Smoothies, dehydrated scrambles, wraps, couscous, grits, noodles, potato, congee, upma, chia: more than just porridge!

hiker next to tent with steam coming out of cooker on tent platfrom — *Cooking up a nutritious, delicious breakfast on the Grampians Peaks Trail, Victoria.*

When you’re carrying everything in your pack, you want nutritional bang for a lightweight buck and food to match your taste and energy needs, especially on long thru-hikes. On such hikes, cracking eggs into your pot won’t happen, delicious though it might be for short trips or car camping when space and weight matter less!

Ideally, backpacking breakfasts should

require no cooking or
require only a very short cooking time, or
require only cold soaking or quick hot soaking/rehydration to save on fuel, which also has to be carried
be shelf stable and easy to prep on trail
be nutritious and lightweight.

All the breakfast suggestions in this comprehensive article meet these requirements. Whether you prefer a grab-and-go or a sit-down brekky, a combination (hello second breakfast!), hot or cold, sweet or savoury, home-made/assembled or commercial, there is always something that can satisfy your needs.

hiker wearing rain gear sitting on ground resting back against rock wall eating noodles — *Hot noodles with vegetables and bean curd on a very cold morning on the Larapinta Trail, central Australia.*

Westerners all know oatmeal/porridge, but humans around the globe have been creating delicious, nourishing breakfasts forever, and you can tweak many of them to be equally tasty and convenient on trail. Why not try some different breakfasts on your next long hike?

Individual carbohydrate components include everything from oats to tapioca, plus processed ones such as sago and noodles. They can be sweet – cinnamon, fruit, sugar – or savoury (onion, chilli, spices, vegetables). Protein includes powdered protein, egg and milk, soy products, legumes, nuts and dried meats and cheeses.

Mixed carbohydrate breakfasts include granola, muesli and breakfast bars with endless commercial options… or assemble your own. And then there are clever takes on breakfast wraps, scrambles, as well as commercial freeze-dried breakfasts. We cover the usual suspects, as well as less familiar options.

Our article describes

What Makes a Good Backpacking Breakfast (convenience, minimised weight/substitutions, nutrition)
Personal Taste (hot or cold, sweet or savoury)
Easier Breakfast Options (starchy, creamy breakfasts, mixed grain/seed/nut breakfasts, soaked breakfasts, smoothies/shakes, other processed carbohydrates, commercial freeze-dried /dehydrated breakfasts, supermarket offerings)
Dehydrating your Own Cooked Breakfast (western style, options from around the world) and
How to Adapt Hot Breakfast Recipes for Backpacking

What Makes a Good Backpacking Breakfast?

bowl of muesli with freeze dried berries and seed — This yummy home-made muesli with rolled oats, freeze dried fruit, chia and flax seeds, brown sugar, chopped hazelnuts, maple sugar and milk powder is a convenient, healthy yet lightweight start to the day. Image Credit Inga Aksamit, author of *'The Hungry Spork'*.

Convenience

Backpacking breakfasts should be as easy – or easier! – to prepare in camp as in your kitchen. Commercial freeze-dried and dehydrated breakfasts do the prep for you, but you can achieve similar results by packaging your hiking breakfasts thoughtfully at home. For example, parcel oatmeal into single serving portions and add milk powder/protein powder and any flavourings (cinnamon, dried fruit, sugar), so you need only add boiling water in camp. If, like us, you enjoy breakfast noodles with dehydrated additives (vegetables, jerky, bean curd sheets), make up sachets at home.

If you’d rather carry ingredients separately and assemble breakfast in camp, weigh everything because it’s easy to bring too much or too little, especially on long trips when guesstimating leads to mistakes. Don’t ask how we know this!

2. Minimal Food Weight (more calories per gram) and Substitutions

The water in fresh food makes it heavy. However, on long hikes, even dehydrated and freeze-dried foods easily comprise more than half your total pack weight: Geoff and I aim for 1650 kJ (395cal) each from breakfast. Our average daily breakfast weight for two people is 186g (3 oz), or 93g (1.5oz) each. That works for us and is about all we can eat then, so we (particularly Geoff with a heavier pack) get extra fuel during the day through snacks. Other hikers need more breakfast calories depending on mileage, terrain, preference and build.

This is why dry cereals, noodles, milk/yoghurt/protein/egg powders, and dehydrated or freeze-dried fruits, meats and vegetables are always preferable to fresh when backpacking. Nor do they go bad in your pack. Crackers are lighter and more shelf stable than wraps which are in turn preferable to bread. European pumpernickel-style rye breads are heavy but shelf-stable and calorie dense.

Oil, butter and ghee are heavy but so high in calories that they’re worth including on thru-hikes when it’s difficult to consume enough food to maintain body weight. On hikes longer than a week, carry the lightest food with the most calories to minimise what is inevitably a relatively heavy pack.

Consider breakfasts you like, and which dry components might replace fresh ones. Extend a little ingenuity to breakfasts you might not expect, such as breakfast wraps filled with commercial scrambled powdered milk/egg, bacon bits, and freeze-dried onion, capsicum and tomato. Read on for more examples!

3. Nutrition

As you’d expect, breakfast options differ wildly in their nutrition. Some have a great balance of carbohydrates, healthy fats and proteins, whereas others, like Pop Tarts, have almost no protein and are primarily sugars and processed carbohydrates that don’t provide sustained energy. We notice a huge difference between low-GI porridge with protein powder and/or milk powder, and noodles when the latter is eaten without additional protein and low GI carbohydrates: we’re hungry after just two hours on instant ramen alone, whereas oatmeal fuels us almost till lunch time.

Those on keto diets peruse the backs of packs, and hikers should as well. Breakfasts we’ve seen range from 200 calories and almost zero protein, to 40g of protein and 600+ calories. Although a few crappy breakfasts don’t matter on a weekend trip, a solid breakfast makes a huge difference on multiday hikes of over a week, and especially on thru-hikes of many weeks or months. It’s beyond the scope of this article to discuss diet in depth, but consulting a dietician benefits anyone unfamiliar with nutrition and the importance of protein when planning a long-distance hike, particularly if you are an older hiker, or someone covering big distances.

Personal Taste

Hot or Cold Breakfast?

Hot breakfasts are nice in winter, but require more fuel (extra weight) and time depending on your stove system. On long hikes without resupply, cold breakfasts potentially save lots of fuel weight over hot ones. On short trips, it won’t matter. Some cold breakfasts, such as chia pudding or Bircher muesli, are prepared the night before to save time in the morning.

various brands of milk powder packets — Choose milk powder that dissolves in cold water, and mix with your carbohydrate base (oats, muesli, etc) so all you need to do is add water in camp.

If you’re someone for whom coffee is non-negotiable, boiling a little extra water for porridge makes little difference but, if you’re someone who likes to head out as quickly as possible, cold breakfasts might suit you better.

Couples and hiking partnerships save time when one prepares breakfast while the other packs up the tent, so there may be no advantage in a cold breakfast time-wise, only fuel-wise. Other people have a grab and go breakfast like a muesli bar, and then cook a hot breakfast when they stop for a break.

Sweet or Savoury?

smiling hiker at picnic table with bowl of noodles and snowcapped hill behind him — *Our own favourite breakfast noodles in hut bowls,* *Laugavegur Track, Iceland*.

Many breakfast staples world-wide can be adapted as either sweet or savoury dehydrated or lightweight meals.

Sweet themes include riffs on

milk (dairy, coconut, oat, or soy milk powders)
protein or egg powder
sugar, powdered honey or maple syrup
spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, nutmeg, vanilla
dried fruit
oil, ghee or butter with
any kind of starchy staple (oats, corn, wheat, rice, quinoa, barley, buckwheat, chia, tapioca, sago).

Savoury breakfasts often contain

dehydrated vegetables (especially onion, capsicum, garlic)
a blend of spices and herbs reflecting the country’s cuisine (eg chilli, mustard, cumin, coriander, ginger, oregano, parsley)
dehydrated proteins (nuts, powdered egg, powdered yoghurt, jerky, shelf stable sausage, protein powders, dehydrated minced meat, dried seafood, freeze-dried tofu, TVP, bean curd sheets or other dried soy protein products, freeze dried meats and cheese)
oil, ghee or butter with
any kind of starchy staple.

We’ll cover those breakfasts in more detail below, so note these themes and adapt them to your taste.

Easiest Breakfast Options

i. Cereals

Weetbix, Cornflakes, Special K or any other cereal with milk powder. In camp, just add water and mix well.

ii. Starchy, usually creamy breakfasts

hiker pouring himself an espresso coffee at remote campsite — *Porridge remains our go-to breakfast when we want a fast, warming, nutritious breakfast. Here with espresso in Mt Field National Park.*

We’re all familiar with oatmeal or porridge in the west, but the options broaden when you look worldwide:

porridge/oatmeal
farina/semolina/upma (wheat)
grits/polenta (corn, variably smooth)
congee/jook (rice)
barley
chia
quinoa
millet
buckwheat
sago (palm tree)
potato
sweet potato
tapioca (cassava root).

The starch is cooked or soaked in milk, water or stock to a soft, variably creamy or slightly gritty consistency; for hiking you aim to add boiling water to a starch/milk powder mix, then let it thicken in a pot cosy, rather than wasting fuel on simmering or cooking.

Different combinations of spices, sugar, salt, fats, herbs, seeds or dried fruit create sweet or savoury versions. They’re all high in carbohydrate, with milk, meat, protein powder, nuts etc providing protein. Fats and oils (full fat milk, ghee or butter, coconut milk powder) and sugar significantly increase calories.

More processed versions – eg instant oats vs rolled oats or white grits vs coarse polenta – may contain less fibre and have a higher glycemic index. Multiday hikers often get digestive upsets: a modest amount of fibre helps keep you regular. Processed starches create a smoother, creamier texture and are faster; some unprocessed versions of the above grains and seeds, such as buckwheat and barley, require overnight soaking or precooking before dehydrating at home to make them quick on the trail (see soaked breakfasts and dehydrating hot cooked breakfasts below).

Quinoa, buckwheat and unusual carbs are expensive compared to oat and wheat options, often with relatively little difference in protein or glycemic indices. Those with gluten intolerance prefer them, while others like their texture or nutty taste.

iii. Mixed grain/seed/nut breakfasts

These include

Muesli
Toasted muesli/ granola
Poha
Upma
Breakfast bars/biscuits, pop tarts

Most are high in carbohydrate calories, with seeds and nuts boosting protein. Many contain dried fruit, high in sugar to increase calories. Toasted muesli and granola are higher in calories than untoasted with extra sugar/honey and oil. Muesli is eaten with milk (remember, milk powder when backpacking!); poha is prepared with hot water. If substituting, remember that coconut milk powder, while high in fat, is low in protein.

supermarket shelves packed with various muesli bars — Breakfast bars and biscuits are basically muesli plus additives pressed in a convenient shape to eat on the go: perfect for those who want to be up and at ’em, or those who like a quick breakfast followed by second breakfast later on trail. Check nutrition labels carefully as these products vary greatly!

pot of poha — *Home-made* *poha* *packed with nuts, seeds, roasted soy beans, peas and spices is much more nutritious than the instant versions.*

Like instant ramen, instant versions of poha, upma etc rarely contain enough protein or calories for longer hikes. That doesn’t mean you can’t use them, just boost them to improve their nutritional profile.

iv. Soaked/Overnight Breakfasts

Soaked breakfasts save preparation time in the morning, are eaten cold or cook very quickly: usually they’re done by the time you’ve brought water to the boil. They also widen your options to include grains like buckwheat that are normally too slow to prepare or cook when backpacking: the traditional method of soaking porridge oats in water overnight followed by a quick cook in the morning works for many other breakfast grains, as long as you can securely store your pot! Consider adding protein powders to maximise nutritional bang.

supermarket shelves full of various grains suitable for overnight cold soaking — *A selection in our local supermarket.*

Porridge alternatives that work well with cold soaking overnight include buckwheat and millet (both gluten free).

Bircher muesli

You’ll find numerous recipes online but, of course, use dried fruit rather than fresh.

Sago porridge

This porridge also cooks quickly if you choose small pearls and soak them overnight in water and spices (cinnamon, cloves, cardamom). In the morning, bring to the boil with a little sugar and milk powder and cook for a few minutes until thick. Add extra reconstituted coconut milk powder, plus dried fruits and nuts.

v. Breakfast Smoothie Powders and Shakes

These are ideal for those who have little appetite in the morning, as well as for snacks on the trail. Look for ones with a good balance of protein, carbs and fats, or make your own.

Supermarket smoothie options are often every bit as good as fancy ones and a fraction of the price. For omnivores, experiment with whey and vegan protein because some people find one easier to digest than the other.

homemade smoothy shaker pot but there are gritty bits still in it — Many people prefer the mouthfeel of whey protein powders over vegan protein powders – test a few in your kitchen at home before bringing something undrinkable on the trail! Google breakfast smoothie powder for countless options.

vi. Other Processed Carbohydrates

pot of noodles with lots of veggies — *Breakfast noodles with vegetables and TVP*

These include foods like tapioca pearls, noodles, hash browns and instant pasta, as well as wraps, crackers and breads. To them you add protein in a sweet or savoury flavour profile.

vii. Other Commercial Freeze Dried and Dehydrated Breakfasts

These can be as simple as the oat sachets with fruit, honey, or nuts on your supermarket shelves, to fancy high protein muesli from online suppliers, to freeze-dried breakfast fry-ups. Almost all commercial dehydrated and freeze-dried backpacking food companies have a breakfast range.

Below are examples of commercial backpacking breakfast ranges:

*Radix: vegan, keto, high protein and low-FODMAP options.

*Strive: porridge options

*Back Country Cuisine: cereal and yoghurt blends, freeze dried cooked breakfast

*Campers Pantry: cereals

**Real Turmat: cereals, muesli

**Bla Band: muesli

**Summit to Eat: eggs and cheese

** Lyo: cereals, egg scrambles

***Peak Refuel: like Radix’, their meals are high in protein. They have a “breakfast skillet”, cereals like porridge and granola, and the uniquely American “biscuits and gravy”.

***Packit Gourmet: egg scramble, corn and wheat-based cereals, and breakfast tacos.

***Good to Go: cereals, egg scramble, pumpkin breakfast hash.

***Gastrognome: cereal, hash plus keto based meals

***RightonTrek: grits, egg scramble, cereals

*** Mountain House: biscuits and gravy, egg scrambles, cereals/muesli

*Australian and/or New Zealand companies

**European and UK companies

***US companies

hiker sitting on bench on edge of cliff eating breakfast overlooking the sea — Commercial brekkies can save time and effort, and sometimes they are your only option, perhaps due to import restrictions on home dehydrated foods (Australia and New Zealand both have stringent regulations). We were lucky taking carefully selected food from home onto the Cape to Cape Track above in (next door) Western Australia, but overseas visitors will need to buy meals when they arrive. Honey, uncooked dehydrated veg, dairy, meat and nuts are common red flags. Always check the import restrictions imposed by any country: imagine arriving and having all your carefully prepared meals confiscated by customs/biosecurity! Ouch!

Big chain stores and online suppliers in Australia (Anaconda*, Paddy Pallin*, Ultralight Hiker*) and overseas (eg REI***, Basecamp Food**) sell a range of different breakfasts from different manufacturers: Basecamp have an astonishing ninety different breakfast options from sausages to cereals to flapjacks and breakfast bars!

The above hiking-specific meals are expensive, but they’re convenient if you’re time-poor or dislike cooking. Unfortunately, hiking-specific freeze-dried cooked breakfast options like those with eggs, potatoes, wraps, grits, burritos etc are also notoriously variable in flavour. Nevertheless, cooked breakfasts are the ones that are most difficult and labour intensive to reproduce at home and so probably offer better value for money when compared with backpacking-specific cereal or mixed grain breakfasts. Much cheaper cereal breakfasts are ubiquitous in Western supermarkets and you’ll find many gluten free, high protein and keto options. And it is still cheaper to tweak these products with extra dried or freeze-dried fruits, nuts and seeds, protein and/or milk powder to boost their nutritional value, than to buy hiking-specific meals:

bowl of muesli with freeze dried yummy tropical fruits — *Inga Aksamit's home-dehydrated Tropical Muesli, one of many delicious offerings in her book 'The Hungry Spork Trail Recipes: Quick Gourmet Meals for the Backcountry'. When you assemble your own it's cheaper, and you get exactly the taste and nutritional profile you prefer. (Image Credit: Inga Aksamit).*

Tweak any basic supermarket breakfast cereal (eg Instant Oats) into nutritious and convenient backpacking breakfasts by adding:

milk (all kinds) powder
yoghurt powder (not yoghurt starter)
protein powder
cocoa powder
peanut butter powder
dried fruit
nuts and seeds
freeze dried fruit
cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom
vanilla
powdered honey, chocolate or brown sugar.

A few classic flavour pairings to try with your carbohydrate:

Dried apple, cinnamon, brown sugar
Freeze dried raspberries, chocolate protein powder, vanilla and powdered honey
Dates or currants, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, coconut milk powder
Dried blueberries, vanilla protein powder, citrus zest, nuts
Dried apricots, almonds, powdered honey, cardamom

Really, the list limited only by your imagination! Package individual servings to suit your appetite into ziplocs, or into a larger single bag. If packaging the entire trip’s meals into a single bag, know exactly how much you need per serving and weigh the total so you don’t over- or under-pack.

Dehydrating your Own Cooked Breakfast

burrito with reconstituted powdered egg and rehydrated sausage meat — Tammy White's trail breakfast burrito made with commercial egg powder, freeze-dried mince, onions, capsicum, cheese and dehydrated salsa. Tammy puts the sausage, cheese and veg in one bag to rehydrate, the salsa in a separate bag. The eggs are the only thing cooked on the trail: add a small amount of water, then low and slow in the pot. (Image Credit Tammy White)

If you want to dehydrate your own “cooked breakfast,” in line with food safety authorities worldwide we strongly recommend using commercial egg and milk powders, rather than dehydrating your own. Commercial egg powder/crystals need to be rehydrated and briefly cooked.

You’ll find numerous dehydrated/cooked breakfast recipes online. These usually include

potato or sweet potato
scones (‘biscuits’ in the US), wraps or damper/bannock/frybread
eggs and/or various meats or TVP
dehydrated vegetables

Egg powder is easy to find in the US , but has been difficult to get lately in Australia. It is back in stock at Woolies at the time of writing or, slightly cheaper, direct from the manufacturer .

Tofu scramble is a great alternative to eggs for vegans. For the trail, freeze firm tofu, then thaw and crumble. Fry in a non stick pan with scant oil and finely sliced spring onion and diced red capsicum, garlic, tumeric, himalayan black salt, and any other quick-rehydrating vegetables like kale or spinach (alternatively for the fastest rehydration, add freeze-dried vegetables after dehydrating). Dehydrate, then package with a little oat milk powder and optional nutritional yeast for a cheesy flavour. Reconstitute with boiling water on the track and serve in a wrap or burrito.

In the US, buy dehydrated or freeze dried hash brown: shredded or grated cooked potato in jars or UHT packs; I haven’t found them in Australia as these are not the patties we call hash browns. However, dehydrating cooked grated potato is very easy and it rehydrates quickly. And here’s a great potato breakfast skillet recipe.

Deb instant mashed potato is everywhere in Australia and its equivalents in all western countries. Add cheese powders, bacon bits, dehydrated spring onion or onion, and freeze dried capsicum. Here’s a great backpacking cheesy breakfast mash .

packet of cooked breakfast — *Peak Refuel Biscuits and gravy* packs more than a whopping 570 calories per (almost) 100g serve, but it is aimed at keto hikers and is not for everyone with 45% fat over half of which is saturated, and 18g of protein. Non-keto hikers and those watching their cholesterol will be better off assembling their own with less saturated fat, see below.

Biscuits and gravy is easy to assemble with readily available ingredients in the US, less so elsewhere. Substitutions to prepare and dehydrate yourself include muffins and TVP seasoned with spices; add freeze dried vegetables and packet gravy mix.

Grits are a form of polenta or corn porridge popular in the USA and Europe, uncommon in Australia. You’ll find numerous dehydrated recipes suitable for backpacking but you can also wing it. To dehydrated grits (or potato) add any combination of the following ingredients (freeze-dried additives rehydrate almost instantly, pop dehydrated vegetables into the cold water as you bring it to the boil):

dehydrated/freeze dried blanched chopped onion or spring onion
dehydrated/freeze dried capsicum
chilli flakes
tomato powder
plenty of salt and pepper
dehydrated/freeze dried kale or spinach
cooked dehydrated mince (seasoned with spices like cumin, garlic, onion, chilli, paprika) or freeze dried sausage crumbs in the US
egg powder (rehydrated then scrambled)
cheese
sliced shelf-stable sausage sticks, jerky, seasoned TVP
freeze dried or shelf stable cheeses

Or you can go the sweet version with the same additives as porridge.

Dehydrating Cooked Breakfasts from Around the World

For Westerners with adventurous palates, much is on offer. Many Asian cooked breakfasts, such as congee/jook, upma, and poha require only minor tweaks to make them suitable for the trail.

Upma is another tasty vegan Indian breakfast made with roasted semolina (known as rava, upma rava, suji, or Bombay rava). Buy pre-roasted and roast again at home, creating a nuttier flavour, or roast plain semolina. In camp, add water to chana dal and urad dal plus spices (mustard, cumin, ginger, onion, chilli, curry leaves, asafoetida) that have been fried at home, bring to a boil then add your upma to the water, stirring until it thickens in a minute or two. Choose a drier, fluffier texture or a moister, creamier texture. Like instant ramen, instant upma is a popular breakfast option but, for backpacking, add protein and calories. Stay tuned for our dehydrated recipe!

smiling hiker with muddy gaiters sitting on log eating noodles — *Breakfast Noodles with seitan (wheat protein aka gluten) and vegetables on the South Coast Track, Tasmania. As you can see, we love our supercharged brekky noodles!*

Mamounieh (aka Mamounia) is the Middle-eastern version of that toasted semolina upma breakfast. It’s a sweet version flavoured with ghee, cinnamon and pine nuts, or sometimes with cheese.

Instant Couscous rehydrates, well, instantly (even ordinary couscous rehydrates within ten minutes) and makes an ideal breakfast base. Traditional Middle-Eastern pearl couscous takes much longer to cook and rehydrate unless pre-cooked in the same way as in our pasta recipes.

Sweet couscous options include brown sugar, dates, currants, dried apricot, rosewater (use rosebuds from tea shops), cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, nuts (especially pistachios and pine nuts) and coconut milk.

Savoury couscous options are more Mediterranean with dried tomato, capsicum, onion, chilli, garlic, dried cheese (especially dried feta), salted olives and oregano, or go Middle Eastern with cardamon, chilli, cinnamon, ras-el-hanout, pine nuts or pistachios and currants.

various packets of couscous with different flavours — *Make your own couscous mix from scratch, or beef up commercial ones with extra protein and veg to increase their nutritional value.*

Tibetan Tsampa is porridge made from roasted barley that has been ground into flour. The porridge is strongly flavoured with yak butter, milk or water, strong tea and either salt or a little sugar; it’s somewhat of an acquired taste. Clearly traditional tsampa with yak milk and butter and the high-altitude ‘blue’ barley of Tibet is beyond home cooks other than Tibetan ones, but recreate it with milk powder, ghee and a strong smoky tea, which is seasoned with salt.

Although tsampa flours are eye wateringly-expensive in Australia, it isn’t difficult to roast pearl barley with sand in a wok and then powder it in a spice grinder or good food processor. If it’s a flavour you love, you can tweak the basic recipe for backpacking by packaging your flour, sugar and milk powder with a sachet of ghee, then boiling your water with tea in camp before removing it and adding the other ingredients. For a more authentic version, make the butter tea and use it to moisten the Tsampa as described in the first recipe above.

Quinoa porridge is easy to make and dehydrate at home, then rehydrate in camp.

Sweet potato porridge can also be made at home using the flavourings in this recipe and including a little extra oatmeal (to help it powder well) but omitting the milk: just use scant water. Dehydrate the puree, and powder in a spice grinder. Mix through coconut milk powder (and protein powder if you like) and package. In camp, add water and bring to the boil, stirring constantly.

Adapting Hot Breakfast Recipes for Backpacking

pot cups and cooker in vestibule of tent — *Breakfast in the pot, tea ready to go,* *Walls of Jerusalem National Park*.

You’ve seen a great hot breakfast option online, but its fresh ingredients are unsuitable for carrying, or it’s too time-consuming for camp. We’ve already covered a few examples, but how might you adapt a particular recipe? The principles are covered in Dehydrating: How to Adapt Recipes, but here are breakfast-specific tips.

Many cooked breakfast recipes require adding various flavouring ingredients to oil or butter in a pan, milk, stock or water, and a grain. Sometimes you also stir in or add toppings at the end. Ideally, you aim to do any actual cooking at home, and then simply add boiling water in camp to rehydrate the ingredients.
When converting cooked breakfast recipes for backpacking, remember that fried spices go rancid after 4-8 weeks, so prepare them close to the time of your hike and use as little oil as possible. Package them separately to your grain. If ingredients need to be stirred in afterwards, pack them in a second sachet: keep dried fruit and nuts separate from grain to prevent it clumping or absorbing any moisture from the dried fruit. Our poha recipe is an example.
If you’re able to omit oil from the recipe when cooking it at home do so, and add it in camp instead.
Increase seasonings and spices in dehydrated recipes as drying weakens flavour. Consider using MSG instead of salt.
Choose carbohydrates that rehydrate quickly eg couscous rather than pearl couscous, instant oats rather than ordinary oats. If you use slow-cooking wholegrains like quinoa, buckwheat, barley or rice, you need to par-cook and dehydrate them before using them in your recipe, or cook the whole recipe and dehydrate it before reconstituting it in camp.
Chop vegetables – capsicum, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, spring onions etc – very finely so that they rehydrate quickly, or use freeze-dried ones. Grate and blanch firmer vegetables.
Think creatively about substitutions, as in this faux biscuits and gravy recipe using gnocchi and a meat substitute.

steaming pot with chunks of tofu veggies and noodles — Breakfast noodles with freeze dried tofu and finely chopped/fast rehydrating vegetables like broccoli, spring onion, cabbage, kale. Grate and blanch firmer vegetables like carrots before dehydrating, so they rehydrate faster.

Powdered egg is raw and needs to be cooked, usually as a scramble. Reconstitute it in camp with freeze-dried additives (capsicum, onion, spinach, cheese). Add a little oil to your pot, and cook your egg; sprinkle with bacon bits.
For more flavour, some people recommend frying hashbrowns (grated potato) in scant oil before dehydrating, then rehydrating with freeze dried vegetables etc before heating again in camp.
Don’t dehydrate milk, just add milk powder to your recipe after dehydrating and add water in camp.
An easy example:

Below is how I would adapt this simple Jamie Oliver Couscous recipe for backpacking (and with more flavour!).

Package 200g instant couscous with a separate sachet of

Coconut milk powder (to make 220ml)
a pinch of salt
two pinches ground cinnamon
3 dried rose buds (available from tea shops)
two pinches ground cardamon
two pinches ground nutmeg
Dried orange zest
1 tbspn dark brown or vanilla sugar or to taste

In a separate sachet place

100g mixed nuts (pistachios, flaked toasted almonds and/or toasted pine nuts)
40g currants and/or chopped dates and/or chopped apricots.

In camp, add the sachet containing the first eight ingredients to 220 ml water and bring to the boil. Fish out rosebuds, add 1 tspn of oil (carried separately) and stir, then pour in your couscous. Stir again, remove from heat, cover and put pot in cosy for two minutes. Stir through nuts and currants. Easy-peasy!

The Options are Endless!

As you’ve seen, your trail breakfast options go way beyond porridge/oatmeal, and you don’t need to spend a fortune on commercial freeze-dried meals, or cheap but nutritionally poor instant versions. Instead, buy cheaper supermarket breakfasts (tweaked to your taste and nutritional preferences!), or cook your own breakfasts at home and dehydrate them for stellar bang for buck.

Bon apetit!

hiker on rock next to large clear pool of water at base of waterfall — *An amazing location like this deserves a breakfast to match!* *Thorsborne Trail, Queensland*.

Lightweight Backpacking Breakfasts