Camp Cooking Hack: How to Cook Pancakes

Camping is a wonderful family experience to disconnect from the world and reconnect with each other. There are many challenges that face families that want to go camping and cooking is one of the topics that I am asked most about.

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I’m here to share my favorite camp cooking hack for breakfast! Breakfast is often called the most important meal of the day and that is even more so while camping. You need fuel to start your adventure-packed day and a good breakfast will help carry you through the day. Pancakes are always a hit with my boys and a favorite breakfast while camping. I’m going to share my camp cooking hack for an easy pancake breakfast!

Check out my favorite camping gear for families, including cooking supplies, to get ready for your next camping trip.

Pick your Mix

Even if you are used to making pancakes from scratch, camp cooking is all about ease. That is why I recommend using a pancake mix.

Don’t Worry about the Eggs and Milk

Personally, I like to have milk and eggs mixed in with my pancakes. I do think they taste better but, as I said before, camp cooking is about keeping it simple. You can make pancake batter with just water and that is much easier to do while camping. If you have a cooler, feel free to bring eggs and milk to increase the protein in the pancakes and make for a heartier breakfast.

Camp Cooking Hack: Pancake Breakfast

I know those first two tips are pretty obvious, right? Here is the ultimate camp cooking hack for a pancake breakfast! Use a container that you can easily shake a pour (try this one that comes with a whisk ball for easy mixing). Put your mix and water (with or without the eggs and milk) and just shake it up! This is also a fun activity to involve kids in and you don’t need anything fancy to do it. Even a simple container like this works (with just a little extra shaking). My oldest loved mixing the batter by shaking the container to mix up the pancake batter! I would give him the container while I prepared the cooking surface.

Cook on a Hot Griddle

Once you have your batter mixed up in the container, you just have to pour it onto a hot griddle and cook just as you would at home! I usually carry a small thing of cooking spray so the pancakes don’t stick as well. There are different types of griddles you can use, depending on where you are camping (see below). Having a pancake breakfast was a great way to start our day each day and (despite how their face look here) my boys loved it!

Clean Up

The best part about this hack is how easy it is to clean up! Once you are done with the batter, just put a little biodegradable dish soap into the container, add water and shake it to clean off any extra batter. Again, this is a great way to involve kids as they love to shake just about anything (especially something that makes bubbles when you do). Rinse out the container and it is ready to make more batter the next morning!

What to Use for Camp Cooking

The easiest is to have a propane grill like this one from Coleman. The one we use is nearly 30 years old and still works perfectly so it is worth the investment if you want to have more family camping trips in the future. Put a nonstick griddle on top and it makes an easy camp cooking surface for cooking pancakes.

If you don’t want to bring the whole set up and are planning on cooking over a fire, try this folding campfire grill. You can put it right over the fire for all types of camp cooking, including a pancake breakfast!

Looking for more camping gear for the family? Check out my ultimate list of family camping gear, including a full camp cooking list and a bonus list of beach supplies for camping by the beach.