Upgrade your festival food
The days when you could only get miserable, limp potatoes at a festival are long gone. In fact, you can eat really well there. The only downside? It does cost you a pretty penny. The solution? Do it yourself! We asked about your go-to festival meals and tweaked them into something almost culinary.
Usually you only have one gas burner with you, and not every tent comes standard with a SMEG fridge. Temperatures can rise high and thinking isn’t really an option at a festival anyway. It’s understandable that you’ve been looking forward for weeks to the moment you can eat your ready-made pancakes, noodles or bean stew again, but it can be better.
Barbecue
When you’re camping, your first association with food is probably barbecue. How do you do that if you want to bring as little as possible and let as little meat spoil as possible?
Jolijn often goes to festivals for work, including Lowlands for the seventh time this year, and has developed a routine by now. “I’m really not going to haul all my food with me. They make sure you can get food everywhere. Except on the first evening. Then the grounds aren’t open yet, so we bring a disposable barbecue. Everything goes on it that evening.”
How it can also be done: What’s better than barbecuing once? Barbecuing three times. If you approach it cleverly, for example by focusing more on vegetables instead of meat, you can extend the party. Vegetables spoil much less quickly.
Spring rolls
Coby, an avid Pinkpop and Lowlands attendee, calls them ‘the perfect combination of “healthy” and hangover food’: vegetable spring rolls. You can indeed bring those along and eat them cold as soon as you’re at the campsite. But are they a meal you can live on? Of course not. Unless you have buckets full.
How it can also be done: If you bring rice or noodles, some stir-fry vegetables and some chili sauce, you’ll almost have a rice table. Of course, you can also just go for that bucket.
Noodles
A tried-and-tested way to get a quick base in your stomach and/or combat a hangover is to eat a generous portion of noodles. Julia not only often attends festivals, but also stands in (days-long) queues for concerts. “I just bring a little bag of vegetables to throw in with the noodles.” There you go.
How it can also be done: Kimchi, fermented cabbage in a chili spice mix, is packed with bold flavors. It’s a product you can keep for a very long time, so bring it along as a topping for your noodles. It adds crunch right away. Also: a bag of mixed toppings with, for example, sesame seeds, fried onions and dried chili flakes.
Pancakes
Karin and Stef rarely miss a festival (Best Kept Secret, Down the Rabbit Hole, Pinkpop, Lowlands, you name it), and they agree: pancakes are the absolute best food at a festival campsite. “Of course, made with pancake shakers: add milk or water to the dry ingredients and you have a super-deluxe meal. Very easy and it gives you a satisfied feeling in the morning.” Karin: “I actually really enjoy those ready-made pancakes in the morning. The greasier, the better. They make you a lot happier in the morning than healthy bowls of oatmeal.”
How it can also be done:Whether they’re ready-made or made from a shaker: definitely bring syrup. Pro tip: try a savory pancake. Fry onions and any vegetables in the same pan as the pancake.
Hot dogs
Ah, the hot dog. Together with barbecue, perhaps the most tried-and-tested meal at the campsite. Greasy, juicy and so satisfying.
How it can also be done: Here too, we advocate fried onions and perhaps some pickle. Other than that, the hot dog is perfect as it is, as long as you bring ketchup, mayo or mustard. Or all three.
Last but not least: the hangover remedy
When asked what you festival pros do to combat a hangover, we received very different responses. A few that we can get behind, such as ‘a Lipton Ice Tea with a paracetamol to spice things up’, ORS, ‘a chemical concoction that is basically just water with sugar and salt, good for hydrating’ and breakfast cakes with lots of fiber and seeds.
We also heard someone mention ‘a gin and tonic with cucumber for the fiber’. Alcohol is the best remedy for a hangover, or so they say, right? We’ll take your word for it.
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