Camping food list for a group

Group camping food lives or dies on two things: what keeps without a fridge, and cooking that works on one or two burners. Nail those and you eat well all weekend. Here is how to build the list.

Plan the meals before the shopping

Decide every meal for every day first — how many breakfasts, lunches and dinners you actually cook on site versus grab on the road. The shopping list should fall out of the menu, not the other way around, or you end up with three bags of food and no plan for any of it.

How much food per person per day

• •Water: 3 litres per person per day for drinking and cooking — more in heat, and always more than you think if there is no tap on site.
• •Breakfast: oats, bread, eggs, fruit — quick carbohydrates to get the group moving.
• •Lunch: cold and no-cook — cured meats, cheese, wraps, tinned fish, hummus, tomatoes.
• •Dinner: ~200 g protein plus a one-pot carb (pasta, rice, couscous) and vegetables.
• •Snacks: trail mix, biscuits, chocolate — always pack more than feels reasonable.

What keeps without a fridge

• •Hardy vegetables: onions, carrots, peppers, cabbage, potatoes.
• •UHT milk, hard cheese, cured meats, eggs (fine unrefrigerated for a few days).
• •Tinned and dry staples: pasta, rice, couscous, tinned tomatoes, beans, tuna.
• •A cool box with ice packs buys you a day or two for fresh meat and dairy — plan to cook those first.

Cook one-pot, share the load

On limited burners, one-pot meals win: chilli, pasta, curry, a big shakshuka for breakfast. Assign a cook (and a washer-up) per meal so the same two people are not stuck at the stove all weekend, and so nobody forgets whose turn it is.

Buy once, split fairly

Do one big shop before you leave rather than several scattered ones, and log who paid for what as you go. Splitting a weekend of shared food from a pile of receipts on the last morning is how camping trips end in mild resentment.