Kids Salmon Camping Recipes: Foil Packs and Mountain Pies

One of the best times during the year is when the weather breaks, school’s out and families can begin planning their yearly camping trips. Along with tents, sleeping bags, pillows, and lanterns, you can’t have a successful camping trip without some classic campfire eats!

After a long day of hiking, fishing, swimming, or stone skipping in the sun, your crew will be craving a hearty meal. The two campfire salmon recipes below will give both you and the kiddos of all ages the fuel that you need to keep enjoying your trip. Bonus: both recipes can be cooked in just 8 minutes!

What food do you bring on a camping trip?

Some of the typical foods one might bring on a camping trip include dry items like cereal and bread, along with fuel foods like eggs, meats, soups, and vegetables. Chef Nicole’s coolers are always packed with similar essentials, except for one notable change: bacon, eggs, potatoes, lunch meats, spice mix, and... sockeye salmon!

That’s right, salmon is actually one of our team’s favorite additions to their coolers when deciding what food to bring on a camping trip. Not only is it versatile and easy to prepare, cooking salmon over the campfire brings the great outdoors full circle. When hungry campers come back from a long day in the sun, all you need are some vegetables, spices, and sockeye salmon to really hit the spot.

Plus, when it comes to camping food ideas for kids, It’s a fun way to introduce them to salmon, or to camping, or to both at the same time!

For the Teens and Adults: Salmon Foil Pack

While our Mountain Pie Recipe below is centered mostly around camping food for kids, we can’t forget the older siblings and adults who are cooking for them! Some of the best recipes for camping include the classic foil pack.

Using hot coals that have been hanging in the fire pit all day long, foil packs are a quick and easy way to prepare a whole meal with minimal clean up so you can stay focused on the rest of the day’s activities. Chef Nicole recommends making a seasoning mix at home that you can keep in the picnic basket to make spicing up your meal by the fire even easier!

Foil packs allow all of the juices from veggies, meats, and spices to combine and make a satisfactory meal. When cooking salmon in foil, it comes out particularly tender and perfectly cooked. Using Chef Nicole's spice mix, along with some fresh zucchini, tomatoes, and wild sockeye salmon, this foil pack comes together as the perfect savory dish - one that you may want to make even when you can't go camping! 

These foil packs are great by themselves for those who are happy to stop & enjoy this recipe here. However, those with younger, more picky eaters should continue on to our main recipe feature, Sockeye Mountain Pies, below!

If you aren’t camping and want to give this recipe a try, you can bake or grill the salmon skin side down on oiled pan or grill racks for 375 for 5-8 minutes for portions and 12-15 minutes for fillets!

Kid-Friendly Camping Meal: Sockeye Salmon Mountain Pie

Now for the good stuff - the best easy camping meal for kids! A big camping tradition in the Kurian’s home state of Pennsylvania, Mountain Pies are a great way to sneak some protein and omega-3s into your little adventurer’s next camping trip meal. They are also a great solution for leftover salmon, should you have any left after testing out our Salmon Foil Pack recipe above!

Whether you know them as hobo pies, camper pies or campfire pies, you know that mountain pies are a staple camping trip snack. They are made by taking two slices of buttered or oiled bread and filling with your favorite sweet or savory mix (many use fruits for sweet or a source of protein and cheese for savory).

Then, a long-handled, metal tool known as a Mountain Pie Press is used to hold the concoction over a campfire until the ingredients are heated and the bread and filling are fused together, similar to a pie. A campfire sandwich press can be used in place of a Mountain Pie Press. 

This simple recipe combines sockeye salmon, cheese, tomatoes, and bacon and makes for the perfect lunch on your next camping trip!

Chef's Notes

All year long I look forward to the weather breaking and my yearly camping trips to be planned. The long day full of sunshine activities makes for a hungry crew by evening. There are the essentials that are always packed away in our coolers.. bacon, eggs, potatoes, lunch meats and sockeye salmon. Yes, always sockeye salmon, it's perfect for making a foil pack after a long day in the sun and putting it on the hot coals that have been hanging in the firepit all day long and a whole meal is cooked in 8 minutes and makes even better leftovers the next day in mountain pies. I always have a seasoning mix premade at home to keep in the picnic basket that will be great on everything.

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AUTHOR PROFILE

Nicole is the in-house Chef at Wild For Salmon as well as a Recipe Developer and Food Photographer from Allentown, Pennsylvania with an Associate degree from The Culinary Institute of America. Her first memories are of planting seeds with her father and grandfather in their elaborate gardens and sharing their abundant harvests with friends and neighbors. The spark of both pride and joy she felt when sharing this food with others and seeing the happiness it brought them was what inspired her to pursue the culinary arts from a young age. Nicole has spent time exploring the Hudson Valley and Philadelphia food scenes, but her current home in the rolling hills of Central PA is where she most enjoys combining her two passions; exploring the outdoors, and good food.