing).

A recipe for caramalized shallot-cheese fondue.Maya Visnyei/The Associated Press

As someone who once went mountain climbing with nothing but freeze-dried food, which in turn caused Chernobylean clouds of gas to erupt from my guide as I followed him up vertical cliff walls, let me say this: Cook It Wild is very high-end camp eating. Instant Caramelized Shallot-Cheese Fondue, over a WhisperLite stove no less, on a long, energy-sapping back-packing trek? Yes, please. Powdermilk biscuits (baked in a Dutch oven buried in the ashes of a fire), or a phenomenal corn-cheddar-and-green-onion skillet cake for breakfast? Yes again. (Freeze the feta, so you don't have to carry the heavy brine.) The book's sides are original and delectable and also easy: puff-and-serve chapatis! Risottos! Enfoiled mushroom roasts! And then there's campfire paella. "No other outdoors dish says party quite like paella," Nuttall-Smith writes, adding that it is "the showstoppiest of showstoppers." He proffers three versions, one of them vegan. Yes, you need an open fire to cook them, and a cooler to keep the squid and chicken and shrimp from spoiling, and a large heavy skillet or a paella pan. But it all fits in a canoe.

But make no mistake: Eating well in the simplicity of the wild takes more work than eating well just about anywhere else, in part because you prepare everything twice: once At Home (Nuttall-Smith divides every recipe this way) and again At Camp, ditto.

I spent an entire recent Saturday shopping for and then cooking a luxurious Cook It Wild meal for six. (Which I then reheated on my backyard barbecue, as a simulation.) The meal was dinner-party worthy. Nuttall-Smith's Freakishly Delicious Olives, Warmed by the Fire and marinated in smashed garlic and orange peel, were even better for having sat a day in their carefully sealed Baggie. His Silky Day-Glo Hummus, whirled from a roasted beet, was first rated A+ by my guests, and then A++. Olive Oil Pistachios (shelled and gently heated in same) got a look or two – "Why heat pistachios in oil?" my wife, a pistachio fiend, asked – but it's a subtler pistachio, a calmer nut that has had some therapy and is more amenable to conversation. (They were even better four days later.)

The Fresh Lime Margaritas (19 ounces of weight in the drinks cooler) that Nuttall-Smith claims will keep two weeks frozen and two days thawed are so delicious they will actually only last one night. But the star of the evening, the dish one of my guests (a seasoned canoeist and quartermaster) made again the very next day for his children and grandchildren, was the Really Creamy Spinach. It weighed nearly two pounds and demanded nearly an hour of prep and cooking before I plopped it into its resealable freezer bag, but it was definitive creamed spinach. And I haven't even mentioned the book's desserts, none of which – for once – are the hideous degradation known as smores.

The one phenomenon Nuttall-Smith does not explicitly explore (though he certainly describes it) is why people who love the simplicity of nature and holidaying on the land would go to the bother and trouble of making elaborate meals. He hints at an explanation: he refers to his excellent sunset cocktail snacks (a tin of good fish, candied nuts, "some oozy cheese … drizzled with Scotch bonnet-kissed honey") as "the most important meal of the day," because you have finally reached your destination.

And that is a great feeling. But there is a deeper reason people go to a lot of trouble to treat their companions to luxuries in reduced circumstances. Providing well in the wilderness, going out of your way to give pleasure to others, is a form of decency – what we used to call chivalry. Even here, the gifted quarterperson declares, with no running water or easy comforts at hand, in this pristine but still precarious spot where nothing comes easily and without effort, where we have been stripped to essentials, we can still show each other unnecessary kindness and unexpected generosity, just to honour the gift of one another's company. That treat is always worth the prep.

This image released by Clarkson Potter shows Cook It Wild: Sensational Prep-Ahead Meals for Camping, Cabins, and the Great Outdoors by Chris Nuttall-Smith.The Associated Press