The Best Backpacking Meals of 2024

Rising from roots in emergency preparedness, Readywise has burst onto the backpacking scene with a whole slew of delicious dishes for each meal of the day. We’ve tested just about every one of them, as they quickly became our meal-of-choice for thru-hikes of the CDT and AT in 2021. Their approachable price point, solid ingredients, and respectable calorie-to-weight ratio made them shoo-ins for a financially strapped aspiring thru-hiker.

Hands down our favorite concoction from the brand is the Still Lake Lasagna with Sausage ($8). One of the more hearty options in its lineup, the lasagna has an incredible taste that fills in all the corners of a starving backpacker’s belly after a brutal day. We’ve sampled several different “lasagnas” from other brands, and this one strikes pretty darn close to that traditional bake-at-home flavor we’ve all grown to love. Pro-tip: chuck a handful of croutons on top for more of a crunchy, “baked” texture.

While this is an efficient meal to bring along, it does take a good amount of water (2 cups) to make, which isn’t awesome at dry camps. We also found it harder to rehydrate all ingredients in the meal when compared to other options (common with pasta meals). Make sure to give this meal the full 15 minutes to rehydrate and accommodate for elevation.

Aside from that, you really can’t go wrong with these high-energy backpacking picks. They deliver adequate, long-lasting energy, cook up fast, and are downright tasty to boot. And when you consider you can buy two for the price of a single Peak Refuel Chicken Pesto, you’re stretching your dollar pretty far on trail.

Hoooboy, do we love the taste of Pad Thai on trail! We don’t even care that it’s on the heavy side, as it’s quickly become our all-time favorite flavor for any adventure. Backpacker’s Pantry Pad Thai ($10) not only tastes amazing, but also has you add several ingredients throughout the cooking process, making it feel like much more of a home-cooked meal than just pulling an oxygen absorber from the pouch and dumping water in.

Boil 2 cups of water (yeah… a bit much) and pour it in, squeeze a pouch of peanut butter into the noodles and let them sit, and then sprinkle actual peanuts and flavorful sriracha lime powder over the final product. We’ve got Chef Boyardee over here! Trust us — after months of mixing nothing but hot water with your meals on a thru-hike, this feels like cooking for royalty.

We’ll often bring some extra sauces and spices to spruce up our freeze-dried meals, but this one needs no additions, making it our choice to doctor up ourselves. The sriracha lime bursts with flavor and the crunchy peanuts seem to bring it all together. The texture is close to something you’d order at a restaurant.

Our quibbles with this meal lie in the sheer amount of single-use packaging it employs, and the fact that it requires a good deal of water. Aside from that, it packs a calorically dense punch, and is by far one of the best flavors we’ve ever sampled in the wild. If you’re after a bit more protein, consider the Pad Thai with Chicken — an added $3 but almost doubling the protein.

The most beloved breakfast we’ve sampled on trail, the Heather’s Choice Apple Pie Buckwheat Breakfast ($9) is a grain bowl with a fruit-forward flavor and plenty of nutmeg and cinnamon to keep things well spiced. We like that these meals are cognizant of many folks’ dietary needs and they’re not overwhelmed with sugar and sodium.

530 calories in a 4-ounce package passes the 100 calorie/ounce rule we try to go off of for backpacking, so it’s a win in our books. We wish there was a bit more protein for a breakfast meal, but the taste is great, and we feel it gives us adequate energy for the day ahead. A dollop or two of peanut butter takes this breakfast to the next level, in our opinion.

We do love how little water this meal requires (4 ounces), as we don’t have to be too mindful of saving a bunch for the morning at dry camps. The anticipation of this tasty treat is bound to raise you from the dead in the wee hours of the morning on trail!

Meat and potato types will likely be better served by an old fashioned hash like the Mountain House Breakfast Skillet, but we think this Buckwheat Breakfast is a slightly lighter start to the day that can be a great base for tossing in some fresh fruit or honey. If eating first thing in the morning is tough for you on trail, snag this option.

Perhaps one of the best lunches we’ve had from a bag, the Pinnacle Foods Herb Roasted Chicken and White Cheddar Dumplings ($15) tops our list with its savory flavors and hunks of cheddar biscuit. You’ll pay for the quality, but as a goal to get you up the next hill for lunch, we’re hard-pressed to come up with a better enticement.

With one of the better calorie-to-weight ratios out there and packed with healthy energy, this is a top pick for the ultralight cult — if the price isn’t too much of a deterrent. For reference, the Backpacker’s Pantry Pad Thai packs in more calories for $5 less, but the rich flavors are the draw here.

We’d eat this every day without a problem. It’s comfort in a bowl. A mix of marinated chicken, delicious dumplings, green beans, carrots, and parsley in a fabulous sauce, and you pretty much forget you’re eating a backpacking meal. We’ve noticed that anything with a dumpling takes a little longer to fully rehydrate, so be sure to give this lunch the full 12 minutes to cook up.

As an added bonus, this meal is available in both an ‘omnidegradable’ (read: easily broken down in landfills) and classic retort packaging. The omnidegradable packaging is a bit narrow at the top and has a slightly shorter shelf life, but we still snag them whenever we can.

You didn’t think we’d leave the thru-hikers out, did you? Multiple thousand mile treks are built on cheap staples like instant ramen noodles, and just about the best we’ve tasted so far is the NongShim Shin Black Noodle Soup ($4). A spicy enough flavor is balanced with an unctuous bone broth packet, and at less than $5 a pop, you can load up on them.

Unlike most options in our line-up, you’ll need to cook up these noodles in your own cook pot, which can mean a bit more clean-up but also less packaging to pack out — a win when you’re headed out for long trips. These noodles have a great tooth to them and hold together better than your average college fare, and between the three packets (soup base, dehydrated vegetables, and bone broth), there’s plenty of dial to tune in your favorite mix.

Here’s the real down low for maxing out your calories from the hiker trash among us: make a ‘ramen bomb’ by adding Idahoan Instant Mashed Potatoes to the broth in your ramen. The result is a thick, stick-to-your-ribs mix that will keep you warm long into the night. You can also experiment with making your own version of budae-jjigae — a Korean ‘kitchen sink’ soup that piles in anything from American cheese to hotdogs to enrich the flavor.

We also like Sapporo Ichiban ramen, which is a good bit cheaper at around $1.50 per, but still considerably better than your bottom-barrel options. Given the choice, however, we’re snagging the Shin Black every time.

Neil Armstrong is cool and all, but those ice cream sandwiches were legendary. And thanks to Backpacker’s Pantry ($5) and NASA, we can now take them backpacking.

These are simply incredible for rounding out a hearty meal around the fire, or even rewarding yourself after you’ve conquered a tough section of trail. We can’t recommend these enough for their barely-there weight and incredible taste. Just make sure you bring enough to share — you could quickly make some enemies if you’re the only one snacking on one in your trail family.

Since they’re totally freeze dried, we did find these ice cream sandwiches a little liable to crumbling, so be sure to find a safe spot in your pack to stash them in — they’re best enjoyed whole! If the whole astronaut food thing doesn’t do it for you, we also highly recommend the Backpacker’s Pantry Dark Chocolate Cheesecake Mix, a chocolate mudpie-like mixture that’ll have you scraping the bottom of the bag.

We hate to say that Mountain House has the eggy breakfast side of camping cornered, but we’re personally obsessed with every egg-based breakfast in their arsenal. The Scrambled Eggs are super light, just the right size for breakfast, and an eggcellent (sorry) base for building out a large breakfast for big groups.

But our favorite — and another fan favorite — is the Mountain House Breakfast Skillet ($12). Peppers, onions, hashbrowns, pork sausage, and eggs! No need to bulk this one out, as its already got the full measure packed in. It’s so good, and we always have enough left over for lunch. Win-win.

This is our top suggestion for hikers and backpackers who want something that’ll stick to their ribs a bit more than hot cereal bowls like the Apple Pie Buckwheat Breakfast or Backpacker’s Pantry Blueberry Walnut Oats. It’s good to know that the rehydrated eggs are a bit controversial for some, and we found that you’re either a fan or could leave them behind. Try them out before going all in on them.

At 520 calories, the Breakfast Skillet offers plenty of calories to confidently charge into a long day on trail. Plus, it boasts a solid calorie-to-weight ratio.

The clear favorite among the paleo options, the Wild Zora Paleo Meals Chicken Caldera Curry ($13) is a pile of meat, veggies, spices, and pineapple. That’s it. For those who are mindful to stick to their diet preferences even while on trail, this meal ticks all the boxes.

Freeze-dried pineapple isn’t an ingredient we come across frequently in our testing, so its inclusion here was novel — and tasty. However, this is another meal that we suggest waiting a bit more time for the meal to get fully rehydrated. In practice, we found the full 15 minutes necessary to get everything working together,

It also doesn’t have the best calorie-to-weight ratio, so this dish isn’t optimal for ultralight missions. But in terms of flavor, it’s an absolute winner. A bit of hot sauce really makes it, in our opinion, but it’s just as good without.

While we’re wild about the high-quality ingredients in this meal, the lack of preservatives means that the shelf life is a good bit shorter than many other backpacking meals: just 36 months. This won’t be an issue for most, but if you’re the type who likes to stock up on your favorites, make sure you won’t run out the clock on this one. It’s worth eating right away.

Another hearty breakfast option that’s mindful of diet is the Backpacker’s Pantry Blueberry Walnut Oats ($7). The ingredients are all organic and natural, and there are no weird, difficult-to-pronounce chemicals listed. And while most of the other breakfasts from Backpacker’s Pantry incorporate milk powder, this bowl goes without, making this ideal for those not down with dairy.

One among us remarked that this meal is “hella tasty” — a phrase you rarely see in these freeze-dried parts. The meal hydrates pretty quick, but takes a bit more water than other breakfasts, and the dry weight isn’t the lightest for only 360 calories. As a base for making a quick and easy breakfast, however, it’s tough to beat.

Like other hot cereal breakfasts, we enjoy packing out some fresh fruit and honey to really dial in this meal. At $7, it’s cheap enough to grab a few of these to spruce up a few breakfasts on trail.

It would have been grand to see some type of milk-substitute powder added to this breakfast, as it’s obvious that it’s a big calorie boost. For example, the Backpacker’s Pantry Granola with Blueberries, Almonds, and Milk boasts 620 calories, while this meal only packs in 360. If you really want to hack this breakfast, snag some Alpine Start Instant Oat Milk and mix it to your content.

Good To-Go has been an absolute staple of our backpacking loadout for thousands of miles — the brand just doesn’t miss. The lightweight, smaller packages disappear easier in your pack, and the taste is consistently satisfying.

The Good To-Go Thai Curry ($10) is simply a standout. It looks terrible after it’s absorbed water, but don’t be dismayed. This is one of the few meals we don’t add anything to once it’s hot and ready for action. It’s a hunting camp go-to after a long day on the mountain.

This meal in particular does take more water than we generally like, and you have to sit for 20 minutes while you wait in agonizing hunger — just about the longest we’ve seen. Not a deal-breaker, but worth noting, and the reason it finds itself lower in our suggestions.

For the calorically indulgent and dietarily unrestricted, the Mountain House Biscuits & Gravy ($10) is one of the most popular backpacking meals of all time.

This was one of our author’s staples on several of his thru-hikes, and he has to confess that he ate this meal at all times of the day — not just for breakfast. It makes a great “corner-filler” after a lighter dinner meal or even a celebratory snack after reaching the top of a climb. It has a solid calorie-to-weight ratio, making it a no-brainer for the weight-conscious ultralight crowd.

It’s without a doubt delicious and moral-boosting if you’ve been trotting around in the backcountry for any number of days, but isn’t great for those with dietary restrictions. If you need a quick pick-me-up that will fuel you on particularly grueling days, this is one of our favorite breakfasts for the job.

It should also be noted that, like the Pinnacle Foods Chicken and Dumplings meal, the biscuits in this breakfast generally take the whole prep time (or even a few minutes longer) to fully rehydrate. Be sure to wake up a little earlier to ensure you don’t have unexpected crunchies in your bowl.

The first time we ate the AlpineAire Spicy Sausage Bolognese ($12) was fireside, and we hadn’t even hiked yet. We made our camping partner try it because we were so blown away by how good it was. Our new favorite backpacking dinner is creamy, sausagey, delicious, cheesy goodness.

Spiral pasta generally rehydrates pretty well, given you get the meal well mixed, so be sure you really stir this one before setting it aside to rehydrate. The red sauce is well-balanced and well padded out with chunks of pork sausage (note: this meal also incorporates powdered cooked beef), and the added parmesan cheese rounds it out well. The only thing we missed was a piece of garlic bread!

With flavors similar to the Readywise Still Lake Lasagna, we do find ourselves reaching for the budget option a bit more often, which packs in some more calories and food overall. It’s the spice level that actually has us reaching for the AlpineAire from time to time, which was better flavor-wise compared to the Readywise meal.

It’s not the best for folks with dietary restrictions, and it takes a while to hydrate. Still, it has a passable calorie-to-weight ratio and doesn’t require a ton of water. Diet be darned — this meal can be worth the full indulgent leap into dairy, gluten, and meaty excellence.

We’ve given Pinnacle Foods some love in this roundup already, but we felt it important to mention another one of our favorite recipes. The Thai Peanut Curry with Roasted Vegetables and Rice Noodles ($16) slaps you in the face with flavor — in the best possible way.

We took this meal on a recent demanding backpacking trip along the Cumberland Trail, and it was a welcome treat at the end of a brutally hot day. This packs an absurd amount of ingredients into a small batch. Roasted bell peppers, onions, broccoli, zucchini, sweet potatoes, edamame, and garlic join forces with rice noodles and a rich coconut-curry peanut sauce. It’s topped off with cilantro, lime, and scallions to give it even more of a flair. Is your mouth watering yet?

The loud, exotic flavor was a pleasant shock to our tastebuds after consuming the other relatively dull freeze-dried meals we schlepped along. If this brand wasn’t quite so expensive, these would probably be staples in our backpacking loadout. $16 a pouch gets pricey, and if you tack on shipping and tax from their website, it’s comparable to a steak dinner out on the town.

There were almost no cons that surfaced, but we did find it a bit difficult to fully stir our meal after pouring the water into the omnidegradable package. The tall profile also makes it difficult to scrape every morsel of food out of the corners. Like the Roasted Chicken and Dumplings meal, however, you still have the option of the retort packaging, which is wider.

Qualms aside, this is (aside from Backpacker’s Pantry Pad Thai) perhaps one of the best flavors we’ve run across in our sampling of backpacking meals. It’s enough to make you want to pack up and move to Thailand simply for the cuisine.