Camp Cooler Breakfast Bricks

When I have the time, my favorite way to bring food on a camping trip is in sealed frozen form. I call them "Bricks" and they're great for simple meals, with little planning and little to no clean up, and they help to keep everything in your cooler cold. These breakfast bricks are a great way to get started, but with a little creativity you can use this technique for virtually any type of meal.

A food sealer is a great tool that you can use for a lot more than making your food last longer. If you don't have one, look for a used one online. I've found them for as little as $20.

At a minimum you will need eggs, an ice cube tray, a vacuum food sealer, and sealer bags.You'll want to make sure the sealer bags your are using are rated for boiling. For these breakfast bricks I added bacon, cheese, and salt & pepper. I usually can't go crazy on ingredients if I expect my daughters to eat them. But when I make them for the adults I usually add onions, mushrooms, country sausage (a personal favorite) peppers, and sometimes pre-cooked hashbrown potatoes.

If you're adding bacon... who are we kidding, of coarse you're adding bacon, I like baking it on a rack at 425 degrees until done. It ends up crispier, and is easier to crumble.

Pretty much self explanatory. Put it in a bowl and mix it up!

Pour your mixture into the ice cube tray. I like to use a 2" silicone tray. Each cube holds about 2 eggs, depending on size of eggs you use. Then put your tray into the freezer until the eggs are completely frozen. This is the trick to vacuum sealing liquids. Otherwise the eggs, juice, or whatever liquid you're sealing will suck out of the bag and into the vacuum sealer.

Once your eggs are fully frozen, pop them out of the tray and cut yourself enough sealer bag for them to fit in. Follow the directions for your food sealer to vacuum pack and seal your cubes. After that, I like to wrap them in aluminum foil so they stay frozen a little longer, and then use a Sharpie to label the ingredients. Now you have a nice sealed, frozen, brick of camp food that will help keep everything else in your cooler colder longer. And since they're sealed you don't have to worry about yucking up the melted ice water ice in the bottom of the cooler.

Get yourself a pot big enough to to hold your brick. I tried to use my backpacking stove since both burners on our big camp stove were in use. You can see in the photo, it wasn't going to fit, so I had to wait and use a bigger pot on the bigger stove. The eggs were still mostly frozen so it was better to have the bigger burner anyway.

It looks pretty funny when you pull it out of the bag, but it tastes great and if you did a good job sealing the bag, you don't have to clean your pot :) This trip I served it up will cheap canned biscuits I baked before the trip, along with gravy I made, froze, sealed and cooked just like the eggs.