What to Grill on the Trail – Swiss Style

We love cooking over an open fire, especially in the Swiss alps. But sometimes it’s hard to decide what to cook. Sausages are an obvious choice but can get a little boring if you go hiking every weekend. So here are few ideas (meat & veg) that are easy and still fit in your backpack. At the end of the post, I have a list of picnic supplies that make grilling on the trail a bit easier.

See also How to Build a Fire – Swiss Style and A Swiss Guide to Hiking Food.

Grilling cheese

The first time we grilled cheese on the trail, I was hooked! It’s such a nice alternative to meat, still salty and very filling. We have travel raclette pans that sit over an open fire (shown below left). My friend brings a little cast iron dish and sets it directly on the coals to melt brie; so delicious with bread dipped in! We also like Haluomi cheese (often called Grillkäse), but it only works if you have a grill; with sticks, the cheese just melts and flops off the stick.

Roasting bread dough

Swiss kids love to make “steckenbrot” or “schlangenbrot” aka snake bread. Just bring some store bought or homemade bread/pizza dough in a baggie (or make it yourself and let it rise while you hike). At the fire, twist it around a roasting stick and slowly cook it over the fire. I like to bring a little honey to eat it with or I add sugar and cinnamon to the dough when I make it. Sometimes the kids wrap it around a hot dog as shown below. See this post for a recipe and more instructions.

Veggies

I love having veggies to balance out all the junk food we eat on the trail. The easiest veg to grill is cherry tomatoes. They don’t need a marinade, they easily fit on a roasting stick and they cook quickly. On occasion, I have cut up veggies (e.g. zucchini, peppers, eggplant, mushrooms), drizzled them with oil, seasoned with salt and pepper, and stuck them in a baggie to marinate while we hike. When we’re ready to grill, I skewer them and roast over the fire. Or sometimes I bring my grill cage shown above, which easily cooks lots of cut veg at once. This is a bit messy and bulky to pack. But it’s a nice break from all that meat.

Pre-cooked sausages

This is the easiest and most obvious choice. Cervelat (the Swiss national sausage), bratwurst, and hot dogs are already cooked when you buy them, so you don’t need to worry about keeping them cold in your backpack. They only need to be charred over the fire for more flavor.

Each region has a different style of carving the sausages before cooking. We like the criss-cross for Bratwurst and the flower for Cervelat. When we are cooking with friends, we carve our initials in the sausage so we can tell them apart.

Uncooked sausages

If you bring uncooked sausages, like the curled ones below, remember they will take much longer to cook all the way through and they need to be kept cool while hiking. They are often much trickier to cook on sticks because they are so floppy, so better on a grill. Many Feuerstelle have grills but not all.

Marinated meat

All groceries and most gas stations sell pre-marinated steaks and other meat products, especially marketed for grilling. They are usually quite salty and not amazing, but decent trail food because the vacuum packaging makes them easy to carry around. My kids love the kebab meat sticks so this year I’ll experiment with making my own.

Condiments 

Don’t forget your ketchup and mustard. Some stores have single serve portions for sale, but that’s a lot of packaging. I bought these mini silicone squeeze bottles, so I can bring a small amount instead of the big containers. Love them!

Marshmallows 

These days, you can buy marshmallows at many groceries in Switzerland. But my tip is to bring those cookies that already have the chocolate on them so you can easily make Smore’s.

Appetizers 

Don’t forget lots of snacks for the kids while they wait for the fire to be ready. Of course, we bring the unhealthy stuff like chips. But veggie sticks with hummus dip and fruit are often quite welcome for hungry kids while they wait for sausage.

Picnic supplies

Eating on the trail can be quite messy. I have a few tips for keep things organized, especially with kids.

Roasting sticks. We like carving roasting sticks, but it can take a long time and sometimes wood is not available. The telescoping roasting sticks are great for cooking and tending stuff on the grill since they are so long. These are also good when cooking something small that needs a thin stick, like veggies. We love our Rolla Roasters, that have a rotating feature, great for even cooking on marshmallows. Migros sells telescoping roasting forks as well.

sticks pic from Rolla Roaster website, no affiliation

Cool bag. Raw sausage or steak should be kept as cold as possible until you cook them. We love our PackIt insulated freezable picnic bag (shown above) that I got at Manor a few years ago. The cool pack is built into the bag itself so you just keep the whole bag in the freezer till you need it. It fits a few sausages and condiments and packs pretty flat in your backpack.

Dishes. In nature, you can eat with your hands, but my kids tend to drop things in the dirt. So plates help. I prefer paper bowls to paper plates because with kids, sausages are always rolling off the plates into the dirt. Food stays much more contained in the bowls. These oblong “pommes schales” work great for sausages and dip. Remember to pack minimum 2 dishes per person.

This year, I’m trying out lightweight reusable camping dishes, which are more durable than paper and environmentally friendly. The downside is that I have to bring back dirty dishes in my backpack (wrapped in a plastic bag).

Utensils. I recently bought reusable camping sporks (shown above) and my family loves them. You have to pack out disposable utensils anyway, so might as well be a little more environmentally friendly.

Cutting board. We usually just cut the food up on a paper plate, but the knife always cuts through the plate and makes a mess. So I started bringing a small thin cutting board and we are much happier.

Towels. I always a pack of paper towels for clean up, a must have. These easily burn in the fire. I recently started bringing a kitchen towel, which has come in handy many times when we’re not by a river or lake for washing our hands.

Trash bags. You will end up with lots of trash you can’t burn and dirty utensils that need to be packed out. So think ahead and bring at least one bag for trash and one bag for dirty plates and utensils.

Wow. That was a long post. Hope you found it helpful. Good luck on the trail. En Guete!

See also How to Build a Fire – Swiss Style and A Swiss Guide to Hiking Food.