We like to have several meals prepped and ready to go when setting out on a passage. There are several reasons we like to have food ready to go, number one is rough weather. Sometimes it’s rough and you just don’t feel like cooking in a rough seaway. Second, especially if it is cold, is to quickly get a hot meal in your belly. Having something pre-cooked that’s ready to quickly re-heat in a microwave or small pot does wonders for crew morale. If you’re starting to get cold getting a hot meal in your belly is a game changer. And yes, you can get cold on night passages in the tropics. Last but certainly not least is that often, especially on the first couple days of a passage, you just don’t feel like cooking or doing much. It often takes a couple of days to get into the passage groove and having meals ready to go is a nice luxury to have.
Going on passage we have two top priorities, take care of the boat and take care of yourself. Taking care of the boat means keeping her in a good sailing state, keeping a good watch, making good decisions when challenges present themselves, which they always do. You cannot keep a good watch and make good decisions if you brain is starved from fuel and your body is weak. This is why you need to eat well on passage.
So, without further ado, these are the top meals we prep to have ready to go for passage.
Burritos
We love burritos, period. They are one of our favorite foods. But, they’re also a great food for sailing.
You can store them in the fridge or freezer and you can put just about anything in them. You can make burritos with just about any leftover meat and even some heartier stews. We like breakfast burritos kept in the freezer for a quick breakfast with nearly no cooking. You can shove meat and veggies to your hearts content into a burrito, the hardest thing is wrapping it up.
You can microwave them, put them in the oven, but my favorite way to reheat a burrito is to heat them on low in a skillet. This method heats the filling inside while also crisping the sides. You have to have patience for this method however.
Burritos can be eaten in the cockpit, at the helm, even in bed if you’re just getting off watch and need some food before you get some sleep. This is possibly the easiest thing to prep and reheat on this list.
Chili
Chili is a great meal you can make for cold weather passages. There are a ton of ways to make it, you can accomodate even the pickiest of palates and most finnicky eaters by adding or taking out ingredients. We put a ton of meat and veggies in ours, one of our crew is no beans, but I like beans, so sometimes I add beans afterward to “my batch.”
You can eat chili by itself, put it over rice or noodles, top it with cheese or sour cream. A friend of mike eats his with tortilla chips, I had never tried this, but it’s delicious! Chili has a ton of utility on a boat and is great to eat on watch. One of our favorite passage meals, especially for cold weather.
Lasagne
Lasagne or really any type of pasta bake or casserole is an excellent passage meal to make ahead of time. You can keep it in the pan, parcel them out in plastic containers, or wrap individual portions in foil. Depending on how your boat is set up, if you have a microwave, oven or a stove or all three you will come up with the best way to package them up for reheating. Putting individual portions in foil can be reheated in the oven or even on a stovetop in a pan on the low setting.
Pasta Salad
As I’m hoping you are beginning to notice, many of these meals can be altered to suit yours our your crew’s taste or dietary restrictions or make it a little more robust by adding more protein. Pasta salad is no different, we make ours with salami, ham, cheese, tomatoes, red onion, spinach, etc. You can add whatever you have on hand. We like ours more robust so you can get some good protein and carbs all in one shot by dumping some pasta salad in a bowl. Within a minute on passage you can be shoveling some pasta salad into your belly.
This is a great snack or meal to eat if it’s hot out.
Chicken or Tuna Salad
Chicken and tuna salad are very similar in what you can use them for, and they both have a ton of utility. You can toss it in a wrap or tortilla, add tomatoes or green onions, make a sandwich out of it, or in heavy weather dump some in a bowl and eat it at the helm. I like to eat tuna salad with crackers as a small meal or snack. This is especially a great meal if it is hot out and you don’t want to heat up the galley or yourself.
Chicken Curry
I like to think of curry like an Indian chili. We like to make it with chicken and sometimes fish and serve it over rice. When we make it for a passage meal we mix the rice in when it’s cooking so everything is already combined together in one container for easy reheating. You can use regular curry powder or even better, tikka masala spices. At a purely basic level you can use canned chicken and canned tomatoes with an onion and some rice and you have a very easy, hearty meal with nothing that needed to be refrigerated before you cook it.
Recently we found these bottled curry and butter chicken sauces so all we do is toss in a bottle, some canned chicken, onions and rice for a super easy meal. This is about as easy as it gets.
Chicken and Noodles
Chicken and noodles is kind of like chicken noodle soup with very little broth and more noodles. As I am typing this I have a batch ready to go for our upcoming passage. We know it’s going to be cold, we’re in the North Atlantic in late December and we know when it’s cold and windy on our first couple days of passage we’re going to be reaching for that container of chicken and noodles. We start ours off in a pressure cooker with the chicken breasts so we can easily shred them and then just make everything in that one pot so we don’t have to dirty a bunch of dishes. I like to cook but I hate washing dishes.
Ramen
OK, admittedly you are not going to pre-cook ramen noodles, you crumble them up, put them in a large coffee mug with the seasoning packet and add very hot water from your kettle. When you’re doing a 3 am watch and it’s cold outside this will warm you up get some calories in your belly and keep you going until the end of your watch. Probably not the healthiest meal, but it can be made easily enough in rough seas with no prep. We keep ramen on board at all times, may not touch it for months on end, but it’s always there when we need it.
Hard Boiled Eggs
Probably the easiest thing to prep before passage, hard boiled eggs are great to grab for a snack or to add to a meal. We struggle to get enough protein on passage because we’re not breaking out the grill or cooking a lot of meat unless we’re making fish tacos. So with the hard boiled eggs they’re just sitting there in a container ready to go.
Charcuterie Meat and Cheese Tray
Another easy to prep meal or snack for us. You can often buy pre sliced meats and cheeses from the grocery store that are ready to go depending on what part of the world you are in. Some places you might have to slice them up yourself. This is a great snack if you have a larger crew, sometimes this is a meal for us. You can add just about whatever you want to a charcuterie plate, meat, cheese, crackers, pickles, greek dolmas, I especially like tinned sardines or smoked oysters on crackers with a little hot sauce, but Nancy won’t touch those.
Rice and Beans
I am a huge fan of rice and beans, I prefer to add hot sauce to mine before I eat it. You can buy prepackaged rice and bean mixes or make your own with red or black beans and just about any type of rice. You can add just about any type of seasoning to it and it is super easy to reheat quickly to get some warm carbs and protein into your system.
Premade Pizza Dough – Frozen
Pizza at sea, yes please. Now we don’t pre-make the entire pizza, and this isn’t exactly as ready to go as most of the other meals on this list, but it’s too good not to include. We pre-make pizza dough, wrap it in plastic wrap and freeze it. The day you want to make your pizza, take it out in the morning, put it in an oiled bowl, and let it sit in a warm area for several hours. Then all you have to do is roll it out, add your toppings and toss it in the oven. Like I said, not nearly as easy as the other meals, but easy enough on a calm-ish day at sea. You can’t beat eating fresh made pizza on the ocean.
Sausage, Egg and Cheese Muffins
Admittedly we don’t eat breakfast a lot, but if you do this is super simple and can be warmed up in an instant. You can add or omit just about any ingredient, eggs, sausage, bacon, just about any leftover meat, tomato, spinach, salsa, , onion, green pepper, potato, just about any type of cheese, it’s like a little frittata in a cup. The possibilities are endless.
Just mix everything up in a bowl and pour them into a greased muffin tray and cook them in the oven. Once cooled toss them in a container for reheating and eating later. You don’t even need to reheat them if you are really hungry.
Drop Us a Line
If you have a favorite passage meal that you like to make or something you think should be on the list, please drop us a line on our contact page. We’re always looking for new recipes to add to our list.
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