BosKampKos turns camp breakfast into a three minute job. What is in each bottle, what it costs, and how to pick the right two for your next trip.
Somewhere past Dullstroom, ten past six on a Saturday morning. It is cold, two kids are awake and one of them is already moaning, and last night's fire is grey. Somebody has to make breakfast.
You have flour in a Tupperware, sugar in a jam tin, baking powder that may or may not have survived the corrugations, and a measuring cup that is almost certainly in the other trailer drawer. There is a light wind. You are about to measure flour in it.
That line is printed on every bottle BosKampKos makes, and it is more or less the whole product. Dry mix, sealed in a bottle. You pour water in, put the lid back on, shake it, and pour it onto a hot pan. Nothing to wash afterwards except the pan you were going to wash anyway.
They are a small South African outfit, and the thing that makes them worth writing about rather than just another mix on a shelf is the naming. Every product is named after a piece of camping gear. Pancakes are Slaapsakke, sleeping bags, because you roll them up. Waffles are Grondseile, groundsheets, because of the grid. The plaatkoekies are Opblaas-matrassies. The dessert is Tentpenne. It is the kind of joke that only works if you have actually camped, which tells you something about who is making the stuff.
"Camp food does not get judged at home. It gets judged at six in the morning, at five degrees, before anyone has had coffee." JP Voogt, Kampi
There are nine products, which is about seven too many to choose between at nine on a Tuesday night. Two things narrow it down quickly.
The first is eggs. One product in the range needs them and the rest need water only, so if your fridge is already packed and the eggs are travelling in the same box as the braai grid, that has more or less decided it for you.
The second is who is eating. Two adults on a bakkie trip are happy with one bottle of something plain. A family with a nine-year-old who considers plain pancakes a personal insult is a different shopping list, and that is where the flavours earn their money.
Slaapsakke is the pancake mix. It is 415g on the label and R55 at the moment, down from R75.
This is the one that needs water and eggs. The bottle says so on the front. Thin, rolled, cinnamon sugar, gone in ninety seconds. If your camp does pannekoek, this is your bottle.
On the packaging these are Opblaas-matrassies, inflatable mattresses, because that is what a thick plaatkoekie looks like. On the shop they are listed as Plaatkoekie Mengsel. Same thing. Worth knowing before you go looking for a product name you saw on a bottle and cannot find in the menu.
These are water only. No egg, which for a lot of camps settles the argument on its own. Plain is R55, down from R75. Then there are four flavours at R75 each: sjokolade, wit sjokolade, karamel and honderd en duisende.
That last one, hundreds and thousands, is the one to get if the kids are bored of camp food. A seven-year-old will shake that bottle themselves and then eat what comes out of it, because they made it.
If you are only buying one bottle, make it the plain plaatkoekies. No egg, it suits adults and kids, and it is on the lower price. The flavours can wait for the second order, once you know how fast a bottle goes in your camp.
Breakfast is the practical purchase. This is the one people actually remember, and it is the reason a nine-year-old asks when you are going camping again.
Grondseile are waffles. Groundsheets, because of the grid. The bottle is labelled Roomys Grondseile and that trips people up: the "roomys" is because waffles get served with ice cream, not because there is ice cream in the bottle. It is a waffle mix, 415g, R60, down from R70. Water only.
You need a waffle pan for these, which is the one piece of kit this list asks for. If you have one in the trailer, it earns its space here. Waffle, ice cream, syrup, done.
Tentpenne is the odd one out in the range, and the one that gets asked for again. Sugar cones with marshmallow and chocolate, wrapped in foil, packed in a tray. It is 210g and the label claims it feeds six mondjies. R75, down from R80.
You do not cook it. You put the tray on medium coals for roughly ten to fifteen minutes, per the instructions on the pack, and then you hand out sticky cones around the fire. No pan, no washing up, nothing to carry back to the tap in the dark.
It is also the only product on the site carrying a review, and it is a small one: two ratings, both from the same customer, Ruan, back in September 2023. Five out of five. "Great produk? Maklik gerieflik en heerlik!!" That is the lot. Two ratings is two ratings, and you can make of it what you want, but it is what is actually there.
Prices at the time of writing:
Flour is cheaper, obviously. But nobody compares it to flour on the actual morning. They compare it to the padstal breakfast you stop at because nobody felt like cooking, or the diesel you burn driving off the kampterrein to find a shop that has what you forgot. Against those, a bottle that feeds the family is the cheaper morning.
There is also the thing with no price on it, which is whether the person who normally does the cooking gets to sit down.
Worth knowing before you click, because it is not a normal card checkout.
A few items in the range also show up on the Kampi Store if you are already shopping there.
Have a look at what is coming up, because the season is busier than it feels in August.
The Women's Day long weekend lands on 8 to 10 August. Spring Day is 1 September, which is when the first proper camping weekend of the season usually happens. Heritage Day falls on Thursday 24 September and turns into a four day weekend for anyone who takes the Friday. Aardklop runs at the end of September and Rocking the Daisies in early October. The Namaqualand flowers are on now and gone by the end of September.
Pudo takes as long as it takes, and the shop is not on the way to the campsite. Nobody has ever successfully ordered camping food on the Friday afternoon they left.
If the trip is still an idea rather than a booking, that is the part to sort out first. Have a look at what is available on Kampi, or start from where you want to go: the Kruger, the Drakensberg, the Garden Route. If you are new to towing, the campers you can pull on a Code B licence are a good place to start, and the EB licence guide explains when you need the upgrade.
Once the camper is sorted, the food goes in the same box as everything else you are going to forget. Our caravan departure checklist and the 4x4 camper trip checklist both have a kitchen section, and this is what goes in it. If you are working out whether the fridge will survive four nights off-grid, the solar, battery and fridge guide covers that maths.
Worth noting for the dry-camping crowd: every bottle except the pannekoek one needs nothing but water. That counts for something when you are watching what is left in the jerry can, and it is the reason this stuff ends up in bakkies going to places like Dinokeng rather than only in caravans at resorts.
You do not have to buy the whole range to find out whether this suits your camp. One bottle of plain plaatkoekies at R55 and one Warm Sjokolade at R20 is enough to test it on the next weekend away. If it goes the way it goes when it works, you will know what to put in the second order.
Go and have a look at the shop.
A South African brand selling pre-mixed camping food in bottles. You add water, shake, and cook. The range covers pancakes, plaatkoekies, waffles, a fire-baked dessert and hot chocolate. Every product is named after a piece of camping gear. We wrote a fuller introduction to the brand and its range earlier this year.
Almost. The Slaapsakke pancake mix needs water and eggs, and it says so on the bottle. The plaatkoekie and waffle mixes need water only. Warm Sjokolade takes hot water or milk.
Nothing. Opblaas-matrassies is the name printed on the packaging, Plaatkoekie Mengsel is how the product is listed in the online shop. Same mix.
Between R20 and R75 at the time of writing. Warm Sjokolade is R20, plain plaatkoekies and Slaapsakke are R55, Grondseile waffle mix is R60, and the flavoured plaatkoekies and Tentpenne are R75.
Order on boskampkos.co.za, pay by EFT, and choose Pudo locker delivery nationwide or arrange collection. They also answer on WhatsApp on 082 652 1773.
Nothing. It arrives in a foil tray. The tray goes on medium coals for roughly ten to fifteen minutes, per the instructions on the pack, and then you eat it straight out of the tray.