Trail mix: delicious, nutritious and easy to make vegan. Photo by Joe Gonzalez.
In a world of beef jerky and cheese, what is a hiker to do if they don’t eat any of that? Many of the foods we typically think of when planning backpacking meals or hiking snacks aren’t options for vegetarians — and especially vegans. Here are some ideas for your next backpacking trip!
DEHYDRATE FOOD YOURSELF
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. If you’ve got a favorite stew or chili recipe, dehydrating your own meals is a great way to take it with you on the trail. It might seem intimidating, but it’s surprisingly simple to do even without a dehydrator — you can do it in your own oven.
PRE-MADE FREEZE-DRIED MEALS
But you certainly don’t have to make your own vegan meals. You can find options at your local outdoor retailer or online.
- Good To-Go: They cater to several dietary restrictions, with meal options for vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians and omnivores.
- Backpacker’s Pantry: They’ve got plenty of vegan meal options, and their Pad Thai is both vegan and often cited as the favorite backpacking meal of many hikers, both vegan and non-vegan.
- Outdoor Herbivore: They sell full meals and also pantry items, so you can add more to your own vegan meals. All of their meals are vegetarian and they have plenty of vegan options.
BUILD YOUR OWN MEALS
You can also piece together your own meals without dehydrating your own food, but also without buying the more-expensive freeze-dried meals. Throw everything together with your favorite spices into individual bags. Bring along heat-safe container, throw a meal into it with boiling water, stir and wait.
Mashed potatoes are delicious and easy to make in both the frontcountry and the backcountry. Photo by Erika Haugen-Goodman.
- Minute Rice: Okay, it actually takes about 5 minutes to properly rehydrate this, but just add boiling water and you’ve got rice.
- Rice noodles: Most dry rice noodles only need to be rehydrated, not cooked. Note: Noodles can pierce holes in the bags you put them in — consider breaking them into smaller segments before packing them.
- Couscous: A cold-soaking classic, but can be rehydrated with either hot or cold water and doesn’t need to be cooked.
- Dehydrated refried beans: These can be bought in bulk online if you can’t find them at the store.
- Dehydrated potato flakes: Many store options have dairy included, but it’s easy to find potato flakes with nothing added — a blank slate for backcountry mashed potatoes.
- Soy curls: These are often used as a chicken substitute since their texture upon rehydrating is very similar.
- Textured vegetable protein: Just toss some TVP into whatever you’re making to add protein.
- Bacon bits: Culinary bacon bits — contrary to the name — are often vegan and made from soy, and add a nice smoky flavor to whatever you’re making. And if you don’t rehydrate them, they add a nice crunchy texture to your meal.
- Tortilla chips: Great for snacking but also to add some crunch and saltiness to your meal.
- Dehydrated vegetables: Great to toss into anything you make to add volume and flavor.
- Bouillon cubes: It’s pretty easy to find vegan ones at most grocery stores.
- Miso soup powder: Sometimes these even have freeze-dried tofu, green onions, nori or other extras in there!
- Oil: Pack olive oil or coconut oil to add calories or your meal and make it taste richer.
- Nutritional yeast: AKA nooch, no guide on vegan cooking/meal-planning would be complete without mentioning nutritional yeast! Plus, if it's fortified with vitamin B12, it's a great supplement for plant-based folks who might be deficient.
TORTILLA TOPPINGS
Many standard backpacking tortilla toppers aren’t vegan-friendly — think sausage, cheese, Snickers bars, Nutella… But that doesn’t have to stop you from making some great backpacking burritos!
Photo by Erika Haugen-Goodman.
- Field Roast sausages: They’re ready to eat from the package and come in fun varieties like apple sage and spicy Mexican chipotle (the latter is a little messy out of the package, but delicious!). Field Roast also makes pepperoni which you can pepper onto your tortilla.
- Tofurky deli slices: These are also ready to eat from the package, and easy to handle — no prep needed.
- Marinated tofu or tempeh: Easy to make at home with your own favorite flavors or buy at the store.
- Plant-based Babybel cheese: These tiny cheese wheels are great to eat alone or wrapped in a tortilla.
- Plant-based and mushroom jerky: Lightweight, salty and delicious — what more can a hiker ask for?
- Nut butter or sunflower seed butter: These also come in single-serving packs for easy access while you're on the trail.
- Jelly or jam: These even come in squeeze bottles these days so you don't need to use a knife or get your hands all sticky.
- Justin’s chocolate hazelnut spread: Basically a thicker Nutella, its mousse-y texture allows for easy spreading.
- Powdered hummus or chickpea flour: Make your own hummus on trail by rehydrating it in a ziplock bag. Add some garlic salt or olive oil to make it more rich.
Sweet snacks
Miniature packs of candy make for great trail snacks! Photo by Tiffany Chou.
Sweet tooth? You’ve still got plenty of options to pack out to the backcountry.
- Snacks from the grocery store
- Oreos: Every vegan knows that Oreos are vegan!
- Bobos Oat Bars: Plenty of different flavors to choose from, and they’re wheat-free too if you can’t eat wheat.
- Lenny and Larry’s Complete Cookies: Chocolate chip, snickerdoodle, birthday cake, lemon poppyseed and more — plus, these cookies are HUGE.
- Beast Energy Cookies: Cookies with a kick — you'll get a nice shot of caffeine with these bad boys.
- Pop-Tarts: Most Pop-Tarts aren’t vegan due to gelatin or dairy, but the unfrosted versions of blueberry, brown sugar and strawberry are.
- Peanut butter pretzels: A hiking classic, whether you’re vegan or not.
- Animal crackers: Yes, here are some animals you can eat! (Usually, anyway — they typically are vegan, but check the ingredients.)
- Dried fruit: It hardly needs to be said. But they’re also great dipped in nut butter!
- Fresh fruit: Want to build your backpacking muscles and have all of your campmates be jealous of you? Sure, it’s heavy and easily bruised, but nothing beats a fresh peach or juicy apple in the backcountry. Just remember to always pack out your cores, pits, seeds and peels.
- Candy that doesn’t contain dairy or gelatin
- Unreal: This company makes multiple types of chocolate candies that you can pack on your adventures.
- Chocolate nut butter cups
- Coconut bars (think Almond Joy)
- Candied chocolate gems (think M&Ms)
- Swedish Fish: (Un)surprisingly, these fish don’t have any fish in them.
- Sour Patch Kids: This trail favorite is vegan-friendly!
- Dandies marshmallows: Don’t skip s’mores at sunset — Dandies don’t have any gelatin, and as a bonus, they don’t melt into a single huge marshmallow in the bag on a hot day like many gelatin-based marshmallows will.
DIY sweet snacks
Don’t forget how easy it can be to make your own sweet trail snacks...
- Make your own trail mix and only put in your favorites. Go nuts!
- Nuts and seeds
- Chocolate chips
- Pretzels
- Cereal
- Dried berries and raisins
- Dates
- Dried coconut
Trail mix can be salty or sweet — or both! Photo by Joe Gonzalez.
- And you can make your own granola if you're up for prepping a little before your trip. Here's a recipe to get you started (replace honey with your plant-based favorite) — adapt it to fit your palate.
Salty Snacks
Fritos can be more difficult to crush than other tortilla chips. Photo by Thatcher Imboden.
Get your electrolytes through salty snacks!
- Snacks by the handful (that are less crushable in your pack than potato chips)
- Crushed potato chips: Well, you can’t crush them if they’re already crushed… Plus, you can eat them with a spoon or toss them into your dinner — no greasy fingers.
- Nuts and seeds: Some of the most calorie-dense snacks you'll find, and delicious to boot.
- Roasted chickpeas: These can be pretty easily found at grocery stores nowadays, or you can make them at home in your oven.
- Plantain chips: Arguably both salty and sweet; undeniably tasty.
- Fritos: They're harder to crush than typical tortilla or potato chips.
Drinks
Sometimes someone breaks out the hot chocolate packets, and when that happens, you might be left in the dust since many instant hot chocolate packs have dairy. Well, one thing you could definitely do is look for non-dairy instant hot chocolate packets — they are harder to find, but they do exist.
- Other delightful trail beverages
- Instant apple cider
- Hot tea
- Instant coffee
Plant-based folks may have to do a little more careful consideration or meal planning before a trip to the backcountry, but there is no shortage of options for a hearty veggie dinner or tasty trail snack. When out and about, vegans may consider packing some vitamin B12 (or some fortified-with-B12 nutritional yeast to use on trail liberally, because it's great on everything).
Looking for more inspiration? Check out all of our backcountry kitchen resources — although many recipes and ideas may not be vegan, they often can be adapted into a vegan version!
Washington Trails
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