The worst meal I've had in the mountains was a bread roll I couldn't eat, handed to me by a very kind hut warden who had run out of everything else. The best was a cup of soup on a freezing station platform in February, made with water from a thermos, eaten standing up, while a train was two hours late. Neither had much to do with cooking. Both had everything to do with planning.
If you eat gluten-free — by diagnosis or by choice — travel is where the gaps show. Not in restaurants, which have mostly caught up. In the in-between places: the refuge at 2,000 metres with one pot and a kettle, the sleeper carriage, the ninth hour of a drive through somewhere with a petrol station and not much else.
So here's the system. It's built on one assumption: you can almost always find hot water.
Why hot water is the only equipment worth planning around
Hut kitchens have a kettle. Trains have a dining car, or a steward, or a tap marked for tea. Petrol stations have the coffee machine. Campsites have a sink and someone with a stove. Hotels have a kettle in the room, even the bad ones. You can carry a 500 ml vacuum flask and have your own supply for six hours.
What you cannot count on is a hob, a pan, a colander, a chopping board, or — this is the real point — a kitchen that hasn't had wheat flour in it for the last fifty years. Hot water poured into your own cup is the cleanest meal you'll get all day, in both senses.
The three-day kit, in three layers
Layer one: the hot-water meals
This is the spine. Two meals a day that need nothing but boiling water and three minutes. For us that's the Cupster instant soup variety pack — your mug, hot water, three minutes, done. Ten flavours means you're not eating the same thing on day three, which matters more than people expect when you're cold and tired.
A few things make them travel well. They're built on real pasta and pulses, not thickener — red lentil and pea protein do the heavy lifting, so they actually sit in your stomach for the afternoon rather than evaporating at the first climb. The fat is avocado oil, not seed oil. There's no MSG; the savoury depth comes from yeast extract. And they're plant-based, which is a consequence of how we make them, not a flag we're waving — practically, it means no dairy to worry about in a hut at altitude.
Pack: two cups per person per day, plus one spare. For three days, two people: 13 cups. They're light, they stack, and they survive a rucksack.
Layer two: the rescue kit
This is the clever bit, and it weighs almost nothing.
- Gluten-free bouillon powder — 60–80 g in a small screw-top jar. Check the label yourself before you leave; stock powders are a classic hiding place for wheat.
- Olive oil — 50 ml in a leakproof bottle, inside a freezer bag, inside a side pocket. Trust me on the three layers.
- Salt, black pepper, chilli flakes, dried herbs — a few grams each in tiny bags. Total: under 30 g.
- Hard cheese or a nut butter sachet — fat and salt, for the day everything goes wrong.
The bouillon is the hero. Rice, polenta, potatoes and eggs are available almost everywhere on earth and are almost always gluten-free in their plain state. What they are not is interesting. A teaspoon of good bouillon per 250 ml of water turns plain rice into something you'd choose to eat.
Layer three: the cold food
Food that needs nothing at all, for the hours between. Nuts, dried apricots, dark chocolate, a hard-boiled egg from breakfast wrapped in a napkin. Certified gluten-free oat bars if you tolerate oats — the certification matters, ordinary oats are usually milled alongside wheat.
Weights and ratios, honestly
For three self-supported days, aim for 600–700 g of food per person per day. Below 500 g you'll be hungry by afternoon; above 800 g you're carrying water you could have added later.
- Bouillon: 1 level teaspoon (about 4 g) per 250 ml water. Taste before adding more — shop bouillon runs salty.
- Rice: 70 g dry per person for a main, 1 part rice to 2 parts water, lid on, 10 minutes off the heat.
- Polenta: 60 g dry per person, 1 part to 4 parts hot stock, whisked. Ready in five minutes and genuinely good with olive oil and pepper.
- Snacks: 50 g nuts plus 40 g dried fruit per person per day.
- Water for soup: follow the cup — more water makes it thin, less makes it claggy. Your flask holds roughly two servings.
The village shop rescue
You'll run short. Everyone does. Here's the order I shop in when I can't read the labels and don't speak the language: whole foods first. Potatoes. Eggs. A tomato. Plain rice. Hard cheese. A tin of beans or sardines. Fruit. These need no translation and no trust.
Then I go back to the rescue kit. Boiled potatoes with olive oil, salt and chilli is dinner. Rice cooked in bouillon with a tin of beans stirred through is a better dinner. An egg cracked into hot, well-seasoned stock is a third one. None of it requires a kitchen you'd be nervous about.
What I skip entirely: anything floured, anything crumbed, anything in a sauce, anything from a shared fryer, and bulk-bin grains, which are the most cross-contaminated things in any shop.
A worked three-day plan
- Day 1 (travel day): breakfast at home. Nuts and fruit on the move. Cup soup from the flask at the first long wait. Dinner wherever you land — this is the day to eat out, while you still have options.
- Day 2 (the long one): oats or fruit at the hut. Two snack stops. Cup soup at the top, in the wind, where it does the most good. Rice with bouillon and whatever the shop had, in the evening.
- Day 3 (the way back): leftovers and chocolate. Cup soup on the train. Arrive home hungry enough to cook properly, which is the correct way to arrive home.
Four small things that save the trip
- Carry your own spoon. A long-handled one reaches the bottom of a cup. Borrowed cutlery is where cross-contact happens.
- Write your needs down in the local language on your phone, including the words for wheat, barley, rye and oats. Not a sentence — a list. Lists travel better than grammar.
- Fill the flask whenever you pass hot water, even if you're not hungry. Especially if you're not hungry.
- Pack one extra meal than the plan needs. Delays are the rule, not the exception, and a spare cup of soup is the cheapest insurance in your bag.
That's the whole thing. One kettle, one cup, one jar of bouillon, and the quiet confidence that at 2,000 metres, on a delayed train, or in hour nine of a drive, you're not going to be the person eating crisps for dinner again.
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Miklos Founder & CEO, Mill & Folks |
