Boil-in-Bag Camp Omelette
Eggs cooked in a bag in the same pot that boils your coffee water. Nothing to scrub.
- calories
- 420
- weight
- 3.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 120
- protein
- 29 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 3 min
- cook
- 13 min
- total time
- 16 min
- water
- 1500 ml boiled
- 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
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Gluten free
- Nut free
- Eat in the bag
- Grab and go
- Needs a cooler
- Basic
Ingredients
| Eggs | 2 | crack them into the bag at home and freeze the bag; it thaws as a cold pack |
|---|---|---|
| Diced ham | 1/4 cup | shelf-stable pouch ham or summer sausage both work |
| Hard cheese | 1 oz | grated or crumbled, added after cooking |
| Salt and pepper | to taste | |
| Dried onion or chile flake | 1 tsp | optional |
| Freezer-grade quart zip bag | 1 | must be a boil-safe freezer bag, not a sandwich bag |
Method
- Get a big pot of water to a rolling boil. You want enough depth that the bags float clear of the bottom.
- Crack the eggs into the freezer bag. Add ham, salt, pepper, and any dried aromatics.
- Press the air out, seal it, and squish the bag between your hands until the yolks break up and everything is mixed.
- Clip the sealed tops of the bags to a stick or a big paperclip laid across the pot rim so no bag touches the hot metal.
- Boil 10 to 13 minutes. The eggs go from liquid to a firm curd; squeeze the bag to check.
- Pull it out with tongs, open the top, drop in the cheese, and let it melt for a minute. Eat straight from the bag.
This is a Scout-camp trick, and the appeal is entirely about cleanup. The bag is the pan. Water in the pot never touches food, so the same pot boils coffee water immediately after and nobody washes a skillet with egg welded to it. Cooking in water also caps the temperature at boiling, which is why the eggs come out as a soft curd instead of a brown rubber disc.
Two things matter. Use a freezer-grade bag, not a thin sandwich bag, and keep it off the pot wall where the metal runs far hotter than the water. A paperclip or a stick across the rim does that. Note that the BSA has since discouraged this method over plastic-in-boiling-water concerns, so if that bothers you, run the last variation and scrub the pot. Freezing the egg bags at home is the other half of the trick: eggs are day-one food otherwise, and a frozen bag doubles as the cold pack that keeps everything else in the cooler alive.
Packing
Mix and freeze the egg bags at home, then bury them in the middle of the cooler or wrap them in spare clothing. Frozen, they hold overnight and usually into day two. Cheese and ham ride separately if you skip the freezing step.
Variations
- Swap the ham for a foil pouch of salmon and skip the salt.
- Dried mushrooms and a spoon of sun-dried tomato make it vegetarian; rehydrate them in the bag with a tablespoon of the boiling water first.
- No bags: pour the mix straight into a greased pot and scramble it over low heat, then scrub.
https://www.boyscouttrail.com/content/recipe/ziploc_omelette-1115.asp