Southern Comfort Food Ideas for Camping & Backpacking Trips

Among the most iconic regional cuisines in the U.S., Southern cookery—a magnificent hodgepodge of Native American, African, and European influences—features no shortage of soulful comfort food. From grits and cornbread to fried okra and biscuits and gravy, not to mention an entire galaxy of barbecue styles, these are dishes and sides that melt the taste buds (in a good way) and warm the spirit.

But can you pull off Southern food recipes at the campsite? The short answer is: Yes, you bet!

A whole slew of Southern and Southern-style dishes can be readily adapted for camping and even backpacking setups. But if you don’t feel like cooking, Mountain House offers several super-convenient freeze-dried meals that take their inspiration from this beloved culinary tradition, making it even easier to enjoy it out in the Great Outdoors.

Read on for some great Southern food ideas for campers and backpackers, including that stellar lineup of Mountain House options.

Why Is Southern Comfort Food Perfect for the Outdoors?

Southern cooking naturally fits the pace, conditions, and appetite that come with time outside. Think:

• Warm, filling meals built for big days: Hearty stews, cornbread, beans, and slow-cooked meats offer real fuel after long hikes or chilly nights.
• Simple ingredients with bold flavor: Spices, smoke, cured meats, and pantry staples pack a ton of taste without requiring an elaborate kitchen.
• Easy one-pot or campfire cooking: Many Southern staples are already suited for cast-iron pans, Dutch ovens, or simple boil-and-simmer prep at camp.
• Recipes made to share: Large-batch dishes like jambalaya, chili, and biscuits make it easy to feed a group around the fire.

How to Prepare Southern Food While Camping

To make Southern-style food even easier to whip up on a camping trip, consider following these straightforward tips:

• Use freeze-dried meats or pre-cooked proteins such as sausage, pulled pork, and chicken
• Pre-cook your rice (or use instant rice)
• Favor one-pot or skillet recipes
• Pack instant grits, cornmeal mix, and/or instant potatoes
• Bring relevant seasoning packets: Cajun, Creole, garlic, BBQ rubs, etc.

Southern-Style Camping Meal Ideas

The following Southern camping good ideas are of the “DIY” variety but are all fairly simple and certainly all hearty. (We’ll follow up this section with Mountain House options that give you the speed and ease of the freeze-dried route.)

Campfire Biscuits

Biscuits are part of the backbone of Southern cookery, and certainly one of the components of that cuisine that have become go-to staples for all sorts of campers. You can buy packaged biscuit mixes or put together your own mix of dry ingredients ahead of the trip. To make your own biscuits, simply: 

1. Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt before the trip.
2. At the campsite, combine the dry mix with the butter and buttermilk.
3. Stir, knead, and form a dough. 
4. Shape into individual biscuits.
5. Bake over campfire coals in a preheated Dutch oven, deep cast-iron frying pan with a lid, or pie iron.

Biscuits make for a versatile substitute for bread on a camping trip: enjoyed on their own with a slather of butter, honey, or jam; anchoring a breakfast or lunch sandwich; or dunked in a soup or stew. And then of course, there’s...

Biscuits & Gravy

Use those camping biscuits to cook one of the all-time classic Southern dishes: biscuits and gravy, of course! Cook up your gravy in a separate Dutch oven or cast-iron skillet, browning broken-up sausage and then adding flour and milk to stir up a creamy, luxurious roux.

You don’t even need to expend that effort to relish some mean biscuits and gravy around the campfire (or the campstove). Our Mountain House Biscuits & Gravy pouch features genuine buttermilk biscuits, sausage patties, and a rich gravy, and it’s ready to tuck into in less than 10 minutes!

Cheesy Grits With Sausage

Cheesy camping grits make another pitch-perfect one-pot Southern-style breakfast. Use instant grits to save time and fuel, mixing in the cheese of your choice and smoked sausage for a fortifying—and crowd-pleasingly delicious—kickoff to your day.

Camping Gumbo

Definitely more a car-camping culinary endeavor than a backpacking one, gumbo is ideal for a lazy, convivial afternoon or evening around the fire, mustering all hands on deck for chopping ingredients and tending to the slow-cooking roux on a one-pot journey to delectability.

You could, of course, do some of the prep work ahead of time: making stock, chopping and dicing veggies (onions, garlic, bell peppers, celery, and what have you), pre-cooking rice, and perhaps pre-cooking some of the proteins, such as chicken—saving the sausage- and shrimp-cooking for the campsite. 

Add all of the ingredients to a pot over the campfire and enjoy the aroma as they bubble and come together into a delicious gumbo. 

Sweet Potato & Sausage Hash

This is another one-skillet masterpiece of a camping breakfast (or anytime meal, really). Cook sausage in a frying pan on the cookstove or over a fire, then add diced sweet potatoes, onions, and whatever seasonings to the meat to finish, covered over medium heat, until the taters are soft.

One-Pot Camping Jambalaya

A marvelous medley of meat, seafood, vegetables, spices, and rice, jambalaya is, like gumbo, a great choice for feeding a whole group of people at the campsite—and another dish beautifully suited to a Dutch oven or cast-iron skillet. 

You can keep it rustic and simple while still capturing the classic flavor. Bring along:

• Proteins: andouille sausage (pre-sliced), smoked chicken or rotisserie leftovers, and peeled shrimp
• Veggies: diced onion, bell pepper, celery, and garlic
• Base: long-grain white rice
• Liquids: canned diced tomatoes and a small carton of broth
• Seasonings: paprika, cayenne, thyme, bay leaf, black pepper, salt, oregano, or Cajun seasoning
• Flavor boosters: hot sauce and Worcestershire

And here again, some pre-gaming at home can make the job of making camping jambalaya easier. Pre-cook the meat and rice, chop vegetables, and mix your seasoning blend into a small bag or jar so it’s ready to toss in. With everything prepped, you’re basically sautéing, simmering, and letting the rice soak up all that smoky campfire goodness.

Dirty Rice

This defining Creole side dish, also commonly called “Cajun rice,” is easy enough to adapt for camping. The “dirty” in the name comes from the hue of rice cooked in ground meat—beef, pork, what have you, plus (often) chicken livers—alongside bell peppers, celery, onion, and seasonings. Green onions are a common garnish. 

You can make this from scratch at the campground in a one-pot/skillet process, or use any of the numerous varieties of prepackaged instant dirty rice.

Simple Shrimp & Grits

This Lowcountry breakfast—which can, of course, be savored for any meal of the day—is simple and quick to whip up at the campsite. Here again, instant grits are an efficient choice; add them to boiled water and stir in grated or cubed cheddar or whatever cheese you prefer.

Shrimp, of course, cook fast in a skillet, using cooking oil or butter for the fat and dressing the prawns in lemon juice. Pile the cooked shrimp atop your steamy, creamy grits and garnish with some parsley.

Campfire Cornbread

Cornmeal’s a staple ingredient in Southern cooking, one of numerous culinary debts to Indigenous traditions. And when it’s not being rendered into grits, it’s often going into the batter for cornbread, a skillet tradition for many campers.

You can buy packaged cornbread mix or make your own with cornmeal, all-purpose flour, baking powder, and salt. Add to the dry ingredients milk (powdered being an option), eggs, butter, and honey, then pour the batter into a cast-iron pan—preheated over coals or burner—and cover to bake.

A slice or three of this crumbly camp cornbread can, as with biscuits, serve any number of mealtime purposes, from being enjoyed on its own with butter to mopping up chili or stew.

Make-Ahead Brunswick Stew

A steaming bowl of Brunswick stew certainly hits the spot after a vigorous day outdoors. The geographic origins of this much-loved Southern dish, a frequent cameo at barbecues, are hotly debated between Brunswick County, Virginia and the town of Brunswick, Georgia (where an iron cookpot that local tradition claims was used to make the very first Brunswick stew in 1898 is on display).

You don’t need to wade into that argument; you just need to enjoy the stew! Historically, usually made with the meat of rabbits, squirrels, and other small game, Brunswick stew these days often features chicken, pork, and/or beef, cooked with corn, tomatoes, lima beans, and various other veggies.

Car-campers can make this at home ahead of the trip and reheat over the fire or cookstove; the flavors are liable to deepen during the stew’s residency time in a fridge or cooler.

Freeze-Dried Southern Meals

Maybe you’re craving Southern-style comfort-food flavors but don’t want to mess around with all the prepwork and cleanup. Or maybe you don’t have access to a cooler on your camping trip; maybe you’re miles from the nearest road on a multi-day backpacking journey, but you still want to get your chicken-and-dumplings on.

Well, good news: The Mountain House inventory includes more than a few Southern-inspired pouches, not only the aforementioned Biscuits & Gravy. Our freeze-drying process preserves more of the original flavor, texture, and nutrition of the dishes as compared with standard food dehydration. And, needless to say, that Southern home-cooking craving demands authentic flavors!

You can feel free to add an extra kick to any of these meals, too, via hot sauce or spicy seasonings.

Here are other Mountain House entrées that take Southern cuisine as guiding inspiration and which most assuredly fulfill camping-comfort-food qualifications!

Chicken & Dumplings

Sometimes nothing in the world hits the spot like chicken and dumplings. Fortunately, it can hit the spot even in the deep backcountry thanks to our just-add-hot-water Mountain House version, a blend of chicken chunks and vegetables in mouthwatering white gravy.

Homestyle Chicken Noodle Casserole

Look up “comfort food” in the dictionary, and you might just find our Homestyle Chicken Noodle Casserole—featuring real chicken chunks alongside green peppers, celery, and mushrooms in white-sauce-smothered noodles—as the entry.

Beef Stew

Trust us: On the heels of a 10-mile hike, an afternoon of fishing, or maybe an ambitious summit attempt, you’re going to want to—maybe even need to—tuck into a steaming pouch of our Mountain House Beef Stew! The tender, exquisitely cooked beef joins forces with a medley of veggies, including carrots, peas, and potatoes, for a robust and warming meal.

Chicken & Rice

Our Chicken & Rice entrée is another straight-shooting camping comfort food, combining the namesake ingredients with red bell peppers, celery, and carrots. The result? Elegantly simple perfection!

What Gear Works Well for Southern Camp Cooking?

The perfect kit for Southern camping food is likely going to incorporate a Dutch oven and/or cast-iron frying pan with a lid. Some tools make kettle-cooking easier, from lid lifters and lid stands to tongs, a shovel, and perhaps a tripod if you want to suspend your Dutch oven over the campfire. A campfire grill grate is also good to have on hand.

Backpackers, naturally, will have to make do with their lighter-weight and more portable cookware. If you’re packing into the wilderness with stock, though, cast-iron pots, skillets, and grill grates are back on the table!

Bring Southern Flavor on Your Next Camping Trip With Mountain House

To sum up: You’ve got lots of options to weave in some delectable Southern flavors into your camping meal plan. No option is easier than Mountain House, with industry-leading shelf life and unbeatable convenience.

Explore our full camping and backpacking meal collection today!