This little gem of a recipe has fueled my fishing, kayaking and backpacking endeavors for the past year. I love this Pad Thai recipe so much that my son and I ate it almost every night during hour 260 mile thru-hike of the John Muir Trail July of 2021. The ingredients are simple, cheep, easily attainable and only require boiling water to prepare.! Let’s get into it!
Ingredients
- Raman, 1 package (380 calories)
- Skippy Peanut Butter Packet, 1.15 oz. (190 calories)
- Salted Peanuts or Cashews, 1.oz (170 calories)
- Soy Sauce, 2 packets
- Sriracha Packets, to personal taste
The finished Pad Thai ingredients as described above come to 740 calorie. That’s great for long distance hikes or refueling when you’ve been paddling or wade fishing all day. If needed, you can increase some of the three main ingredients to get more calories. In addition to the calories, you are getting about 10 grams of protein between the peanuts butter and cashews.
Most of the ingredients are available in “restaurant packets” which makes it easy to pack in and prepare.
Preparation
Preparation is fast and simple only requiring about 1 cup of boiling water. In the field, I cook the Pad Thai in my 750 ml Toaks Titanium backpacking pot. I bring the water to a boil. Shut down my stove then put the noodles in to soak until they soften (about 5 minutes). You want to make sure the lid is on your pot while soaking. It will make the process faster. After the noodles are softened up, I mix in the remainder of the ingredients. You don’t have to use the flavor packet for the Raman but I do most of the time when I’m backpacking because I find that I need to replenish the salts that I sweat out all day.
To avoid having to clean your pot, you can hydrate and cook the meal in a 1 quart zip lock freezer bag as long as you have some type of insulating pouch to put the ziplock in while your rehydrating the noodles. There are DIY projects for this on YouTube but I like to use the Repack by Hyperlite Mountain Gear. You can see it in use in my video below.
Wild Trout Chronicles 
This is great; thank you for sharing this. My teenage son and I are always looking for “calorie-dense” backpacking meals from the grocery store. And yet another way to use Ramen – awesome!
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Thanks for the positive comment Scott! It’s a great recipe …. I’m sure it will fuel you and your sons adventures!
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We are definitely going to try it. Also I see you’re also in PA (either that or you do a lot of fishing here?). We’re in south central. My son just got his “fly fishing” merit badge at boy scout summer camp and I’ll have to show him some of your other posts!
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