Cooking and Nutrition

Alcohol backpacking stoves are popular with long distance hikers and with good reason. Here are the 7 reasons why they’re a good option for backcountry cooking, especially if you’re a beginner, looking to soften the up front expense of buying backpacking gear. 1. Alcohol stoves are inexpensive Alcohol stoves are very …

Backpacking stoves can greatly increase your comfort and safety on multi-day trips and in challenging weather conditions. There’s nothing like hot food at dinner to warm you up after hiking in the rain all day or hot coffee after sleeping in a shelter after a cold night. However, backpacking stoves …

Resupply and Mail Drops Mail drops are a common way for long distance hikers to resupply on a long hike. Thankfully, post offices here in the states and abroad will hold packages for pickup by hikers and people who are just passing through an area. Hikers often send food, batteries, …

The biggest challenge I face on most backpacking trips is eating enough. The problem is that the food I bring or resupply in towns is boring and doesn’t have that much variety. Ramen noodles, rice sides, couscous, pasta, mashed potatoes, refried beans – they’re all monotonous to eat over a 2-3 week …

Reflectix Home Insulation is great stuff for making homemade MYOG backpacking projects. Consisting of bubble wrap sandwiched between two layers of tin foil, it’s relatively inexpensive, easy to find at home improvement stores, highly malleable, and thermally efficient. I’ve also been using Reflectix for the past several years as an insulated …

I’ve been using a canister stove as my primary cook system for the past 3-4 years. I like the fast boil times, and the fact that you can light them and turn them off in seconds. While there have been endless debates about whether canister stoves and fuel canisters are …

You’d think there was a simple answer to this, but it really depends. What you eat for breakfast depends on knowing what your body needs in the morning. It depends on external weather conditions, the number of daylight hours you have, the distance you need to hike that day, how …

Click here for a printable PDF version. Just a few more weeks to go and I’m going to start my White Mountain Challenge hike, a 230 mile unsupported, un-resupplied hike over all 48 of the AMC White Mountain 4000 footers, and everything in between. (see The White Mountain Challenge Guidelines and FAQ) …

I really like eating Ramen noodles on backpacking trips. They’re cheap, quick to cook and easy to resupply. In fact, I think that Ramen noodles, powdered Miso, and a few ounces of Olive Oil make the perfect backpacking dinner. The only thing that’s really missing is some protein, and while …

These instructions were contributed by regular sectionhiker.com reader Ken “Drip Dry” Holder. The cozies were co-developed by Ken and Lee “Revlee” Fields, shown above. A Cozy System for Freezer Bag Cooking My hiking buddy (Revlee) and I went through about 5 renditions of this design before we hit on something …

Long-distance AT hikers love to obsess over pack weight and gear choices. Eventually any extended or thru-hike planning effort will come to a decision on what stove to bring. For me, this was quickly remedied by the statistics on what kind of stove successful thru-hikers used and a huge percentage …

Benefits of Dehydration Dehydrating your own backpacking meals is a great way to add variety to your backpacking menu, save money, and eat a healthy diet. But those benefits aside, I’ve found that dehydrated food help with backpack volume reduction, weight reduction, and fuel savings. The fact is that dehydrated …

Dehydrating your food is an incredible way to add variety to your backpacking menu and improve the quality and quantity of food that you can bring along on strenuous hikes. Here’s a sample 9 day menu for the 100 mile Wilderness which gives you an idea of the variety and …