camp meals

Skillet Meatballs in Red Sauce

Beef meatballs simmered straight in the sauce, over pasta, in one pot at the truck.

calories
560
weight
9 oz
cal / oz
62
protein
30 g
serves
4, scales
prep
10 min
cook
25 min
total time
35 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.

  • Dinner
  • Canister stove
  • Liquid fuel
  • Campfire coals
  • Car camping
  • Basecamp
  • One pot
  • Pre-mix at home
  • Needs a cooler
  • Basic

Ingredients

Ground beef 1 lb kept cold in the cooler, cook it the first night
Dried minced onion 2 tbsp stands in for a fresh onion, no cutting board
Powdered egg 2 tbsp mixed with 3 tbsp water, replaces 2 eggs
Grated parmesan 1/2 cup the shelf-stable canister kind is fine here
Bread crumbs 1/2 cup
Salt and black pepper 1 tsp total
Jarred marinara 24 oz a pouch weighs less than a jar and does not break
Spaghetti 12 oz snapped in half so it fits the pot
Dried parsley 1 tsp for the top

Method

  1. Mix the powdered egg with 3 tbsp water and let it sit a minute. Add the beef, minced onion, parmesan, bread crumbs, salt, and pepper. Work it with your hands until it holds together.
  2. Roll balls about an inch across. Smaller cooks faster, and you are burning fuel the whole time.
  3. Pour the marinara into the pot over medium-low heat. Set the meatballs in the sauce in one layer. Lid on, 20 minutes, turning them once. Do not stir hard or they fall apart.
  4. Move the meatballs and sauce to a bowl or a second pot lid. Boil about 1.5 L of salted water in the same pot and cook the spaghetti until soft, roughly 9 minutes.
  5. Drain, return the pasta to the pot, and pour the sauce and meatballs back over it. Parsley and more parmesan on top.

Simmering the meatballs directly in the marinara is the whole point at camp. There is no oven, no baking sheet, and no reason to dirty a second pan browning them first. The sauce cooks the meat through and picks up the fat that renders out, which is what would otherwise be left in a skillet you have to scrub.

The binder is where this changes from the home version. Fresh eggs and a fresh onion both travel badly, so powdered egg and dried minced onion do the same jobs without the cooler space. Grated parmesan from a canister is stable at any temperature. The ground beef is the one thing still on a clock, so this is a first-night dinner unless you carry the precooked meatballs instead.

Packing

Mix the bread crumbs, dried onion, powdered egg, parmesan, salt, and pepper into one bag at home. At camp it is one bag plus the beef. Beef goes in the coldest part of the cooler and gets cooked the first night out.

Variations

  • Swap the beef for a pouch of precooked meatballs if the cooler is not reliable. Just simmer them in the sauce for ten minutes.
  • Skip the pasta and eat the meatballs on sub rolls the second night.
  • A spoonful of chili flakes in the sauce turns it into arrabbiata.

https://www.bowlofdelicious.com/quick-and-easy-spaghetti-and-meatballs

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