Make Dinner a Priority
Part of the fun and challenge of a multi-day bikepacking trip is planning the meals. Some routes let you indulge in small-town food stops where you can resupply or simply eat at a restaurant every few days. But what about more remote routes and the days when you need to be self-sufficient with your food? Packing enough food to fuel a five- or eight-hour day on the bike is not a trivial task. It takes planning and strategic food sourcing to replace the thousands of calories you burn riding a loaded bike day after day for multiple days.
Breakfast and daytime snacks are important, but the primary focus here is on bikepacking dinner tips. The short story on breakfast and lunch is as follows. The go-to breakfast is instant oatmeal (and coffee, of course). It’s fast, simple to prepare and readily available at markets everywhere. Lunch is basically a mix of daytime snacks: jerky, bars, nuts, etc. On the days when your route allows for stopping at gas stations or markets, you can augment with whatever is available.
On to dinner planning. Bikepacking meals need to be lightweight, low-volume, easy to pack, loaded with calories, long-lasting, reasonably healthy and taste good. That’s a lot of boxes to check, and it’s not an easy ask. After years of experimenting, here are our top five bikepacking meal tips and top five food picks for eating well and getting the calories you need to keep the body pedaling day after day.
Top Five Bikepacking Meal Tips
- Keep It Simple — It should go without saying, but the number one rule is to keep dinner simple. That means one-pot cooking. Simplicity makes for a lighter load. Whether you are cooking your own meal or using a just-add-water approach, keep the cooking to a single pot and accessorize with stuff that doesn’t require additional cooking. Our favorite single-pot cooking system is the MSR Pocket Rocket Kit.
- Go Freeze-Dried — There are many tricks to packing light, and one of the most effective is using freeze-dried camping meals (read our review of Backpacker’s Pantry meals). Modern freeze-dried meals taste better than you might guess. The catch with freeze-dried camping dinners is getting enough calories. An average freeze-dried meal package only offers 300-400 calories per person. To put that in perspective, most sports energy bars offer 200 calories. The easy thing to do is to use a typical two-serving meal as a single serving. Of course, that requires carrying twice as much. The next step is to augment freeze-dried meals with other easy-to-carry items, which leads us to tip numbers two and three.
- Add Olive Oil — Adding extras to a freeze-dried meal (or any dinner) is an easy way to boost the calorie count. It can be as simple as adding a tablespoon or two of olive oil to your food. Olive oil packs about 100 calories per tablespoon. Adding a small plastic bottle of oil to your packing list is an efficient way to pack extra calories. It pairs reasonably well with a wide range of flavors, making it a very versatile add-on.
- Add Smoked Fish — Like olive oil, smoked fish is an efficient way to add calories to a range of different meals. Whether you are cooking basic pasta or using a freeze-dried camping meal, adding smoked salmon, tuna, mackerel or tinned sardines is a simple way to boost the calorie count of any meal. Vacuum-sealed cooked fish and tinned fish are easy to pack and have a good shelf life.
Smoked salmon turns basic pasta into a special treat. Add some fresh hard cheese plus pesto, and it’s downright yummy.
- Soup Appetizers — Following a long day on the bike, starting the dinner meal with an instant ramen soup appetizer is a great way to hydrate and replace lost sodium before you sit down for dinner. Ramen is loaded with calories and only requires boiling water plus a few minutes to sit. Make it a habit to arrive at camp, prep the ramen and set up the tent while the noodles hydrate. Once the tent is up, the soup is ready. With two people, you can divide and conquer the tasks; either way, soup is ready minutes after arriving at camp.
Top Five Bikepacking Food Picks
- Tortellini — Pasta is the universal go-to dinner for dirtbags around the world. It’s inexpensive, filling and easy to make. Using tortellini is a great way to up the calorie content over regular pasta. Tortellini is widely available in supermarkets across the US and online. An 8oz bag of tortellini has approximately 850 calories. Add olive oil or, better yet, pesto, and you’re looking at 1000 calories. It’s hard to get better than that for calories per packable weight. But tortellini requires boiling time and more fuel you protest? The hot tip is to pour the boiling water over the tortellini, put a lid on it and let it sit for 10 minutes. Pour off the water and season as you like; no extended fuel burn is required.
- Pesto — As mentioned above, pesto is high in calories. It’s also easy to pack, has a long unrefrigerated shelf life and takes up very little space. Add a few tablespoons to your pasta of choice and enjoy a hundred extra calories. Amore brand pesto is available in a convenient tube that makes for easy packing. Better yet, make your own and pack in a ziplock bag.
Safe Catch — Smoked fish is a simple pleasure that feels like a downright treat in the backcountry. Safe Catch offers tuna and salmon in single-serve vacuum-sealed packaging. We’re talking wild-caught fish in low-profile packaging that doesn’t require refrigeration. Add the fish of your choice to your favorite freeze-dried meal or to a pasta dinner. You get valuable protein and calories plus added flavor that elevates a variety of different meals.- Top Ramen — If you’re not packing ramen with you on a bikepacking trip, you are missing out on easy, inexpensive calories. As shared above, there’s no need to waste precious fuel boiling the ramen for several minutes; simply pour boiling water over the ramen and cover for five minutes. The only strike against ramen is it’s bulky. The good news is you can cram it in almost anywhere. That’s 380 calories for a mere 0,49 cents! For bonus calories, add instant mashed potatoes to create a high-carb dinner.
- Tortillas — Everything is better in a tortilla, right? Okay, maybe not the ramen, but almost any freeze-dried meal can be served in a tortilla. A good flour tortilla adds 150-200 calories to any meal. Plus, they pack nicely, travel well, and although a bit heavy, they are widely available in almost any grocery store.
Check out more of our bikepacking tips and gear reviews
Ortlieb bikepacking bag reviews
Bikepacking route planning tips
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