This is a reanimation of the Vicaribus blog as lived by Miro Kazakoff and Ehren Foss in 2004 and 2005. The photos may be spotty.

Atomic Noodles

Posted by Miro recipes

This will likely be the only backcountry cooking recipe I include here. Sean picked this up from the NOLS cookbook and prepared this for us when we were camped in Olympic National Park.

A few words about backcountry cooking and the unique challenges about cooking when you have to carry all your food and equipment on your back: the whole thing is based on a few principles that, like many aspects of backpacking, are hard to fully appreciate until you’re in the woods.

1) Meals must be quick and simple. Plan on being exhausted after a day of hiking.

2) Ingredients need to be shelf-stable to hold up for days without refrigeration.

3) Backcountry is not the time to count calories, except in the sense of trying to pack in the few thousand you’ll need to get you through the day’s hike.

4) Camping stoves have one temperature: hot. The longer you run it the more fuel you waste. Anything that cooks low or slow is a waste of fuel and time you’d probably rather be resting or moving; hence boiling water is the foundation of backcountry cooking.

5) Bears. In the wild, Yogi ain’t the friendly scallywag you remember from TV. Don’t invite him to dinner by cooking anything too fragrant.

1) Start with 5 or 6 packets of instant ramen chicken flavored noodles. Boil these in just as much water as you need.

2) Empty the flavor packets into the water just before the end of cooking. When the noodles have absorbed the flavor pour off the broth and retain some of it for the sauce. Drink the rest of the broth as an appetizer. Remember that someone has to drink it or carry it out. Flavored broth can’t be thrown into the woods (see number 5, above)

3) Melt a half stick of butter or more. Don’t be stingy with the butter. You need the calories.

4) Add two dollops of peanut butter (about a half cup) to the butter and melt the whole thing.

5) Add one serving of Atomic Soy Sauce (see below). Mix

6) Thin out the sauce with the chicken broth to taste.

7) Recombine the sauce with the noodles and serve. Perhaps throw on some more butter.

Atomic Soy Sauce

Sean carries this in a little container about the size of those shampoo samples they sell at the CVS. One is about right for a single preparation of Atomic noodles.

1) Take two tablespoons brown sugar. Saturate the sugar thing with Tabasco.

2) Add as much soy sauce as it takes to fill a sample-size shampoo container.

Assessment: Surprisingly good. Sean made this for us under a tarp in the rain and cold. It made me feel not miserable. What better could be said?