How to eat well in the Maine outdoors
Maine’s Registered Maine Guides know that a well‑planned meal is more than a convenience; it’s essential fuel for safe and enjoyable excursions. For decades, guides have been preparing food in remote camps, and a new generation of entrepreneurs is making it easier than ever to eat well on the trail.
Taylor Boucher, founder and owner of Portage Eats, a South Portland‑based business that creates meal kits for campers, said, “Things taste better when you’re camping.” Her kits, assembled at Fork Food Lab, include fresh Maine‑sourced ingredients and simple cooking instructions. Boucher, who works for the University of Maine and no longer leads trips professionally, said her biggest goal is “to make it easier for people and help them get outside.” She noted that packaging is crucial because “you have limited space, and things are being jumbled around.” Her favorite kits include seaweed corn chowder and steak tip kebabs, and she hopes to partner with campgrounds next year after wrapping up her first season.
Preparation is the cornerstone of camp cooking, according to Candace Sabol of Corinth, who has cooked at hunting and fishing camps across the state. “What comes up with you is what you have for the whole week,” she said. Sabol, who now guides as well, often introduces clients to her favorite recipes, such as partridge pot pie. On Thursdays, her camp tradition is pizza topped with bear heart, barbecue sauce, red onion, mushrooms and jalapeños — a dish that sometimes surprises guests but wins them over. “It’s so much more than cooking for people,” Sabol said. “It’s helping people celebrate and share their harvest that they worked so hard for.”
Chris Toy, a Registered Maine Guide, cooking instructor and cookbook author from Bath, freezes meals like shrimp stir fry or chili for overnight trips to Chimney Pond at Baxter State Park. Doing so reduces the amount of chopping needed after a long day of hiking, prevents contamination of raw ingredients, and cuts down on gear. “If you’re not going to be carrying cleavers and cutting boards and ways to clean up, the more you can do at home, the better,” Toy said. When car camping, he still slices ingredients ahead of time and packs a divided hot pot, which he described as “a perfect option for a large group with varied tastes. One side could be spicy; the other side could be, as I like to joke, wimpy.”
Lisa DeHart of West Gardiner, who has guided canoe trips for nearly 30 years, started a YouTube channel called “3 Minutes with a Maine Guide” to preserve the skills she learned from mentors. Many videos cover camp cooking — setting up a dishwashing station, cooking over an open fire, choosing gear, and making biscuit dough or pie crust in advance. She emphasized that food is one thing guides can control in a field full of variables. “No matter what happens that day on a river for anybody, you can always pull out a day with really good food, and really good food in the middle of nowhere makes a guest feel safe,” DeHart said.
Sarah Holman of Portland, who runs the guide service She Hikes Mountains, checks nutritional labels closely. She aims for about 800 calories for dinner while backpacking and chooses snacks with the highest calorie‑to‑weight ratio, such as nuts. “They’re heavy, but they provide excellent fat, protein and nutrients,” Holman said. She also adds candied ginger to her almonds to help settle an upset stomach. Holman once foraged five types of wild mushrooms and added them, along with garden green beans, to a ramen dish that she called the best she’s ever had in the woods.
For those who prefer to let someone else handle the work, Portage Eats offers pre‑portioned kits that require only basic cooking. Boucher emphasized that “the packaging really is the most important piece” because of limited space and the risk of items being jumbled. Meanwhile, Jennifer Scism, founder of the Kittery‑based company Good To‑Go, started her business after experimenting with a tabletop dehydrator and her favorite comfort foods. Scism, who once ran a Michelin‑starred restaurant in New York and won the TV show “Iron Chef,” said her favorite meal is chicken pho. Good To-Go meals, found in stores nationwide, typically need just a little hot water. Scism wrote, “No matter what kind of adventure you’re on, whether you’re summiting Katahdin or taking a leisurely walk through the woods, your meal should be something you genuinely look forward to at the end of the day.”
From Thanksgiving dinner with gravy and cranberry sauce to ramen with foraged mushrooms, corn chowder with seaweed, partridge pot pie and hot pot, the menus of Maine’s guides reflect both tradition and creativity. Whether by careful planning, clever packaging, or simply sharing a harvest, these meals are more than sustenance — they are a celebration of the outdoors and the people who explore it.
