Our Allagash 2026 Menu

Night 1: Japanese barbecue, bibimbap, shishito peppers, banana boats

One of the best meals I’ve had camping – our friend made Japanese barbecue pork belly to accompany Bibimbap bowls. They brought the Bibimbap ingredients pre prepared from an Asian grocery store and cooked the pork belly in foil. They had also pre prepped the rice. We cooked shishitos in wire hand racks. For dessert we had banana boats – a classic camping dessert where you cut a banana down the middle with the peel on, stuff with chocolate and marshmallows, wrap in foil, and toss in the coals until it all melts into a gooey delicious mess! Some of us used peanut M&Ms which turned out to be a bad choice as the candy coating burned.

Night 2: Goulash, cast iron veggies, cinnamon bread pudding 

Night two was a classic goulash pasta one pot dish, some red onions and carrots in a maple mustard sauce in the cast iron (used tinfoil, big mistake, learned from that one), and a cinnamon bread pudding in the reflector oven that was basically Pillsbury cinnamon rolls torn up with apple pie filling on top.

Night 3: Weenies on sticks, stovetop stuffing in the cast iron, cast iron chocolate chip cookie 

Beat after a long day, we did weenies on sticks which were absolutely delicious, cast iron stovetop stuffing, and a big chocolate chip cookie. The vegan dogs left something to be desired aesthetically but everything was delicious. At this point we’d gotten the hang of cooking in the cast iron: set it on the grate about 12 inches above hot coals, lid on, coals on top of the lid as well. This yielded the most even bakes.

Night 4: Chili, cast iron cornbread with green chilies, blueberry peach cobbler in the reflector oven 

This meal was another all timer. The chili was delicious and the cornbread turned out perfectly. The reflector oven takes a long time but the results were always pretty impressive. Some sour cream and shredded cheddar and avocado were an amazingly fresh addition to a meal later in the trip.

Night 5: “Must Go Couscous,” pineapple upside down cake in the cast iron 

This couscous was a joke for the whole trip as we had no real recipe and anytime we didn’t use all of an ingredient we’d say we’ll just throw it in the couscous. It ended up being absolutely delicious with leftover sausage, peppers, onions, tomatoes, god knows what else and some feta and mint we’d bought for the actual couscous. The pineapple upside down cake turned out shockingly well in the cast iron even though we realized we had not saved any eggs and resorted to whipping up aquafaba from a leftover can of chickpeas. Shockingly turns out that works!!

it was so fun planning and prepping food for our trip. We chopped almost all of our veggies before we left which was immensely helpful. We also took mixes out of their boxes and just cut out the instructions from the cardboard boxes to bring with us.