Kristen Peterson, leadership and training coordinator for AMC’s Youth Opportunities Program (YOP), teaches a backcountry cooking class for adults who lead youth trips. She has 10 tips for feeding kids in the backcountry. She also shares two of YOP’s most popular dishes, Thai Peanut Spaghetti and Instant Baja Bean and Rice Burritos.

YOP Backcountry Cooking Workshop: Top 10 Food Tips

1. Make sure kids are invested in the food and meals. Get them to help plan the menu and help with the cooking. This can be the most memorable (for good or bad reasons!) part of the trip for some youth.

2. Keep cooking groups small. Two kids and one staff member is normally the perfect ratio for great meals, quality time with those kids, and the fewest spilled pots.

3. Develop a fun ritual to see who does the unpleasant jobs, like washing dishes or carrying the trash. “Lucky Almond” is a great one, where one almond gets thrown in the pot and whoever gets it in their serving is stuck with the dishes. The excitement and fun of the game can make kids forget how much they hate doing dishes!

FIND RECIPES
Get backcountry meal ideas for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

4. Make sure the food is organized well and easily accessible. It’s tragic how many meals miss out on key ingredients that were in the bottom of somebody’s pack.

5. Plan dinners ahead for short trips, but leave some room for creativity with a diverse spice kit and some simple baking ingredients.

6. Label those hard-to-distinguish items. Many tired campers have poured cheesecake mix into their coffee due to a wrong guess about which white granular substance was in the Ziploc.

7. Pay attention to food quantities and keep track of what has and hasn’t worked in the past. True creativity comes out when trying to get a group to finish those big pots of food!

8. Physically mark off the kitchen area, even with adults. This will keep out armchair cooks, flying Frisbees, and allow for a less stressful and safer mealtime.

9. Do as much prep work as possible before the trip. Cutting onions, repackaging, labeling gorp bags are all much easier done at home or in the office than late at night in the rain.

10. There’s normally one simple ingredient that can make a meal far better. Try fresh cilantro in beans and rice, or basil in a boring pasta dish…just be careful not to try anything too adventurous with youth.

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