One of the sheer joys of river running is sharing good food with good friends while taking in spectacular views. And unlike with a backpacking trip or other similarly spartan pursuits, on a river trip you can pretty much bring all the goods you need to whip up some gourmet fare. Truth be told, even the most humble spaghetti made with sauce from a jar tastes better on the river. Here’s a guide to planning meals for a private river trips, including how to organize the cook crews, meal planning ideas, and pointers to additional resources for kitchen camp gear and recipes.
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Through years of experimenting with different approaches to raft meal planning, we’ve come up with some tactics that consistently work to keep the prep time in camp to a minimum (we know you’d rather be fishing or playing bocce), accommodate different dietary preferences, and deliver memorably tasty—or at least filling—chow. (Check this post for meal ideas and recipes for every kind of eater, including vegetarians, vegans, and meat-eaters.)
These guidelines assume that you have the right number of rafts to support a fairly expansive array of gear and food.
Organizing river meals
Should every meal be a group exercise? We think not. Although that approach would probably save the most space, here’s the strategy we’ve found to be most harmonious for all.
- Assign one raft to hold all the main kitchen setup. It’s much easier to consolidate the essential kitchen gear (campstove, coffee pot, pots/pans, utensils) in one dry box. If you want to spread the responsibilities, assign another raft to hold the dishwashing setup.
- Assign cook crews. Convey in pre-trip communications who is on which cook crew. Arranging crews by family unit is typically easiest, but it’s also fun to combine people who don’t regularly see each other outside of river trips. Generally, 2-3 people per crew is the perfect number. Our rule for the supper crew is that when you’re on, you’re on. When you’re off, you’re off. If it’s not your night for supper, stay out of the kitchen. Don’t hover around commenting on the ingredients, critiquing the prep work, or even offering to chop. Go fish or hike or whatever. For those on the cook crew: This is your night to shine, from the first hand-crafted cocktail to the last dried dish. You get to do it all. The beauty of this plan is that it forces a shared workload on kitchen duty. This relieves the chronic over-achievers from doing everything every night and gives the less-in-charge people a chance to feel useful.
- Consider establishing breakfast as “on your own.” Although this might be controversial among some river parties, over time we’ve found that it’s easiest to let each party do their own thing for breakfast. People are notoriously picky about breakfast—not only what it consists of but when it’s served. That doesn’t mean folks can’t share their yogurt and granola, bust out some sausage and eggs, or make breakfast burritos with the previous night’s leftovers as the spirit moves them. But insisting on a set menu for breakfast just begs conflict. Some people don’t even eat breakfast, and some don’t get up until it’s time to load boats. People need to ingest food at their own pace in the morning, especially kids, so this meal is better left DIY. The only requirement is that the first person up needs to make coffee. We highly recommend you determine who the early risers are among the group (they will make that plainly known) and make sure they know where the coffee pot and fixings are. They will take care of the rest.
- Make lunch a potluck affair. Some river trips invite long, luxurious lunch stops at a waterfall or hot spring. Some are flotilla affairs with snacks passed around boat to boat so you can make some miles in flat water before the wind kicks up. Encourage everyone on the trip to bring shareable lunch food. Then the trip leader should declare a time for lunch, whether it’s conducted while floating or at a designated stopping point. Doing pot-luck lunches does require that people have access to their dry food and cooler food without a lot of unpacking, but I haven’t observed that to be a problem.
Raft trip meal ideas
Experienced river runners have their own go-to food for each meal, but if you have newcomers or are just looking for more ideas, here are our proven meal strategies. These meal suggestions will accommodate vegans, vegetarians, and meat eaters. If you also have people with food allergies on the trip, we recommend sending out specific instructions far ahead of the trip. We have had several soy-free trips, which was easy to navigate because we were given specific directions about how to uncover hidden soy by scrutinizing labels. Not too hard once you got the hang of it. (For more river trip food ideas, see “Easy River Camp Meals for Every Kind of Eater.”
River trip breakfast
As mentioned before, breakfast is easiest when it’s DIY. But if you want to do a group breakfast or people are looking for ideas, this meal plan will accommodate many eating preferences and eliminates cooking if you want to avoid a morning dish-washing session.
- Hard-boiled eggs (cooked pre-trip, stored in cooler)
- Yogurt (either assorted flavors, or offer plain with some fruit on the side)
- Bagels (plain, whole-wheat, and gluten-free)
- Hummus
- Smoked salmon
- Cream cheese
- Fruit (best bet is to cut up apples, red grapes, melons, and oranges or grapefruit—leave the berries and bananas at home as they will spoil before they’re eaten, guaranteed)
And in case people are inspired to make some magic out of the previous evening’s leftovers, we always have on hand fresh eggs and tortillas.
River trip lunch
Keeping in mind that lunch might happen while floating or while stopped on a sand bar, lunch should require few or no utensils to serve. Here are the cornerstones of our lunch plan:
- Tabbouleh or some other grain salad (protein-packed, stays fresh for days in a cooler, and amazing in a tortilla)
- Tortillas (everything goes in a tortilla, in our view). Pro tip: Bring whole wheat and corn tortillas to make the whole-foods and gluten-free people happy. Leave the white-flour tortillas at home; they just take up unnecessary space.
- Smoked salmon, beef/elk jerky, or canned tuna. Hard-core protein for carnivores and pescatarians. Also good in tortillas.
- Hummus
- Trail mix
- Oatmeal-and-chocolate-chip bar cookies. We call these “Johnny cookies” in honor of a particular recipe that will satiate any growing teen-ager. Homemade cookies with whole grains and chocolate are so satisfying on the river. No matter how rushed we get in our river trip packing, we never skip making these.
- Cut fruit. Every parent knows this truth, but it’s especially applicable on the river: Nobody wants an apple, but everybody wants some cut-up apples and grapes and melon. Make it easy for people to ingest a lot of fruit, especially on a hot desert river trip. The difference in the general energy level (and lack of heat-stroke crises) will be remarkable.
- Water. Get a big water jug out at the lunch stop and make sure everyone has an opportunity to top off. Don’t make it hard for people (especially river-trip newcomers) to ask for water. (Check out this post for tips on choosing water filters and carrying clean water on river trips.)
River trip dinner
Supper on the river is such a magical time, from the signature cocktail to the last bite of dessert—especially (or even if) it’s a super-great chocolate bar shared around. We assign cook crews for each night, and as mentioned before, our expectation is that the cook crew is in charge from the time the boats touch the eddy to the moment the camp is locked down that night. They are also in charge the next morning of supervising the kitchen pack-up, but not responsible for providing the breakfast food.
Here are our time-tested tips for the dinner cook crew:
- Serve a veg-and-meat-lover combo appetizer. As soon as people have their boats tied off and have shed their wet clothes, they are ready for a little something. First thing the cook crew can do to please the crowd is set out some cheese, crackers, hummus, and salmon or summer sausage or other smoked meats.
- Mix up a cocktail (or mocktail). We often bring a dispenser for a group cocktail that can sit on the corner of a camp table so everyone can self-serve. Make enough for everyone to have one or two—but not much more. As time goes on, we’re stocking up more on the delicious non-alcoholic beers on the market now.
- Pre-cook and freeze your main dish. This is by far our most urgently conveyed advice on supper, especially for hot multi-day trips: Don’t bring raw meat on the river. Instead, cook up a curry or chili or dal or other delicious concoction that can be frozen into solid flat packets in Zip-Loc bags pre-trip. That will be the base of your main cooler (the one that you only open once a day), with some dry ice if your supper slot comes late in the trip. (Check out this post for more food packing tips.) Along with your main dish, cook up some rice or noodles. Two-pot meal for a two-pot camp stove. This approach is especially useful when you’re pulling into camp late and you have hungry kids. You can heat up the main dish and get the rice or noodles cooked in about 30 minutes. Also: if you have vegetarians on the trip, make the main dish veggie and let the meat-combo appetizer take care of the meat eaters. It will be fine. (For a couple of easy make-ahead dinner ideas, check out our white bean chili recipe and our black bean with golden corn chili recipe).
- Serve some sort of greens. Bringing fresh, tender lettuce on a river trip can be tricky. We recommend chopped salads with sturdy veggies (cabbage, broccoli, carrots, etc.), or you can bust out the grain salad you introduced at lunch. Grain salads are amazing keepers in hot weather, especially if they have a healthy dose of lemon juice.
- Don’t overdo it on dessert. Cakes and pies and such are hard to transport on river trips. In our experience, people seem just as happy with some good chocolate shared around (and a chocolate bar takes up very little cooler space). Certainly if someone is having a birthday, bring out the double-layer velvet cake. But we’ve observed that a big dessert gets left essentially uneaten and then is an albatross the rest of the trip. Another option: Small things like cupcakes, or serve the bar cookies left over from lunch (as if).
More river trip meal resources
No matter what you serve on the river, it is going to taste better than anything else anyone has ever had. But with some years of experience, we’ve discovered that these tried-and-true approaches have helped everyone feel like they can go on a river trip without worrying about suffering from allergy attacks, forsaking their dietary preferences, or going hungry. (Or spending all their time hunched over a hot camp stove.)
If you’re starting to assemble your river kitchen gear, or want to spruce yours up, check out Game-Changing River Camp Kitchen Gear and our post on food packing for river trips.
Got some tips to share about river trip meal planning? Drop them here.
