What counts as a substantial meal for a DofE Expedition? (And why it’s important)
If you noticed that in the 20 conditions of a DofE Expedition you are required to cook and eat a “substantial meal” each day, but aren’t sure what this term means, then you’ve come to the right place. In this article I go through the details of what counts as a substantial meal, followed by some of top suggestions for a delicious substantial meal.
A substantial meal on a DofE expedition must be a hot meal cooked by the participant, that is both nutritious and filling. Participants are required to prepare a substantial meal every day of their expedition, with the exception of the final day.
Why is it important to know what counts as a ‘substantial meal’?
With the exception of the final day of the expedition, you are required to cook and eat a “substantial hot meal on each day”, as laid out in point 18 of the DofE’s 20 conditions of the Expedition section.
As well as this, you must “plan an appropriate expedition menu”. Don’t worry — this doesn’t mean you have to type up a nicely formatted menu on Word, print it off, and bring it with you on the expedition (although that would be quite the flex).
Rather, this simply means that you should be aware of, more or less, what you’ll be eating each day to ensure you have the correct number of dinners, correct number of breakfasts, and so on. This is to avoid the stuff-loads-of-food-in-a-bag-and-hope-it’s-enough method, which is never advised.
So, what counts as a substantial meal?
On analysis of point 18 of the 20 conditions, I’ve boiled ‘what counts’ down to three distinct boxes that must be ticked, all outlined below.
The meal must be “cooked” by you during the expedition (i.e. not precooked at home). You certainly don’t have to go all out and prepare grandma’s stuffed ravioli recipe, but at least some cooking equipment must be involved, even if it’s just to boil water. To put any potential concerns at ease, boil-in-a-bag camping meals absolutely qualify, and are in fact my favourite dinner on an expedition.
Secondly, the meal must be “hot”. This is fairly self explanatory, and is actually a hard box not to tick assuming you’ve made sure the meal is cooked. I can think of a couple of meals that might not qualify, so if you intend to do something along these lines I would recommend passing it by your expedition provider first: if you are bringing cold soup in a can (NB cans are not generally recommended) and are cooking breadcrumbs to go with it; or, if you are are preparing some form of salad with a few cooked ingredients, e.g. roasted walnuts.
The meal must be “substantial”. This is the most subjective point and just requires a bit of common sense. My Gold assessor described substantial as ‘nutritious and filling’. All the classic camping/expedition meals are perfect — they’re essentially designed to be definition of substantial — and so is pasta, porridge or other similar carbohydrate-based meals. The sort of meals that usually won’t pass are your Pot Noodles type meals: not calorific enough to be a proper dinner after hiking 20km, nor nutritious enough to be worth bringing!
There is no rule that your daily substantial meal has to be dinner, but for most people this will be the most natural. In general I would recommend making yourself a hot, filling meal for dinner, irrespective of the ‘substantial meal’ rule.
However, if you are intending to have a cold dinner one day, the next best option for your substantial meal is breakfast — you’ll want to avoid having to get out the cooking equipment at lunch for convenience. I would recommend using simple porridge pots, like these golden syrup flavoured ones, as they taste great and really fill you up.
Top suggestions for a substantial dinner
For dinner you have two routes you can go down: one-pot meals (such as pasta with a sauce) or boil-in-a-bag meals. Boil-in-a-bag meals are generally much quicker to prepare, require almost no clearing up, and have a huge range of options, which is why they get my pick every day of the week.
The wide range of options for a boil-in-a-bag dinner range from meals designed specifically for camping trips, to ready-made packs you can find on a supermarket shelf:
Wayfayrer all-day-breakfast and Wayfayrer chilli and rice were my two favourite dinners on my Gold expedition. They are pre-hydrated, meaning they weigh more but (in my opinion) taste better for it.
For a plant-based diet I’d hands-down recommend Firepot, who have an amazing selection ranging from porcini mushroom risotto to vegan orzo bolognese, from chili non carne to dal & rice with spinach.
This Expedition Foods spaghetti carbonara packs an amazing 1000kcl into just 213g. This meal is so light because you have to add the water (unlike the Wayfayrer meals which are already hydrated and simply require heating up).
I'm also a fan of adding in a hot dessert after the main course. There aren't as many options for desserts, but I found that Wayfayrer’s hot salted caramel chocolate brownie rounds off the day perfectly.
There is truly a huge range of options for boil-in-the-bag style meals on DofE. If nothing I’ve mentioned so far sounds right for you, I would suggest checking out the full ranges of the companies that make boil-in-the-bag meals using the following links: Wayfayrer, Firepot, Summit to Eat, Trekmates, and Expedition Foods.
If you do opt for the one-pot meal option, you'll likely be cooking a pasta or rice based dish.
Pasta with pasta sauce is a classic and probably the safest bet. Another benefit is you can bring your own personal pasta sauce (e.g. pesto, or tomato sauce) but share the pasta among teammates
Risotto is also popular (and I must say, one of the few times I've looked back at my boil-in-a-bag despondently) but takes time, requires a fair amount of effort, and has a lot of cleaning up