63 Easy Backpacking Food Ideas

Meal planning for your next backpacking trip? We’ve compiled our favorite backpacking food, ingredients, and meal ideas to help you get started. Find out what food is best for hiking, discover new ingredients, and get inspired by some of our delicious DIY backpacking meals.

Backpacking is a great way to unplug, immerse yourself in nature, and challenge yourself both physically and mentally. While there’s a lot of natural beauty to take in, experienced backpackers know that no matter how spectacular the scenery is, much of the day is spent thinking about the next meal! 

But figuring out what food to pack can a be challenge all on its own! Since you’ll be carrying all of it on your back, backpacking food needs to strike the right balance between nutrition, weight, and ease of preparation. 

In this post, we share our favorite backpacking food ideas from hundreds of miles hiked over the past few years. From freeze-dried options to homemade meals, you’ll find all kinds of filling and lightweight trail food to help keep your energy up and your taste buds satisfied.

Best backpacking breakfasts

A good day on the trail starts with a solid breakfast. If you want to get through the morning without running out of steam, it’s best to start with some calories in the tank.

Seasoned backpackers will be familiar with the tried-and-true instant oat pouches, but thankfully there are a lot more options to try out!

Here are some great backpacking breakfasts to check out.

Backpacking lunches, snacks, and bars

When backpacking, the goal is to consume a constant stream of calories throughout the day. This slow drip offers your body a consistent and stable fuel source, preventing your blood sugar from taking a nosedive (i.e. bonking). 

So we like to think of hiking as one long, moveable feast. Lots of little snacks here and there, a big snack in the middle of the day (otherwise called lunch), and then more snacking throughout the afternoon. The key to making this work is variety. Don’t get burnt out eating the same thing over and over.

Best backpacking dinners

After a long day on the trail, one of the best things is taking off your pack, finding a comfortable stop to sit, and enjoying a hot dinner! This is why it’s so important to find a meal that will end your day on a happy and satisfying note. 

While there are more backpacking dinner options to choose from than ever before, our suggestion is to stick to your pre-existing food preferences. If a meal sounds good to you now, you will likely love it after a long day of hiking. But if you’re not an adventurous eater at home, then you’re likely not going to magically become one on the trail. 

Here’s a list of the best backpacking food brands along with a few of their top-rated entrees:

Save some cash! If you buy 8 or more backpacking meals at a time from REI, you’ll automatically get a 10% discount on all of them!

DIY Backpacking Meals

The sky’s the limit if you’re up to making your own homemade meals. While we’ve developed a lot of different backpacking recipes over there years, we’ll give you a shortlist of our some of our favorites meals (ssh, don’t tell the others!):

Dehydrator Recipes: 

• Mushroom Risotto
• Red Lentil Chili
• Tortilla Soup
• Minestrone
• Beef Stroganoff
• Chili Mac

No Dehydrator Required:

• Thanksgiving Bowl
• Fried Rice
• Chicken Marbella

More DIY Backcountry Meal Resources:

• One Pot Backpacking Meals (no dehydrator required!)
• DIY Lightweight Backpacking Meals
• Dehydrating Food Basics
• our full backpacking dinner recipe index

Grocery store backpacking food ideas

Whether you’re making your own custom meals or looking for a way to stretch a freeze-dried meal, there are a bunch of store-bought ingredients you can pack along.

• Idahoan Potatoes: These are great to add to packaged meals that are on the saucy side (like beef stroganoff).
• Stovetop Stuffing: Another favorite to have on hand as a “side” or in packaged meals. Combine it with instant potatoes for a Thanksgiving Bowl!
• Ramen: Does it get more basic than ramen? It’s cheap, lightweight, and calorie-dense. Toss the sodium packet and doctor it up — see our Revamped Ramen recipe for ideas.
• Knorr Pasta and Rice Sides: These are great (and cheap) building blocks for meals. Add chicken, tuna, or TVP for protein.
• Annie’s Mac and Cheese: Add chicken, tuna, or TVP for protein, and throw in some dried veggies to make a full meal.
• Bulk nuts & dried fruit: Build your own trail mix using the bulk bins at your grocery store!

Desserts

When developing your backpacking meal plan, desserts absolutely have a place! As a special treat to mark a notable day, a morale booster after a real doozy, or just a way to pad out your dinner’s calorie count, backpacking desserts are a great trick to have in the bottom of your bear barrel.

Condiments and extras

These are some of our favorite extras to add either calories or flavor to our meals.

• Heavy cream powder
• Whole milk powder
• Coconut milk powder
• Cheese powder
• Butter powder
• Ghee packets
• Olive oil packets
• Coconut oil packets
• Soy sauce packets
• Tamari packets (gluten-free)
• Various hot sauce packets
• Mayo Packets
• Honey Packets
• True Lemon & True Lime flavor packets

Backpacking Food Strategy

In this section, we’ll dive into everything you need to know about making a backpacking meal plan—what to look for when choosing meals, packing the right amount of food you need, tips for planning and packing, and a few gear suggestions.

What makes for good backpacking food?

There are a few factors to keep in mind to determine the types of food that are good for backpacking: shelf-stable, weight, calorie density, and cook speed.

Shelf-Stable: It’s important that the food can be stored at room temperature. You can get away with bringing some things like cheese or salami if you eat them in the first few days, but for the most part, you want to skip anything perishable.

Lightweight: Since you have to carry it every step of the way, backpacking food should be as lightweight as possible. Dehydrated and freeze-dried foods tend to be lightest, though there are plenty of everyday grocery store items that fit the bill as well! 

Calorie Dense: Backpacking takes a lot of energy, so you need food that can properly refuel you. When we plan our backpacking food, we try to average 125+ calories per ounce to keep the weight down.

Cooking Time: Consider how much patience you have to cook your food and how much fuel you will be bringing. We highly recommend quick-cooking meals that are easy to prepare

How much food should you pack for backpacking?

Backpacker magazine suggests that backpackers who plan to hike long days with a heavier pack should aim for 25-30 calories per pound of body weight, per day.

If you’re going to do shorter days (less than 2 hours of hiking) or will cover less strenuous terrain, you can scale it down to 21-25 calories per pound of body weight, per day.

Instead of eating just three meals per day as you might at home, aim to eat snacks throughout the day and consume 30-60 grams of carbohydrates per hour (source) to keep your energy high and prevent you from hitting the proverbial wall.  

These, of course, are just a starting point and you should adjust based on your own experience.

How to plan food for backpacking trips

Meal planning for backpacking trips is one of our favorite things to do! It’s also super important.

Creating a detailed meal plan not only ensures you bring enough food for your trip but allows you to see how all your meals will work together. It’s a great opportunity to build in variety and double-check that you’ll be hitting your calorie count every day. 

Here are the steps that go into our meal-planning strategy:

1.) Figure out how many days your trip will be and how many meals you will need on the trail. 

2.) Determine how many calories per day you need to pack (see the previous section).

3.) Choose your breakfast and dinner for each day. Take note of how many calories are in each of these.

4.) Subtract the calories of your breakfast and dinner from your total calorie number. These are the remaining calories that you’ll need to pack in the way of snacks, lunch, drink mixes, or dessert. Plan for a variety of snacks, keeping in mind that to avoid losing steam during the day, you’ll want to eat 30-60 grams of carbohydrates per hour as you hike.

Best backpacking meal tips

Bring salt and hot sauce: While most backpacking food on the market is made with more than enough sodium, occasionally you’ll get a meal that tastes undersalted (or under-spiced). A few salt and hot sauce packets don’t add much weight, and can really save the day.

Bring food you know you like:  Now is not the time to break out of your taste buds’ comfort zone. We understand the desire to want to eat healthy on the trail, but you will likely be burning more calories than you’ll be consuming while backpacking. So treat yourself. 

Shop for calorie density: The food you chose should be calorically dense, yet still lightweight. We personally try to choose food that provides 125-135kcal per ounce.

Pack a variety of flavors AND textures: For longer hikes, make sure to plan in a little variety, especially for your snacks. 

Bring extra food: Try to pack at least one extra meal for breakfast and dinner—just in case. Maybe you’re extra hungry, maybe something in the package spoiled, or maybe you just want the flexibility to rotate something out.

Packing & food storage tips

Proper food storage & critter protection: From field mice to grizzly bears, there are a lot of wild animals that are attracted to human food. How you need to properly store your food will depend on the area, but methods include storing food in a critter-proof bag, hanging your food from a tree, or using an approved bear canister. Be sure to check the local regulations before you head out. Read up on how to use a bear canister or do a proper tree hang. 

Repackage food: Wherever possible, try to repackage food to make it lighter and more compact (either replace bulky packaging or squeeze the air out of it). It can also be a good idea to portion out snacks so they are quick and easy to grab.

Organize food by day: When packing your bear canister or food bag, add your food in ascending order—your last day’s food goes at the bottom, and then work your way forward so your first day’s food is at the top. This way you won’t have to empty your canister every time you need to find this afternoon’s snack. It can also be helpful to pack all of each day’s food into one large zip-lock bag to keep things organized.

Plan for trash: Remember that you’ll need to pack all of your trash out with you. Bring a large zip lock bag to stash it all in.

Favorite backpacking cooking gear

We have whole posts dedicated to backpacking cooking gear and backpacking stoves, but here are some of our favorite gear items to prepare your backcountry food on the trail.

Looking for more backpacking food resources? Check out our guides to vegan backpacking food, gluten-free backpacking food, these lightweight backpacking recipes, and our ultimate guide to dehydrating food for backpacking!

This post was first published on November 9, 2017, and was updated in 2023. There are a ton of new backpacking food products that we included!