Meats in Camp

[Kayak Jack]

I try different kinds of meats for camp. Jack's Link is the best store-bought jerky I've found. Others are good; I just like Jack's Links better. My home made jerky is better to me, because I add more smoke and more garlic. Can't ever have enough of those two, choice flavors!

You all know my opinions on such meats as Spam, Viennie snausages, hot dogs, and bologna. And, I've been nothing but disappointed by all versions of tuna and salmon I've tried - they all taste like canned fish. YUCK.

BUT - at Sam's. I found small cans of smoked salmon. Brand is Members Mark (Sam's store brand). It has a light, smokey flavor and a pleasant taste. Best thing I can say about it is - it doesn't taste like canned fish!

My stand by meat is canned chicken breast. Goes well with many dishes and cuisines (a cuisine is anything good to eat, if you like it).

each of us likes our own choices. I suggest you try this smoked salmon at home, and see if you would like it in camp.

 

[tx river rat]

I like fresh meat , :lol: the reason I carry the five day cooler,Now Jack has to admit he ate all the steaks , the sausage, hamburgers, and some more that was in the cooler
Ron

 

[Kayak Jack]

Damned guy twisted my arm, held a gun to my head, and a knife at my throat. Quite persuasive.

 

[oldsparkey]

Group camping , we have a ice chest with us (usually in Macs Canoe) and it is stocked with meats , Pork Steaks , Steaks , Chicken , Shrimp & Scallops ... whatever the guys settle on for meals in the evening.

Mac carries the meats , I have the cooking gear , someone else has the ice and between us in the evenings we have a good time when I start supper and even after supper with a adult beverage. Ist night out is always steaks and spuds done over a campfire.

For river snacks , Sardines , Vienna's , Deviled Ham , Tuna , and the rest of the canned meats with Ritz crackers is the norm.

If Oldyaker is along then we have the best Jerky there is , he gets it from his butcher and it is top grade ..#1 Jerky.

Solo paddling , Jack Link jerky for me on any trip , even road trips going and coming from paddling an camping.

Chuck.

 

[Swampy]

For all ya'lls interest ... Chuck will put you into mind of a raccoon going from trash can to trash can when you see him going from camp site to camp site begging for grub. How does he know what he is eating anyways??? :roll:

He has no dislikes! So it is simple to list what he likes ... noticed how he is baiting Jack on the jerk? ... a real pro ... he'll be eating Jack's jerky real soon ... yo just watch ...

and Jimmy ... aka ... Little Italy .... he's never known a piece of meat he hasn't already eaten ... no matter where it's from! ( He has never met a piece he hasn't loved either....)

Me? I just watch them eat <snicker>

Little USA
swampy

 

[oldyaker]

and Jimmy ... aka ... Little Italy .... he's never known a piece of meat he hasn't already eaten ...
Little USA
swampy

Dinosaur.....I haven't eaten dinosaur......but I'm still hunting.

 

[jimsong]

The best jerky, other than homemade, that I have found, has been "Robertson's" out of Marietta Oklahoma. I don't know how far out they distribute, but if you find a "Love's" store, they usually usually have it. (Labeled as Love's brand.)
A tad pricey, kind of like my homemade. My needs are simple. I only want the very best. :lol:

 

[Kayak Jack]

I made some homemade jerky about 40 years ago that set my teeth on edge. I sliced the beef, blanched it for about 15 seconds, set it on a dry towel, then put it into a large paper bag with salt and cayenne pepper. Shook it up, strung it over a smokey fire, and dried it.

Tasted great - until the cayenne kicked in. WHOOEEYYYY! Rockets to the moon!

 

[hairymick]

Fresh meat here, Steaks, lamb chops, (love me lamb) and sausages.

In the winter, I like to take home made meat & vegetable soup.

Oh yeah, there is allways a bunch of tins of tuna in the food box too and a pound or two of cheese. 8)

 

[Kayak Jack]

Mick,

I let Katie make homemade noodles (cup of flour, 1 egg, pinch of salt, make dough, roll out, cut into noodles, dry). She is proud of them, they taste great, and the add to the homemade meat & vegetable soup.

She also helps dehydrate the veggies (can be either canned or fresh) for the soup. She does all this for only a small bribe of dried pineapple. (Cans of sliced pineapple in the dehydrator.)

 

[jimsong]

Mick,
I love lamb, as well. But at least in the SW US.,I can't love it too much!
Even at Wally World lamb chops cost more than prime rib. I have a half leg of lamb in the greezer that I paid 14$ for, and felt like a shop lifter carrying it out of the store.
Before we were invaded by middle easterners and Mexicans, I could buy a lamb or a kid, the proper size for the smoker, for five or ten bucks. Now it's $30 to $50.
I've a friend that has 130 goats and has never eaten one. He says he can't afford to eat meat that costs that much.

 

[Kayak Jack]

My original reason here was to present another choice for canned meat in camp. Most canned fish tastes like, well, canned fish - and that's no compliment. This smoked salmon actually tastes pleasant.

Many more possibilities opened up in the thread. Lots of meats (and some that aren't real meat).

Canned chicken and jerky are my standbys. I no longer carry a cooler, less bunglesome. If I did it would be a Coleman Extreme because, as Ron showed me on the Brazos, they keep things cold a lonnnnnnnnggggg time.

And Ron found that string cheese and box wine help pass a pleasant evening, or two, or three, ....

 

[Swampy]

I like to take the foil packs of albacore, salmon, and tuna and mix a small pack with about 3-4 oz of cream cheese.
Place this , or spread this on a tortilla and roll it up. Yummy ...
I like these on the mid day break when Jimmy hasn't brought the corner butcher with him that day ...

These ingredients are good for some days in the cooler or dry stored. Carry peanut butter for diff on rolls ..

swampy

 

[jimsong]

Depending on how I was traveling,(Truck camping, canoe camping, and back packing have vastly different parameters.) the menu would change.
In truck camping, anything in the grocery store was useable.
Canoe camping was not a whole lot different than truck camping, in that I almost always went solo, so I had a lot capacity. Canned fish, canned chicken, the dreaded vienna sausage, canned ham, went along to use after the first two days. The first two days, I ate frozen meat.(It kept the beer cold.) I also took bacon. If you take bacon out of it's wrapping, and leave it open in the refigerator for a week or so, the water will evaporate, and it will keep much longer. It's not the same as the watery bacon we are used to, but's pretty damned good. Fresh eggs will keep a week or better, but dried eggs are readily available.
When backpacking, the weight got serious. I used the foil packed salmon and tuna a lot. I use dried beef a lot, not jerky. I love jerky, but it gets old after a week or so. I would cook a roast, dice it fairly small, 3/8 inch or so, and dehydrate it, vac-pak it with dried onion, garlic, dried tomato sauce, and a couple of unwrapped bullion cubes.
I would boil the water, pitch in the contents of a vac-pak, and when it boiled again, thicken it with instant potatoes. It ain't grandmother's homemade stew, but it ain't bad!
You can do roughly the same thing with dried roast turkey. I tried drying chicken with less than favorable results.
You can cook lentils or split peas, and dehydrate them, combine them with instant rice from the grocery store, vac-pak them with the usual garlic and onion and chicken broth cubes.dehydrated carrot, celery,, and sage are good in this mixture, but don't expect the veggies to rehydrate like fresh stuff.Toward the end of my back packing career, I discovered dried tuna. I bought it from "Arrowhead Mills". It is good stuff indeed! A little pricey, and the minimum purchase is alot. But you can vac-pak it in smaller portions.
This wasn't involved in the in the original thread, but, if you are going to be out for weeks, do not skimp on oil! I would lose one to one and a half pounds a day back packing. I imagine paddling takes many fewer calories.
But after a few treks that I came back so weak I could hardly walk, I started carrying oil in an aluminum bottle. usually olive oil. Canola would probably be a better choice, but I like olive oil.
(If my bones could take it, I could use a month or three of a pound a day weight loss! )

 

[Kayak Jack]

Jim San, you know how to pack for camping. I like your dried roast beef & dried veggies. Helluva good idea. I'll have Katie help with that, and add some of her noodles. JARVIS good eatin'!

I've dried both cooked and raw chicken. For cooked chicken, I diced it, put it in a wide pan, and rinsed it with hot water. Fatty pieces float to the surface and can be removed or trimmed. excess fat washes off.

Pat dry, sprinkle with seasonings, and dehydrate. Rehydrates slowly, so start it a half hour before other stuff.

I suppose, one could rehydrate with a bit of wine instead of water for more flavor? Yakus Eyetalianicus rehydrates himself with Dago red wine quite often. Taught me how. I got him to smoking a seegar from time to time in return. Now, neither one of us is worth a darn.

 

[jimsong]

Jack,
Although any egg will do for homemade noodles, a duck or a goose egg is a good bit better. A khaki campbell egg is about the same size as a large chicken egg. Any other duck egg, and especially a goose egg, you'll need more flour. And semolina flour works better than the garden variety flour. And dehydrated spinach rubbed to dust is a nice addition, as is tomato sauce dust.

 

[Kayak Jack]

Eggs from ducks and geese are a bit hard to get here. Last goose egg I had was on my head, from a trunk lid.

We had some duck eggs a couple years ago from my buddy in Ohio. If I ever get more, I'll try them.

Dried oregano or basil is good in noodles too. So is garlic powder. (Old Yakus Deflectus uses dried garlic in his toothpaste.) I like home made noodles in camp and at home.

 

[jimsong]

Jack, pparently Arrowheas mills no longer carries freeze dried meat at all. This place seems okay, but I have never used them at all http://www.storablefoods.com/catalog/in ... 1213157146

 

[hairymick]

Jim,

Lamb here is still one of our cheapest meats. Can get a side of lamb for about 40 bucks. I think it is because we have sooooo many sheep, even more than the New Zealanders and they LOVE their sheep

For those who live in rural areas here, it is no real big deal to have a gig going with a local farmer and buy a sheep on the hoof and slaughter it yourself. Huge savings there.

Goats are here in their millions (mostly feral) and I love goat meat too. Very similar to lamb

Ducks - plenty here mate.

I just took these two piccies from my back fence.

Another good source of camping food is fresh fruit.
We have planted our yard in such a way as there is nearly allways a fruit in season. (At the moment it is citrus.)

Just took these too. 8)

Valencia Orange

Emperor Mandarin

Washington navel orange

Lisbon lemon

 

[jimsong]

Mick,
You make me so jealous, I may have to just close my eyes, and hurry past your postings!
Each year, I get maybe 20 lemons, fifty limes, and I haven't got an orange yet! And to accomplish this meager harvest, I have to keep my "orchard" (four trees), in 30 gallon pots, and drag them into the greenhouse at the end of November, and drag them back out In April. And water them twice a week, and feritlize them once a week.
But I do get a viseral pleasure from picking a fresh lemon when it's 25 degrees(F) outside.
I figure each piece of fruit costs me about three dollars.
I actually have ducks, geese, and guineas in my back yard. No goats or sheep. I garden, and sooner or later, a goat will eat your garden, and flowers, and trees, and grand kids.
The body of water behind the goat: The Coral sea looks much smaller from that angle!
Jim