There's a moment on most long walks, usually about four hours in, when you realise you've packed the wrong things.
Everything in the bag is sweet. The chocolate has gone soft. The sandwich has been flattened into something with a strange dense corner. And what you actually want — badly, specifically — is something savoury and filling.
This is a solvable problem. Here's how we pack.
The three things a hiking food needs
It has to survive the bag. Everything gets squashed, everything gets warm against your back, and anything fragile arrives as crumbs.
It has to be eaten with cold hands, standing up, possibly in the wind. Anything requiring assembly, cutlery or a flat surface is a fantasy you will not act on.
Half of it should be savoury and filling. This is the one people get wrong. Most walking food is sweet — flapjack, dried fruit, chocolate, energy bars — and after a few hours of it the body starts asking for salt instead. Pack for the person you'll be at hour four, not the one at the trailhead.
Through the day
Nuts and seeds. Efficient, though lighter than they feel — worth pairing with something more substantial rather than relying on them.
Dried apricots or figs. Better travellers than dates, which go sticky in warm weather.
Flapjack. Sweet, but honest about it, and it holds together.
Biltong. Already dried on purpose. Indestructible.
TEMPTÉ Tempeh snacks. The savoury item we take, made in Scotland with tempeh as our main ingredient.
Tempeh is a firm cake of fermented soya beans; baked into thin slices it's crunchy, properly savoury and dense rather than airy. Practically, that means it doesn't melt, doesn't crush into dust, and gives you something properly savoury when you're four hours in and still have a descent to do.
We took a bag up Ben Donich to check. It survived the rucksack and disappeared quickly.
Lunch
Wraps beat sandwiches. A flatbread doesn't compress the way sliced bread does, and it survives being at the bottom of a bag. Fill with something dry — hummus and roasted vegetables, hard cheese, cold roasted potatoes with salt.
Cold roast potatoes with salt. Sounds odd, works enormously well. Dense, savoury, filling, and they don't mind being cold.
Hard cheese and our TEMPTÉ snacks. Also a reliable option instead of serving purely as a snack. Cheddar or manchego, TEMPTÉ snacks, and you're good. Both survive anything. Although, the same pairing works rather better at home, where you can put a proper board together.
A boiled egg or two. Nature's packed lunch, already in a container.
How to eat our TEMPTÉ snacks on a hill
The point of a hiking snack is that it works with cold hands and no surface. A few things that do:
On its own, from the bag. The default, and just as good eaten alone as when you dip it in something else.
With hard cheese. Slice the cheese before you leave. A tempeh crisp is firm enough to take a slice of cheddar without folding — most crackers aren't, and you'll find this out at the worst moment.
With a small tub of hummus or nut butter. This is where the sturdiness earns its keep. A crisp that snaps in the tub is a crisp you eat with your fingers.
With a cured sausage, if you eat meat. Slice in advance, same principle as the cheese.
Anything you'd put on an oatcake. Same job, more flavour of its own than a regular oatcake.
Carrying it
The packaging matters more than people expect.
A rigid tub for anything you care about. A cheap lidded container solves ninety per cent of squashing problems. Fragile things go in the tub, everything else can take its chances.
Decant into something resealable. Half-eaten bags spill, and a bag clip in a rucksack is optimistic. A small tub or a zip bag means you can eat half and keep the rest intact.
Keep food away from the back panel. That's the warmest part of the pack. Anything that melts goes at the front or the top.
Hard things low, fragile things high. Obvious, routinely ignored.
Take the rubbish home (please!). Including fruit peel — banana skins take a long time to break down and look grim on a path in the meantime.
What we actually pack
For a full day on the hill, between two of us:
- Two wraps with hummus and roasted peppers
- A block of cheddar and a packet of oatcakes
- A bag of tempeh snacks and a small tub of hummus
- Nuts, dried apricots, two flapjacks
- Two flasks — one tea, one water — plus a bottle each
- A square of dark chocolate, for morale
The tea is not optional. Nothing improves a cold summit like something hot, and it weighs less than the extra layer you'd otherwise want.
The short version
Pack dense, dry, sturdy things. Make at least half of it savoury. Put anything fragile in a tub. Take more than you think and eat before you're hungry rather than after.
And if you've never had tempeh, a hill is a reasonable place to find out — you'll be hungry enough to pay attention, and there's more on what to eat it with here.
Keep reading
-
What Is Tempeh? A Simple Guide to Our Hero Ingredient
- Why We Make Snacks From Tempeh
- Why Some Snacks Leave You Hungry
- What to Put on a Cheese Board (That Isn't Crackers)
-
What to Dip Tempeh Crisps In
Curious what we’re doing with tempeh? Meet TEMPTÉ →