camp meals

Scout Troop Breakfast Burritos

Sausage, peppers, and eggs folded into tortillas at a car camp table.

calories
520
weight
7 oz
cal / oz
74
protein
22 g
serves
6, scales
prep
15 min
cook
20 min
total time
35 min
water
120 ml cold
cost
$$

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

  • Breakfast
  • Campfire coals
  • Grill grate
  • Canister stove
  • Car camping
  • Basecamp
  • One pot
  • Grab and go
  • Needs a cooler
  • Basic

Ingredients

Bell pepper 1 diced at home to save camp time
Onions 2 diced
Breakfast sausage 1 pack about 1 lb, links or bulk
Eggs 3 or 6 tbsp powdered egg plus water
Water 1/2 cup for steaming the sausage
Flour tortillas 6
Salsa to taste optional, small jar or packets
Shredded cheese 1 cup optional, keeps a few days in a cold cooler

Method

  1. Get a skillet hot over the fire or on a grill grate. Cook the onions and peppers until they soften and the onion edges brown. Scrape them into a pot and set it at the edge of the fire to hold heat.
  2. Put the sausage in the same skillet with 1/2 cup of water. The water steams it through without scorching the outside. Once the water cooks off, let the sausage brown in its own fat.
  3. Cut the sausage into coins and add it to the pot. Leave the fat in the skillet.
  4. Scramble the eggs in that fat over lower heat. Move them constantly and pull them while they still look slightly wet. Add them to the pot.
  5. Warm the tortillas one at a time in the dry skillet, ten seconds a side.
  6. Fill each tortilla from the pot. Cheese and salsa go in last if you brought them.

This is a troop breakfast: one skillet, one pot, and a line of people holding plates. The pot is the whole trick. Each component cooks separately in the skillet, then gets parked in the pot near the fire, so nothing goes cold waiting on the eggs and you never need a second burner.

Steaming the sausage in a little water before browning is worth the extra minute over a fire, where heat is uneven and the outside chars long before the middle is done. The fat left behind is the cooking medium for the eggs, which is why they come out rich enough that the burrito holds together without much cheese. It needs a cooler for the eggs, sausage, and cheese, so treat it as a car camp or basecamp meal; the shelf-stable swap is in the variations.

Packing

Dice the onion and pepper at home and bag them. Sausage, eggs, and cheese ride in the cooler with ice; eggs travel better cracked into a screw-top bottle than in the shell. Tortillas go on top of the food bin so they do not get crushed.

Variations

  • Swap the fresh eggs for powdered egg and the sausage for a shelf-stable summer sausage or a foil pouch of chicken. That version needs no cooler at all.
  • Add a handful of instant potato flakes to the pot to soak up the fat and stretch six burritos into eight.

https://camprecipes.com/classic-recipes/troop-4-ithaca-burritos