UKH

If you're about to embark on a big Munro or mountain multi-pitch day, starting well-fuelled is a must. But what food actually makes the best backpacking breakfast? From cold oats to salty meat, Fliss Freeborn rates some of the leading contenders.

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A useful, interesting article, thanks. Confirms more or less what I thought - I usually favour muesli for sheer simplicity,

I find a small child works for me, all the essential food groups 🤣

Home-mixed porridge here: oats, Nido, sugar, cinnamon, sultanas, cashews. Add boiling water, leave to stand in a cozy. Use rest of water to make home-mixed hot chocolate (with Nido again).

Pre-mixing at home is a bit of a faff, but on the hill, could hardly be simpler. Rehydration doesn't leave burnt-on porridge on pan.

Muesli, weetabix, dried milk mix for me.

Hydrate with warm water, eat out of mug. First small brew, a mixture of tea/ coffee + muesli. Next brew out of cleanish mug, eaten with sandwich, ideally french baggette with chorizo and cheese.

Crunchy Nut Granola for me: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/282723174

with Nido powdered milk.

Home made granola that contains crystallised ginger.  The biggest problem is stopping yourself from picking the bits of ginger out ahead of time.

T.

Thanks for sharing. If I'm overnighting on the Cuillin ridge say, it tends to be an endless conveyor belt of graze bags with the odd bag of peanuts m&ms, i.e. no prep, no refrigeration, no gas, yet there's still something there in terms of nutrients and taste. If it's an overnight on the moors and a bit of a social occasion then it's ready made curry and rice, beer, and coffee for the morning with the odd graze bag thrown in.

They're a total faff to peel though.

I do porridge with seeds added, but it has to be with powdered milk or hot chocolate powder! It is awful with water. 

Since when was simply strong coffee not a viable breakfast?

A big calorie flapjack bar from wherever and a coffee is my usual go to, or a cheese bagel if i have managed to avoid eating it the evening before....

I found home bargains stocks 39p flapjacks - three of these is a cheap and easy breakfast.  Actually not bad for lunch (and, in a pinch, dinner).  Certainly multiples cheaper than a £7 dehydrated breakfast pouch.

One might question the wisdom of putting it in if you don't like it.

Great to see you back on here, Fliss. There was I thinking you were too posh for us now you're in with your Islington Kitchen Cabinet chums. 

Expedition Foods do a thousand-Calorie sachet of blueberry porridge. One of those, a pint of coffee and a judicious zap from an ultralight cattle prod is usually enough to hoik me out of bed and back into my Inov-8s. 

Quite the secret weapon these things. You've noticed they're 500kCal a piece haven't you . 

God, the squashed brioches bring back some nightmares. The really cheep plastic wrapped ones were my go to for alpine starts but for efficiency when packing my very practical but somwhat hartless partner would squash each one on turn so it was as small as possible reducing them to cardboard like sugary lumps. 

Not just for breakfast, but I often take pitta bread as its already squashed flat.

People say tungsten carbide is the hardest substance known but that's because they haven't bitten at 2a.m. into a baguette that's been strapped to the outside of their rucksack for three sun-scorched days.

I hated people like you and your showy baguettes. My hartless partner viewed such delicacies as the hight of high altitude decadence and expressly forbade them. 

I hadn’t!  This is great news (for taking on hill camping trips) but awful news for my regular daytime consumption! 

True, but we wanted them for the versatility. In extremis, they could be driven into bergschrunds as snow anchors, or chunks could be hammered into granite cracks in lieu of wooden wedges.

Scrambled eggs with tuna are a favourite if the eggs can be kept intact.

Peanut butter wraps.

Tube cheese and ham in a pitta bread (I may substitute in tuna)

Porridge with chocolate chips in it

Rye bread with pate or tinned mackerel

Frankfurters in wraps with ketchup

All good solid options that I have had out on the hill, or bike packing!

Another vote for granola here.

100g Tesco strawberry granola in a zip lock bag with a spoonful of powdered milk.

Pour a wee bit of water in the bag (hot if it's been a chilly start), squidge it up and then eat directly from the bag. 

Washing up = licking the spoon.

Surprisingly good on the macros too.

This article made me ponder on whether my favourite dish as a teenager (fridge cold day old fried pizza) would be a great hill option.  It’s going to have calories, not go off.  Nutrient wise, onion or mushroom will give you something…. 

Ummm... Always...?

Breakfast is the meal  the night before ...

1. Porridge options - oats with instant custard and dried fruit - total faff free result, ideal winter rocket fuel if i can be arsed to boil water

2.Current favoured breakfast option - 100g of good chesse, 50g of high quality charcuterie and a few dried figs. Cheese selection important to push you over the all importnat 4kcal/g margin.

If cooking, instant Chinese noodles with enough water to make it a soup.

I used to be big fan of custard and dried fruit but that tends to be explosive in the bum dept.

If not cooking, raw porridge with seeds, nuts and dried fruit, or Aberdeen butteries (rowies) with added butter and/or pain aux chocolates. If I'm backpacking lightweight it'll be some horrible big cereal bar and some cheese. 

Last night's leftover pizza is a good shout.

whats this 'leftover' that people keep mentioning?

Does anyone have recommendations on powdered milk? I've bought Tesco or Sainsbury's own brand in the past and have never been very happy with the results, and I swear it goes off with age. Can powdered milk go off with age?

I camped on Kinder a few nights ago and despite a pretty unremarkable dawn my porridge in a pot was greatly improved with a handful of freshly picked bilberries/blueberries/whortleberries (delete as preferred) them - all picked from the tent porch. There is currently a decent crop of bilberries up high on Kinder.

I always use coffee creamer when camping. It seems to mix far better without lumps than milk. Any supermarket brand seems ok.

Did you mean whinberries?

Too used to packing malt loaf?

no blaeberries

Mustikka in my family! :⁠-⁠)

Yes, it can (and does).  Can't remember what it suggests on the box, but I'd not use it beyond six months from opening, even with careful storage in a cool dark cupboard.  It tastes a bit odd and unpleasant beyond that.

T.

.

Nido. Reconstitutes very close to fresh milk. Full fat, so, yes, it will go off after opening. I keep it in the fridge after opening.

Nido -it's not dried skimmed but dried full fat. Asian shops and some 'world food' sections in supermarkets though I think it's becoming more mainstream. Bit of a revelation, really

I have previously had something similar but I am not a big fan of powdered milk so used one of the instant chocolate milk powders instead. If you really want to go for it get the chocolate granola but it probably not great for your sugar levels and likely to make you crash just as hard as the haribo!

So you're saying my tub of probably five year old dried milk might be past its best?

Everyone else, I will look into Nido - all the supermarket websites have it listed, so maybe in a big Tesco you can just buy it off the shelf. I want milk with coffee, tea and cereal when hiking, but even freezing some before going only last a day in summer, and as I said my attempts at using powdered milk have always been a bit "bleurghh".

Lots of good ideas above but for me, where oats/porage are mentioned I always substitute ready brek. Much easier to slurp down in the morning if made nice and liquid, mmmmm.

As Basemetal says, Nido is a revelation; I've been using it for about ten years.

Those suggesting Nido are clearly gifted as the ones it does not give flatulence or the shits to... (It's also heavy on soy not really being powdered milk)

Good luck with that one!

Also, I liked this article and Fliss's on going hill food themes

Avoid Nestlé NAN baby milk powder…!

Interesting. Is this a common side effect?! 

porridge with freshly picked (ripe) blackberries is a rare treat

Not one I've got experienced, and I find myself eating spoonfuls of the dry powder. It contains a small amount of soy lethicin as an emulsifier, but then so do many powdered foods.

Maybe treesrockice has used one of the Nido-branded baby/infant milk formulas that Nestle also produce, rather than the milk powder. I don't think the formulas ate sold in the UK, only the milk powder. Googling suggests all the major supermarkets stock it now.

Ironically, I still generally try to avoid Nestle products on accounts of the baby milk thing, but one of the only products that I knowingly buy from them is milk powder...

I've been using Milfresh, it comes in pouches which I think are intended for filling coffee vending machines, but can easily be decanted into something smaller, I've used Berocca tubes (put through the dishwasher to get rid of any residual taste) or the small pots the prescription version of Gaviscon comes in, I'm sure you can find something suitable.  It's granulated so dissolves better than powder.

I too have found, though, that it does seem to "go off" with age, both in terms of the taste being a bit odd and in terms of it dissolving less well.  I wonder if there's residual moisture in it at the start and you lose that?  I have definitely experienced that though, and was surprised.  Couldn't tell you exactly how long it lasts though.

I can't stand porridge (but do like flapjacks, so my choice is often a flapjack and a piece of fruit, so as to get most of the calorie/slow burn benefit you do from heavily sweetened porridge) but have made it vaguely tolerable by adding loads of dried fruit and honey, but TBH given the quantities I might as well just have had dried fruit and honey.

Was surprised the article didn't mention Wayfayrer type meals and how non-dehydrated meals are heavy because they're not dehydrated and not because of pouch vs. tin, so a Tesco tin can be a perfectly OK cheaper bet if you're doing a walk where you'd have to carry your water in anyway!

Cold pop tarts and blue Gatorade.

E

I used to take pop tarts on Scout expeditions (to eat cold) for breakfast and lunch, surprisingly practical and unlike sandwiches even edible and not vile when a bit mashed.  Quite dry though.

I headed off without a stove for a month recently, for the first time I think, and in the end I came to the conclusion that in those circumstances it's hard to beat dry granola (even though I was carrying milk powder), with a couple of handfuls of nuts to go with. Might have had something to do with only having one mug and not wanting to mix granola into coffee, but it definitely did the job.

Going stoveless was a revelation, to be honest. I find it difficult to conjure up the energy to tend to essential admin after a full day, day after day, and disappearing the evening cooking was a joy. And having nothing to wash afterwards...

In less austere situations or winter, porridge with strategic additions (dried fruit, honey, whatever works for you) is hard to beat. But it does also mean cleaning a pan out afterwards.

‘Cleaning the pan afterwards’ is where the author and yourself are missing any easy trick. Pre mix your porridge adding to the oats what you want in a Soup and Sauce bag which can stand boiling liquids and are reuseable. Just add boiling water, stir, insulate in your hat for a bit and eat.  The empty bag packs flat and can sorted at home, but a quick rinse in a stream at some point in the day does no harm.

Thus the -3 points to porridge in the article is removed, and porridge moves up the leader board.

A very amusing and interesting article! I usually go for oats with powdered milk, but think your suggestion of also adding protein powder is an excellent idea.

However, maybe it should also have mentioned the issue of packaging after the food has been consumed. Obviously dumping/ burying/ burning should never be considered, and without access to bins or recycling facilities, carrying all waste containers is the only option. Therefore, for that comes in paper or plastic bags should score more highly than tins or glass.

Cold coffee?

Yes, the fats in it go rancid.

Cold-brewed in a Nalgene bottle.

Crikey, somehow that seems much more hardcore than the cold food.

I've found through years of leading scouts on expeditions that carrying milk for adding to things normally means it's turned to butter having been sloshed around in a rucksac all day....

My standard hike breakfast is ReadyBrek with sugar and instant hot chocolate powder pre-mixed in at home.  That way all I need to do is boil water and pour it on. I carry it portioned up in double freezer bags with all the air squished out so they're less likely to get burst.

In South Africa you can buy sachets of 'Oat-so-easy' which you just add boiling water to. This is not the same as the 'Oat-so-simple' available in the UK which requires milk.  If you break the pump on your stove on the first evening like I did, you can make Oat-so-easy up with cold water if you let it sit for 20 minutes.

I keep meaning to try ReadyBrek with instant custard powder to make breakfast custard .

You don't really need milk for oats so simple (my go to standard camping breakfast). I don't know what weird stuff they put in it but it seems fine with water (I can stomach normal porridge with water).

Cold-brewed coffee is delicious in warm weather regardless of need (in my humble opinion).

Hats off to Fliss for not only recycling her leftover mackerel pesto pasta recipe as a breakfast on UKC, but also recycling her journalism by offering the same advice on Radio 4's "Kitchen Cabinet" panel show this morning!

A proper, full fat Scottish Breakfast complete with eggs (they basically come in their own container), bacon, Lorne Sausage and a tattie scone. It's a colossal faff but it's so worth it.

 >  the fats in it go rancid.

Storing in the freezer helps stop that, long-term. Same with nuts and flour.

I agree. I find them perfect. Rarely if ever properly cook them these days, just add boiling water and insulate for 5/10mins. If I'm bothying I often just take the ones in pots.

Proper oats are to much hassle, ReadyBrek too sweet and sugary (might as well have Frosties or Coco Pops).

Avoid ever needing to worry about breakfast by waking up just before lunch.

Sousage and beans? Sign me up!