The Pros and Cons of Cooking Food in the Great Outdoors

Food that you prepare outside in the open seems to have more taste. And if you're camping, appetites are bigger and everything feels so much fresher. Chances are that you're cooking food that you've carried with you - but you've probably also added any herbs or berries that you found by the wayside on your travels.

Cooking food isn't the easiest or most appealing part of camping. We've all experienced trying to light the stove in the rain, running out of water just when you need to thin the soup or discovering that you're missing a vital ingredient - like salt.

As a teenager, I went hiking with a friend in the Lake District. Because we had to carry everything on our backs, we decided that we would only carry lightweight food - and our solution was to pack lots of packets of dried soup. By day three, not only were we sick of soup, we were experiencing some weird side effects from all the e-numbers in the mixtures. My ears glowed red from a mysterious inner heat - chemical in source. But we didn't have any other food to cook.

The key to cooking food on a camping holiday is planning.

Carry a good lighter, a good stove such as a Trankia and some lightweight cooking pots and pans, and cooking food in the great outdoors doesn't look so daunting. Remembering to bring the right cooking equipment and utensils is one thing. But you'll be cooking food. And carrying all that food can be the problem.

While I still carry packets of dried food - because they are so light to carry and take up such little space - I steer clear of anything that contains a lot of e-numbers. This leaves me plenty of room to carry fresh food. Cooking food in the great outdoors is most fun if you use fresh food. And the best fresh food is the berries that you pick while you walk, or the fish that you catch in the river or lake that you pass.

Yes, it sounds a bit too good to be true. But I usually make sure I pass a supermarket or two on route. There, the berries are easier to find and the fish easier to catch. The idea is solid, and it promises to make the best part of your holiday the food you cook.