Camping Food Safety

Whether it’s the fresh air or the extra exercise, everyone seems to get hungrier than usual on a campout. But without the benefits of refrigerators and ovens, how do you keep food safe and healthy for your hungry campers?

Keep Food Cold

The first rule of food safety when you are camping is to keep food cold until you are ready to cook or eat it. Bacteria begin to multiply rapidly when food is stored at temperatures over 40 °F, and can grow to dangerous levels in only two hours. To keep your food cold on a campout, you will need coolers. If you’re camping for several days, use one cooler solely for longer-term storage. At home, freeze everything that will go in this cooler, and pack the cooler so the items on top are what you will use first. When you are camping, open the cooler only when necessary and close it quickly. Your items will stay frozen for several days this way. You can also add blocks of ice or frozen gel-packs to help keep your food cold. Blocks of ice will stay cold longer than ice cubes.

You can use another cooler for less-perishable items such as cans of soda, boxes of juice, bottles of water, and fresh fruit. This cooler will be opened more frequently, so you will need to add ice if you want these items to stay cold. Freezing at least some of the juice boxes and bottles of water at home will help items in this cooler stay cold.

At the campsite, store your coolers in a shady area and insulate them further by putting a blanket or tarp over them. Add new ice to the coolers as necessary. As long as there is ice in the cooler, the food should be safe to eat.

Pack Shelf-Stable Items

In addition to the foods in your cooler, you can pack shelf-stable items for extra food. These items don’t need to be refrigerated, so they will be safe food choices on your campout. Possibilities include:

• Peanut butter
• Canned tuna, ham, chicken, and beef (you will need to finish the entire can or cool/discard the leftovers)
• Dried noodles and soups
• Beef jerky
• Powdered milk
• Powdered biscuit and pancake mix
• Individual packets of condiments

Keep Everything Clean

You can expect to get dirty when camping out, but you still need to maintain basic sanitary rules. Start when you pack your cooler: securely wrap raw meats so they don’t come into contact with any other foods. Also pack meat at the bottom of the cooler so no juices will drip onto other foods as the meat thaws.

Before and after handling food, always wash your hands with soap and water, disposable wipes, or hand sanitizer.

You also want to make sure you don’t spread contamination from raw meat to other foods. Follow the same principles you use at home:

• Don’t use the same plates and utensils for cooked meat that you used for raw meat, fish, or poultry
• Don’t cut or chop vegetables on the same surface or with the same knife you used for raw meat, fish, or poultry

You will also need to wash your pots, pans, and dishes. Bring biodegradable dish soap for this job; you can buy it at a camping store.

Also be sure to clean up your campsite. If possible, burn leftover food in the campfire or put it in a secure trash can. Food scraps left around the campsite will attract bugs, raccoons, and, in some parts of the country, bears.

Safe Cooking

When you are cooking meat, fish, or poultry, you will want to be sure to cook it thoroughly. A food thermometer will help you determine when your meat, fish, or poultry is safe to eat:

• Ground meat needs to be cooked to 160 °F
• Other cuts of beef need to be cooked to 145 °F
• Pork needs to be cooked to 160 °F
• ot dogs and poultry need to be cooked to 165 °F
• Fish needs to be cooked to 145 °F

If you are making hamburgers, it helps to keep the patties thin so they will cook all the way through.

Water, Water Everywhere

If you are car camping, you can bring all the bottled water you need and you don’t need to worry about water safety. If you are backpacking for several days, however, you need to plan ahead. Water is heavy and you will not be able to carry all you need. However, you cannot drink untreated water from a lake or stream, no matter how clean it appears. You will need to have some way to purify your water.

The best way to purify water is to boil it. You need to bring the water to a rolling boil and let it boil for at least one minute – more at higher altitudes where the boiling point of water is lower.

An alternative to boiling water is to use water filters and water purification tablets. The purification tablets will kill most bacteria and viruses. However, they won’t kill all parasites. So after you put the purification tablets in the water, you still need to run it through a water filter with one micron absolute or smaller.

Remember to also use safe water for brushing your teeth and washing dishes.

Gone fishing
If you go fishing, you will want to make sure to store your catch safely for later eating. Follow these guidelines:

• Scale, gut, and clean your fish as soon as possible. You can keep them alive on a stringer for a short time as long as they have enough water and room to move and breathe.
• Once you clean the fish, wrap them in plastic and keep them on ice in a cooler.
• If you’re not eating your fish on the campout, eat or freeze them within two days of getting home.

Check For Spoilage

Remember that bacteria in unchilled food reach dangerous levels in only two hours—less if the temperature is over 90 degrees. You need to keep perishable food at a temperature less than 40 degrees. However, you don’t need a thermometer to check the temperature of your cooler: the ice will let you know if the food is chilled. As long as there is ice in your cooler, your food is chilled. If you open the cooler and all the ice has melted, the food may be spoiled.

Unfortunately, there are usually no visible signs of food spoilage at this early stage. The food will look and smell normal. If you are in any doubt about the safety of your food, you should throw the food away.

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