There is nothing like a tasty meal around a campfire… until you realize you need to wash the dishes you made it in. Just in case you don’t want to eat hotdogs the whole time (no judgment), here is my best advice for keeping your camping cookware clean without summoning raccoons!
A quick note about biodegradable soap…
Biodegradable soap means that it can be broken down by nature — it doesn’t mean it is safe to pour into a lake. Biodegradable soap can be especially harmful to aquatic life, so it needs to be handled at a dump station or on soil at least 60 m (200 ft) from water. The microbes in the soil can break it down (the fish cannot).
Skip these:
- Using regular dish soap (too harsh)
- Using antibacterial soap (kills good microbes)
- Dumping the water in the fire pit (attracts animals)
Some tips before you leave home
Prep as much as you can beforehand. The best way to reduce the number of dishes to clean is to cut down on the number of dishes you use. Greasy food dishes (looking at you, bacon!) and cooked-on residue can be hard to clean, so you’re steps ahead if you can prep that stuff beforehand.
Save the napkins from your takeout. Instead of throwing your unused napkins out, save them for your camping mess kit to use instead of dishcloths. There will be some dishes that require a cloth, but a lot of messes can be cleaned up with a napkin. This will save you from lugging around a bunch wet/dirty dishcloths (or at least, will minimize them). Plus, you give use to the napkins instead of them going straight to the landfill!
* Make sure you pack your napkins and paper towels out with you!
Purchase your camping cookware secondhand. Not only are you giving that secondhand pan another shot at life, but you won’t be as disappointed if something happens to your gear — especially if you plan to use it on an open fire.
Essential cleaning supplies
To clean your camping cookware, you’re going to need:
- Biodegradable soap
- Dishcloths (or napkins!)
- Scrubbing pads
- Wash bin or spray bottle
- Baggie to strain your food bits into
Optional but worth considering:
- Dish gloves (if me saying “strain your food bits” made you gag too)
Cleaning your dishes in a wash bin
For a couple of dollars, you can pick up a collapsible wash bin at Walmart (even better: use a salad bowl for free!) . A wash bin is the way to go if you plan to use a lot of dishes or if you are cooking something that is going to make your dishes particularly dirty.
Do your best to scrape as much crud off of your dishes as possible. Scrape it into a baggie to dispose of later. Fill your collapsible wash bin with water and a bit of biodegradable soap and wash away! Make sure you are doing this 60 m (200 ft) away from camp and water sources.
Never rinse your dishes in a natural water source. The water might not be as clean as it looks (hi there, giardia!) and, most importantly, we want to avoid getting soap into the water.
A message from the Field Lab: You don’t want to be rinsing your dishes in the river, but boiling the water actually kills giardia (and is generally considered a very effective water purification method). Click here to learn more about purifying water!
Cleaning your dishes with a soap spray
My favorite method is using a spray bottle. Just spritz and wipe, and you’re done! This can be especially great if you have chronic pain or limited mobility.
I used to use a vinegar mix to clean my camping cookware, which I put in a spray bottle from the Dollar Store. I am not kidding when I say it made everything smell like vinegar. If you don’t mind smelling like salad dressing then the vinegar mix works pretty well, but it’s a no from me.
Nowadays, I keep a spray bottle with a soap mixture in my camping mess kit instead — this is exponentially better than the vinegar mix (and it kills more germs). Fill the spray bottle with water, add a few drops of a concentrated biodegradable soap like Dr. Bronner’s, and you are set. I scrape any leftover food crud into a baggie to throw out later, and then spray the dish a few times with the soap mix and wipe it off. I don’t even rinse the dishes afterwards (but that is just my personal preference — not advisable if you like to be heavy-handed with the dish soap).
When I get home, I take everything out of the kit, wash it in the sink, wash the bin, and then immediately repack everything so that nothing gets forgotten next time.
Cleaning stubborn messes
After a long hike, I like to come back to camp and have a bowl of Campbell’s soup. It is almost a tradition at this point, mostly because all you have to do is reheat it (which is the extent of the effort I want to put in after a hike). But if there is anything I have learned, it is that if you don’t clean the pot immediately, you’re in for some trouble.
Except sometimes my laziness gets the best of me. In this case, when I finally go to wash the pot, I will fill it with water and boil it on my camp stove (be careful if you are using cookware with a non-stick coating — don’t let it boil dry or it can damage the coating). This will loosen up any of the stuck-on gunk, but you’ll still be spending some quality time with your dish scrubber.
Where do you dump the dish water?
You’ve cleaned the dishes and are stuck with a bunch of gross dish water (grey water). What now?
- If it is an option, utilize the camp’s dump station or grey water disposal.
- If it is not an option, make sure you are at least 60 m (200 ft) away from camp and from water sources and then scatter the water about or dump the water in a cat hole.
Pro-tip: 60 m is just 60 really large steps!
Dealing with the leftover bits
The most important part of cleaning your camping cookware is how you deal with the waste afterwards. Leftover food remnants can attract animals. This is crucial in bear country.
You know what they say — a fed bear is a dead bear. Why? Once a bear gets a taste of your great cooking, it’ll come back for more. Unfortunately, a persistent bear who frequents campgrounds is going to attract conservation officers. Best case scenario, the animal is tranquilized and relocated. Worst case scenario, the animal is killed so that no one gets hurt.
This is why it is so important to strain your grey water and scrape as much of your leftovers into a baggie to pack out and dispose of later. If you’re in bear country, store the baggie the same way that you store your food: in a vehicle or hard-sided trailer, or suspended between two trees, at least 4.5 m (15 ft) off of the ground and 60 m (200 ft) away from camp. Don’t dump the food into the hole with your grey water because the bears (and other critters) can still smell it.
Congrats, you’ve officially levelled up to “eco-conscious crud crusher”! Now you just need to decide what’s on the menu for your next camping trip. (And yes, Campbell’s soup totally counts.)
