Good Trail Food: Olive Oil
I’m traveling this week and just got back from a fantastic dinner at Carmines, and excellent Italian restaurant on Rush Street in Chicago. Incredible food. I had an appetizer tonight that I have been planning to bring on my next section hike on the Long Trail: olive oil with good bread and powdered parmesan cheese.
This might seems like an odd meal to bring on a backpacking trip, but olive oil is a very popular food with ultralight backpackers because it is so weight efficient and because it is quite easy to pack. For example, olive oil has 240 calories per once making it very calorically dense. By comparison, other backpacking foods provide you with far less than 100 calories per ounce, if you are lucky
If you want to bring olive oil with you on a trip, you can repackage it in a small plastic bottle or purchase ketchup-style restaurant packages of it to bring along in your food bag.
On my next hike, I will also be bring along some foccacia bread and parmesan cheese to eat with the olive oil. Parmesan cheese keeps extremely well on a backpacking trip because it is a very dry cheese with low water content. I’ll sprinkle the cheese on the bread and then pour oil on it to eat it, and to avoid having to bring along any utensils or paper plates. This will make a very satisfying dinner. I might also had some red pepper to the oil to give it a little kick. Try this sometime and let me know how you like it.
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Sounds great! Excellent! I just wrote it down in my pack list for my next trip. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Great idea. I’ve been trying to figure out how to incorporate Olive Oil into a cold meal, but had not thought of this. I saw the small ketchup-sized packets of olive oil at Subway, last time I was there. Next time I’m picking up a sub, I’ll grab some extra olive oil packets. Thanks.
This is another good idea. I will definitely bring cheese with me on my next backpacking trip (but this means can’t use my newly purchased Snow Peak pots!).
I cook with olive oil every day at home.
If you’d like to see a woman sampling (and by sampling I mean drinking thimbles of it) olive oil, I found this video podcast amusing a few months back:
http://www.delicioustv.com/blog/?p=108
I always take olive oil with me, and I like that foccacia & parmesan idea - going to give that a try next time.
On cold climbs I find that a quick swig of olive oil warms me up rapidly. The only downside is that it freezes at a few degrees below, so I usually keep a small bottle tucked in my jacket somewhere.
Chris - we have this pretty good restaurant chain called “Not Your Average Joe’s” on the US east coast that serves the foccacia, parmesan, red pepper infused olive oil combo as their pre-dinner bread basket. I love it so much I can’t stop eating it, so it seemed like a good thing to copy for summer trips when I don’t want the bother of a backpacking stove.
Extra-light olive oil is what we bring for lipids every time. It goes well with everything, and, as you say, keeps well and is calorie-dense. If I was getting fancy I might bring sesame or hot sesame oil too.
Powdered Parmesan or Romano works well to add some flavorful protein, as does cheddar cheese or cheese sauce powder. Dried egg or whole/skim milk powders are good too. I’ve been getting things like that from Barry Farms - good prices and service.
Beware of the individual packets of oil - the ones at Subway are mostly canola oil - only 10% olive oil.
It is about as calorically dense as regular olive oil, but extra virgin and virgin olive oil contains higher concentrations of antioxidants. If you’re going with light or extra light olive oil, it doesn’t make too much of a difference.
Sesame oil is very pungent - I found it’s an acquired taste. I personally wouldn’t want to eat it in this manner.
If you don’t like the taste of olive oil, try grapeseed, which is lighter, but much higher in omega 3 and antioxidants.
Peanut oil is a cost effective substitute, and is a bit more versatile.
Pasta works well with oil too, and is much denser than bread. Packets of salad dressing mix can add a lot of flavor to an otherwise bland meal.
You might also try solid Parmesan - it doesn’t last quite as well as the powdered varieties, but in cool weather, it will keep for at least a week. But, you can gnaw on a small piece of it anytime you start to get hungry.