Breakfast Ideas for Your Next RV Trip

Mornings are extra special when you’re camping. You wake up, hear the birds chirping, feel the fresh cool breeze, yawn, stretch and come to life.

But you’re hungry. Of course you are. Depending upon your day’s plan, you could get away with a power bar, some coffee or juice and be on your way. However, you’re camping. What’s the rush? Get a good meal in before embarking on your day’s adventures. Here are a few quick and easy camping breakfast ideas.

Who Wants Eggs?

Well, most of us. So let’s get cracking. For the skilled, you can over easy and make them look café-worthy. Or, you can simplify it a bit and stick with scrambled.

With scrambled eggs you can create nearly anything, but only the fluffy receives oohs and aahs. Add a bit of fat to the mix. Some people add a tablespoon of milk for every two large eggs. That’s fine, but you can do it without milk if you melt some butter in the pan before adding in the scrambled eggs.

Skillet? Use one that’s non-stick. We adore our cast iron, but only if it is well seasoned or has been used to cook some deliciously fatty meat. However, if it’s not well seasoned, it can be super-messy with eggs. Therefore, opt for non-stick.

Pick a skillet that will fit all your eggs. You don’t want six eggs in a six-inch skillet. Too many eggs make it difficult to create a perfect scramble.

And for the love of all that is good with camping, you must scramble the eggs in a bowl then move them into the frying pan with melted butter to greet your eggs. Whip those eggs and whip them good. Definitely add some salt, pepper or anything else if desired , throw them in the skillet and cook them low and slow.

When the eggs look like they might be done, add in other ingredients. Cheese them up with some sharp cheddar. If you’re adding veggies and want them crunchy, don’t do a thing to them beforehand. But if you want them smoked, by all means, fire up any other pan on high heat, season and sear your veggies before adding them to your scrambled eggs.

Another Step – Why Not?

Breakfast Burritos. Take that scrambled egg mixture with all the cheese and veggies and put them into a third of a soft flour tortilla (you can steam your tortillas by placing them in a covered pan over low heat), add avocados or guacamole, salsa of your desired heat, and maybe even a dollop or two of sour cream. Roll up your soft tortilla by folding in one end, then rolling up the goodies with the third filled side near you so it makes a neat little package.

As an added bit of delicious, sear the outside of your breakfast burrito by returning it to the skillet on medium heat. Turn it over after a minute to brown the other side.

International Foil Packs of Breakfast

The beautiful things about foil packs is the ability to pre-prepare them. If you like veggies all sizzling good for your morning meal, pre-chop and fill up some foil packs. For hash browns take potatoes and grate them up good. Mix some salt, pepper and maybe garlic plus butter with the grated tater and voila, you’re ready.

Just remember, if you want to add eggs you’ll first need to cook them quickly over a campfire or on a grill, so get those veggies in the foil pack going first. Tent the pack by wrapping the foil in a way that will allow air space allowing the veggies to cook quicker via steam. Once you give it a good five minutes on embers or the grill at medium-hot heat, carefully open up the pack, throw in your pre-scrambled egg mixture (salt and pepper to taste) mix everything up and put it back onto the grill/embers. Give it a good five minutes or so—how long really depends on the heat. There is no harm in carefully re-opening the foil pack to check. Cheese, if desired, can be added in right at the end over the egg-veggie mixture with the pack open.

The ingredients above make it so deliciously American, but you can also cross over a border or two for different, delicious flavors.  You can create any ethnic foil pack you desire. Want Mexican? Taco it up with black beans, jalapenos and a little bit of salsa. Italian? Drop in some pasta sauce, giardiniera of desired heat and mozzarella. Polish? Why not? Kielbasa it up! Slice those things thin, put them on the bottom of the tin foil pack, add peppers and onions and there you go.

More Traditional Pancakes

Those who love being active want to fill up with not only protein via eggs and select meats, but carbohydrates. Providing directions to make pancakes inside an RV on a stove seems a bit silly, so for this we are focusing on campfire pancakes.

Here’s the deal with pancakes over a campfire that’s no different than making them over the stove—amount of heat and thickness of batter matter. The batter is the right consistency when it’s slightly thinner than a fast food milkshake. The skillet/griddle is ready when you shake a few drops of water on it and they dance a bit before evaporating.

The beauty of pancakes is you can pre-make the batter, mixing in everything but eggs and additional mix-ins like blueberries or chocolate chips. Here is a pretty failsafe guideline:

• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 c flour
• pinch of salt
• 1 c milk (or 3tbsp dry milk and 1c water)
• 1 tbsp honey (or sugar)
• 1 tsp cinnamon (optional, but it’s awfully good)
• 2 eggs

Mix the dry ingredients together first. If you use dry milk and sugar you can stop right there and store it in an airtight container in a cabinet. For those who want to add liquid before storing, add in milk and honey, whisk it super good until everything is blended. Place the mixture in a zip-tight bag or similar vessel and refrigerate.

When you’re ready, set the batter out and let it warm up while you crack the eggs and whisk them together. Add the eggs and blend them in.

Put in a cup of whatever mix-in you want—berries, chocolate chips, finely chopped broccoli (not recommended but the kids have to get their veggies somehow).

Make sure the skillet/griddle is ready and get cooking!

Once the pancakes are done, you can go the standard route with pancake syrup or slice up a banana to top off your stack. You can also sandwich your pancakes with vanilla custard or rice pudding in the middle. Kids will love it and they’ll certainly burn it off on the trails.

Note: Take care with baking powder as it does get weak over time. You may need 3 teaspoons, or fewer depending upon your elevation.

Pie Iron Pancakes

First, get pie irons. They are super-versatile as you can make meat pies, fruit pies or anything that can cook between bread. It’s like making your own personal hot pockets over a campfire.

Fill one half of the pie iron combo with batter. Latch it up and cook on both sides of the iron for about 3 minutes (depending on the heat of the fire) with each side right in the embers.

Alternatively, you can also create your own fruit pies with cooked pancakes buttered on the outside, one on each side of the pie irons, and a fruit pie filling or jam in between them.

Waffles

Crazy right? Not so much. You can get a waffle iron similar to the above pie iron. The only difference between pancake and waffle is in the batter. For waffles, you need more fat to make them crispier and lighter. As such, take the above pancake recipe and add a tablespoon of melted butter.

Know what else you can make with a waffle iron? Brownies. Not recommending them for breakfast (well, maybe not) but simply fill the waffle iron with brownie batter, cook like a waffle and serve with ice cream and bananas and whatever else you want on a morning brownie sundae.

Muffins

Hearty oat. Sweet cranberry-orange. A good muffin with coffee can be the great start to any camping day.

First you’ll need something to contain the batter and make a muffin-like shape. You could buy a muffin tin, but where is the fun in that? Have some fun and cut a large navel orange in half, then take out the orange fruit and eat it, because it’s A) good, and B) good for you. Your vacant orange halves are your muffin cups. Don’t use a pineapple (too big) or a grapefruit (too sour) or a grape (too conceptually difficult). Stick with an orange.

Make the batter—you can go the whole mixing route if you like, or use it from a box. You can even use the pancake batter recipe and add in blueberries, that’s a win-win! Take one half of your now-vacant orange, fill it to the rim with batter. Put the other empty orange half on top of it and tightly wrap it with foil. Add two more layers of foil. Take your triple-layered ball and toss it right into the embers. Let it sit for a couple minutes then roll it over. It takes about ten minutes to work its muffin magic, but dang howdy they are delicious!

Anything you can love with a hint of orange taste will make a great muffin—you can even add protein. Add pre-cooked (to keep it crispy) bacon for a delicious  bacon and egg pancake-muffin.

You know what else you can cook in half of an orange peel?? Yep. You guessed it. A brownie with a hint of orange flavor. Mmmmm. Same theory, same baking time.

So there are a few thoughts for a delicious, simple, hot, carb-loaded beginning to your camping day. If you want more eggy dishes, click here. Have any breakfast recipe you’d like to share? Drop us a comment!