Bringing a cooler is a great way to help preserve food on your camping trip.
Using a cooler filled with ice makes it fairly simple to preserve food for a few days.
However, if you don’t use best practices you can definitely run out of ice quickly and your food could go bad.
Follow these quick tips to ensure your food doesn’t spoil!
Bring a separate cooler
As I mentioned before, if you can manage to bring a separate cooler for your perishable food then definitely do as it will make things super easy.
Use the one cooler for non-perishable items that you want to keep cold, like drinks.
And use the second for perishable foods such as meat, cheese, vegetables, etc.
Keeping the perishable foods in a separate cooler will help preserve the food as long as possible on your trip.
Open the lid as little as possible
If you don’t have the room for a second cooler, try to open the cooler lid as little as possible.
This will make sure that the ice stays frozen and your food won’t spoil as easily.
Every time you open the lid cold air escapes and the ice will then work to bring that temperature back down, which will melt it.
Only put cold items in your cooler
If you put warm items in your cooler, the ice then has to cool down those items, which melts it faster.
Try to only put in items that have just come out of the fridge or freezer.
This will ensure the cooler starts off at as cold a temperature as possible.
Place the frozen items on bottom and fridge items on top
When you open the cooler, cold air escapes.
This will affect the items placed on top the most.
Since fridge items don’t need to be as cold, placing frozen items on the bottom of the cooler will help them to remain frozen longer.
Adding a layer of material (such as styrofoam) above the frozen items and below the fridge items will help keep things cool.
Blocks of ice work better than crushed ice
It’s just the way it works.
Having a few large chunks of ice works better than having a bag of crushed ice.
Does the store not sell any?
Make your own blocks of ice by freezing water in rectangular containers such as tupperware!
When you’re ready to remove the block from the container, run warm water along the outside to unstick it from the container.
Layer ice in between food
Layering ice in between food will help keep things colder all throughout your cooler.
It works almost the same as putting the styrofoam layer in between the frozen and fridge items.
Having that layer will cool everything and will also protect the lower items from getting hit by the warm air when you open up the cooler.
And having a layer of ice above everything will help seal in the cold air!
Use (at least) equal parts ice to food
When layering your ice, be sure to use at least equal parts ice to food.
The more ice the better.
Having too little ice will essentially make your ice ‘work’ more, which means there won’t be enough of it to keep everything in the cooler cold and will melt faster.
More ice = colder food!
Use water bottles for drinkable ice packs
Freeze water bottles and place them in the empty space around the cooler.
They will work the same as ice blocks, freezing things really well, and they will thaw out to provide you with extra drinking water!
Place your cooler in a cool place
Coolers do a great job at insulating to keep the heat out from the outside.
But they aren’t perfect.
Leaving your cooler in the heat will start to melt the ice faster.
If you want to keep your cooler cold as long as possible, place it in a shaded area to stay cold.
Refill if the ice has melted
This one is pretty obvious, but water isn’t as cold as ice (“but what about salt water”…).
When your ice has melted, you’ll need to get more if you want to keep everything in your cooler cold.
Otherwise the sandwich meat you packed is going to start smelling funky and your eggs are going to start incubating.
Cooler not keeping things cold? Get a better one!
Insert ad about how you need a $500 cooler that fits 2 water bottles and 4 ice cubes here (lookin’ at you Yeti!).
In all seriousness, if you’re following all of the tips above and your cooler isn’t holding ice for more than 24 hours, it may be time to look at getting a new cooler.
While they are more expensive, there is a reason for the price tag: they do an amazing job at keeping ice frozen and your items cold.
Regardless of the brand, rotomolded coolers are just built better than traditional ones and do a better job at keeping things cold.
What’s your cooler of choice?
I hope this article helped you keep your food from spoiling by keeping your cooler cold longer.
Some of it is self-explanatory, but when you’re out having fun you aren’t always thinking about keeping the ice in your cooler frozen.
When it comes down to it, having a nicer cooler will take some of the thought process out of it, but you still can’t just leave a cooler open or not put enough ice in it.
What’s your go-to cooler of choice for camping?
Let me know why down in the comments below!