camp meals

Bacon, Potato, and Egg Scramble

Bacon, spuds, and eggs in one skillet. Everything cooks in the fat the bacon gives up.

calories
520
weight
9 oz
cal / oz
58
protein
24 g
serves
1, scales
prep
5 min
cook
20 min
total time
25 min
water
none
cost
$

Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.

  • Breakfast
  • Canister stove
  • Liquid fuel
  • Grill grate
  • Car camping
  • Basecamp
  • Gluten free
  • Dairy free
  • Nut free
  • One pot
  • Grab and go
  • Needs a cooler
  • Basic

Ingredients

Bacon 2 strips cut into quarters before you leave home
Potato 1 small sliced thin; thick slices will not cook through
Eggs 2
Hot sauce to taste Tabasco or whatever you carry
Salt and pepper a pinch each

Method

  1. Set the skillet over medium heat and lay in the bacon pieces. Let them render until the fat pools and the edges firm up.
  2. Add the potato slices to the hot fat. Cook about 10 minutes, stirring now and then, until they brown at the edges and give under a spatula.
  3. Crack in the eggs and stir steadily. They will set fast against the hot pan.
  4. Pull it off the heat while the eggs still look slightly wet. Salt, pepper, hot sauce at the table.

This is a cooler recipe, not a backpacking one. Bacon and raw eggs need to stay cold, so it belongs at a car site or a basecamp with a fridge you drove in.

The order matters more than the ingredients. Bacon first because the rendered fat is the cooking medium for everything after it, and thin potato slices because a whole spud will burn outside before the middle softens. Eggs go in last and cook in under a minute, so pull the pan early. Residual heat in the skillet finishes them, and eggs that look done in the pan are dry on the plate. If you want this shelf-stable, see the powder variation below; it is a different breakfast, but it works out of a pack.

Packing

Cut the bacon and slice the potatoes at home, each in its own bag, and keep both in the cooler. Eggs travel cracked into a leakproof bottle, which also saves shell picking. Hot sauce in a small dropper bottle.

Variations

  • Swap the bacon for a pouch of precooked sausage crumbles and add a spoon of oil, since it renders almost nothing.
  • No cooler: shelf-stable egg powder and freeze-dried hash browns, rehydrated with 200 ml of water, plus a foil pouch of bacon crumbles.
  • A handful of shredded cheese off the heat if you have a cooler along.

https://www.boyscouttrail.com/content/recipe/mumbo_jumbo_breakfast-199.asp