Backcountry Cooking: From Pack to Plate in 10 Minutes

Rating:
Summary: Not my first pick, but may be good supplment for hikers.
Review: After reading many reviews, I purchased this book, BACKCOUNTRY COOKING, and THE BACK-COUNTRY KITCHEN by Teresa Marrone. I can't help but compare the two books, so my opinion on this book is relative to my opinion of the other.

The introduction of BACKCOUNTRY COOKING categorizes camp chefs as Ascetics, Pragmatists or Gourmands. This book leans heavily toward the ascetic-pragmatist end of the scale. As the subtitle, FROM PACK TO PLATE IN 10 MINUTES, may suggest, the emphasis is on quickly-prepared meals. As a consequence, the meals tend to be simple. If you're someone for whom part of the challenge of the camp experience is to create fabulous multi-course meals in the wild, this book is not for you. And, as expected for a book from BACKPACKER magazine, the emphasis is on light packing and cooking with a single-burner stove.

The first part of the book discusses ingredients, tool and procedures as does Marrone's book, but I find the discussion in THE BACK-COUNTRY KITCHEN to be better and more complete, in particular, providing much more detail in home drying foods. BACKCOUNTRY COOKING discusses a plethora of grains, most of which I've never seen in a grocery store. (Different kinds of oats, different kinds of rice, bread bases, etc.) Baking methods are very briefly touched upon, but the book goes little beyond single-burner stove-top cooking.

Sidebars from different magazine contributors are interspersed throughout the book, and give good tips. Some black-and-white photos are also sprinkled throughout the book.

After the introduction, the book goes into the chapters containing the recipes, with each chapter representing a meal or course. One very nice thing is that each recipe includes nutritional information.

Now, I just have a so-so opinion of this book, and it was hard for me to establish why. Like I said, I found the introductory information to be better in the other book. But I think part of my indifference is due to the recipes. There seem to be a lot of ethnic foods - Oriental, Middle Eastern, Mexican. The desserts are mostly rice and bread puddings (yick), and include mincemeat (for dessert?!). Maybe you eat a lot of hummus, but I suspect many people will find that a lot of the recipes are not the kind of things you find at home, and perhaps the trail is not the best place to find out that your body has strange reactions to strange food. Furthermore, many of the ingredients, such as the grains and beans, are things I just don't see in the local supermarket. To the author's credit, they give a complete appendix of mail-order companies, but I'm not particularly excited about paying shipping to experiment with recipes.

Teresa Marrone's book, although including more multi-burner, multi-pot recipes for canoeists, car campers and others able to carry more gear, also has many single-burner lightweight recipes for hiking. It seemed to me that her book had more recipes that BACKCOUNTRY COOKING but, in fact, the number of recipes were similar. (BACKCOUNTRY COOKING has 144, and THE BACK-COUNTRY KITCHEN has 150.)

My recommendation is to start with Marrone's THE BACK-COUNTRY KITCHEN. If you feel the need for more single-burner meals, or more quickly-prepared meals, augment it with BACKCOUNTRY COOKING.



Rating:
Summary: Eat Well
Review: If you are looking for a book full of recipes, then this is the book for you. I would say they make up about 80% of the book. The first part is about gathering ingredients and there is a little wisdom about taking precautions against animals. I got this book to complete the series, but I don't really like to read a bunch of recipes, but someday I might.

Rating:
Summary: Mostly recipes
Review: If you are looking for a book full of recipes, then this is the book for you. I would say they make up about 80% of the book. The first part is about gathering ingredients and there is a little wisdom about taking precautions against animals. I got this book to complete the series, but I don't really like to read a bunch of recipes, but someday I might.

Rating:
Summary: Lots of useful advice and stories mixed in with the recipes.
Review: If you subscribe to Backpacker magazine the things in this won't suprise you, but having them all collected together is great. Lots of interesting recipes, good stories about cooking, and useful advice really rounded out my bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: Lots of useful advice and stories mixed in with the recipes.
Review: If you subscribe to Backpacker magazine the things in this won't suprise you, but having them all collected together is great. Lots of interesting recipes, good stories about cooking, and useful advice really rounded out my bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: Eat Well
Review: This book has a good amount (it's not War and Peace) of recipes that are tasty and easy for backpacking! Also a chapter or two of good advice concerning food in general...how to pack it, what kinds of things work, making your own dried foods, etc. Each meal has a chapter, like Breakfast, Lunch, whatever...there are no-cook things, all the way to fresh baked bread on the trail and pizza. Yum! (well no I haven't done the pizza or bread but I'm going to try it since they sound so good! And easy too)

Rating:
Summary: Finally a book for those that like to eat
Review: This book is excellent. It may not have the largest number of recipes, but the ones it does have are well thought out, backpacker friendly, and just plain good. The book has a lot of variety too. Each recipe is organized into two parts, the pre-hike preparation (what to do at home) and then then a on-trail section. The authors have tried to simplify the on-trail requirements making meal time easier. The book emphasizes using standard ingrediants (no more expensive store bought freeze-dried stuff) and includes instructions for preserving (dehydrating) your own.