When you’re out on the trail, food is always an issue. You don’t want to carry too much, as that would add too much weight to your always-too-heavy-burden of a backpack. You don’t want to carry too little, either. The solution, as with everything on a hike, lies with lightweight options. With food, there are many things you can do to lighten the load. In this post, I will let you in on my own recipe for the most important meal of the day: Roel’s Awesome Hiking Breakfast Porridge!
What is it?
While I’m sure the mention of the word ‘porridge’ sort of gives away the general concept, allow me to share a little more details here. This is a recipe to make an instant porridge mix, mostly consisting of finely ground oatmeal (also known as Scottish oats) and milk powder. Note that I’m not using oat bran or instant/quick oats, as I consider the finely ground variety much tastier!
You’ll only need to add hot water to get a steaming bowl of tasty porridge out on the trail! You can choose to measure out the mix into daily portions for easy reference, or just separate the mix itself from the milk powder to leave the portioning up to the day’s demands. Sounds easy, right? It is!
What do you need?
Let’s talk about groceries. I’ve listed the things you’ll need to make a batch good for two weeks worth of breakfast.
One batch of Awesome Hiking Breakfast Porridge contains:
- Ground whole wheat flakes, AKA ‘Scottish oats’ (500 grams/17.5 oz)
- Milk powder (250 grams/9 oz)
- Raisins or pieces of dried fruit (or both!)
- Sugar (to taste)
- A few tablespoons of cinnamon
- Small ziplock bags (when you plan on portioning every breakfast meal)
- Two large ziplock bags (when you plan on making a single large batch)
Fill one bag with the porridge mix, and the other with milk powder.
When portioning: Set aside a number of ziplock bags, one for each breakfast meal. Then portion each bag as follows: three large tablespoons of milk powder, seven large tablespoons of Scottish oats, two tablespoons of raisins/dried fruit pieces, one tablespoon of sugar and two teaspoons of cinnamon. You can vary the amounts of sugar and cinnamon to your own taste, of course.
When making a single large batch all you need to do is mix everything except the milk powder together. Put it all in one large ziplock bag and put the milk powder in another. That’s it, you’re done!
The reason you’ll want to separate the milk powder is that you don’t want to end up with a watery wheat soup! Separating the milk powder ensures you can add it to the water first, then add the rest later once the water has turned to proper milk.
How to use it
When on the trail, heat up one-half litre (16-17 oz) of water without letting it boil. Add the contents of a portioned ziplock bag to the hot water and stir well. Leave the porridge to soak and thicken for a minute and it’ll be ready!
If you’re not using pre-portioned bags all you need to do is add three large tablespoons of milk powder to the hot water first, then add around seven large tablespoons of wheat mix to the milk. Make sure to stir the bag of oat mix before adding it to the milk!
Cold water can be used to make my Awesome Hiking Breakfast Porridge as well, though it will not taste as good if you do!
Smakelijk Eten / Bon Appetit / Buen Provecho / Itadakimasu / Tlachd ás do bhiadh / Enjoy your meal!
