Family Beach Vacation Meal Ideas

When it comes to planning the meals for your family beach vacation meal ideas can run a bit dry. There are so many things to do on vacation, packing in the food of course is not at the top of our list. If you’ve ever been lucky enough to go on a vacation somewhere warm this is something to add to your memories as well as your photographs. However, if like me you’ve ever traveled with little ones there are a few things that you need to think about below.

Planning a family beach vacation? To make your beach vacation a success and to ensure everyone in the family has a good time, planning and preparation is key. One thing you’ll want to think about: You will be having a lot of people in your vacation home that will need to eat! Here are some great family beach vacation meal ideas to get you started. Whether you’re going on a weekend getaway or a week-long family beach vacation, meal preparation and planning are equally important parts of getting away. And planning meals doesn’t have to be hard. If you keep these tips in mind, meal preparation for a family beach vacation will be more satisfying and enjoyable for everyone.

Family Beach Vacation Meal Ideas

One of the most important planning steps for a family beach vacation is mealtime. A successful vacation depends on many factors, and proper meals and snacks play their role in making your vacation more successful. First, let’s look at ways to make snacks easier for you to pack, prepare and store. Here are some tips on how to plan your mealtime for a family beach vacation:

Beach Condo Meal Ideas

Anyone else counting down the days to summer vacation? I don’t know about you, but I LOVE heading to the beach for summer vacation. We usually stay at a hotel, but this year we are going to rent a house or condo. Since we will have a kitchen, we are going to do a little cooking while we are there. Today I am sharing 25 Quick & Easy Beach Vacation Meals. I have breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert recipes that are perfect for your upcoming trip!

What to Bring to Your Beach Rental

Most rental houses and condos come equipped with the basics, but we’ve listed a few of our favorite things that it may not have. You can either bring these things with you or order it ahead of time and have shipped to your destination so it’s there waiting for you.

• Disposable Half-Sheet Baking Pans with Lids: I use these all the time at home and when traveling with food. These are a MUST!
• Slow Cooker: Your rental may have a slow cooker, if not, this one is good. You can make several recipes in this. I love to throw the potato casserole or Smothered Green Beans in here.
• Gallon Freezer Bags: gallon freezer bags are another must for me. I use them for everything. I precook ground beef, sausage, and bacon and place them in the bags. The bags are also perfect to marinate pork, steaks, and chicken.
• Large Cooler: if you are going to do some meal prep before you head down, you will need a large cooler to store everything in. I pack the cooker with frozen casseroles, burgers, and marinades.

Beach Vacation Meals for Large Groups

Most of these recipes can be made in advance and frozen for the trip. All of the recipes are easy to double or triple for a crowd.

• For burger night, I make the burgers ahead of time and freeze them before we go down. I store them in our cooler.
• For grilled meats, you can place the meat in the freezer bag, add the marinade and freeze the bag. Alternately, you can whisk up the marinade and store it in a mason jar.
• Casseroles – all of the casseroles can be made in advance and frozen unbaked. When ready to bake, thaw and bake as directed. Write the time and temperature on the baking pan lid or aluminum foil.

Favorite Gulf Coast Beaches

The Florida Panhandle is our go-to destination. Our favorite beach is Destin, FL. We go down several times a year. You can check out all of our recommendations here: https://www.plainchicken.com/category/travel/usa/destin-fl/

We recently checked out the Alabama beaches in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach. We stayed in a condo at Turquoise Place. It is the nicest place we’ve ever stayed on a trip. We want to move it in!

Check out all of our Gulf Shores/Orange Beach favorites here: https://www.plainchicken.com/category/travel/usa/gulf-shores-orange-beach/

Multi-Family Vacation Meal Planning – How to Divvy Up Mealtimes on a Group Vacation

One of the fun parts of a group vacation is getting to share mealtimes with everyone. At least, I enjoyed this part a lot!

Not only does it make everyone come together in the same place at the same time – an anchoring point for the day – but you also get to test out other people’s food. You might even ask for a recipe or two!

There are several ways you can organize mealtimes, as well as ways to divvy up responsibility so that no ONE family, or ONE person is taking care of the majority of them.

In the end, divvying up mealtime responsibilities also saves everyone both money, and TIME. Time that you can then use to exploring or relaxing!

Option #1: Shared Dinners, Only

The first option is the one our family chose, which was this: every family was on their own for breakfasts and lunches, and then each family rotated a turn to plan, buy ingredients, and make dinner for the group.

One nice thing for us: since Galveston was only an hour and a half to get to by car, we just planned out our food ahead of time, and then stopped at a grocery store on our way into the beach house.

Option #2: Shared Everything

Your group could decide on a huge list of meals for breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks all together, and then one or several of you guys goes grocery shopping for all ingredients. You would then divide the receipt up among the different groups of people there, and everyone pays their share of the costs.

Hint: one issue that could come up from this is how to divvy up the leftover/unused ingredients. These could go to the person who is driving home and/or has a cooler, in cases where some people fly in and wouldn’t want to take leftovers/food on the plane.

Option #3: Each Family/Group Cooks for Themselves

If you do this option…then you don’t really need easy vacation meals for a group. Not to mention, you’ll all be crowding around the kitchen around the same time to try to make lots of meals at once for your own family.

But, thought I’d put it out there, because it IS an option (just maybe not the best one, unless families have lots of specific dietary needs, or are pickier eaters than most).

Now, let’s get to the fun part – easy recipes to feed a crowd. I’ll divide them up into the following categories:

• Hot and Cold Sandwiches for a Crowd
• One-Sheet-Pan Meals for a Crowd
• Homemade Pizzas for a Crowd
• Slow Cooker Recipes for a Crowd
• Freezer make ahead meals for vacation

Psst: pair these main dish recipes with one of these 17 easy side dishes for family reunions.

Hot and Cold Sandwiches for a Crowd

I just love the idea of creating huge sandwiches all at the same time, cutting them up, and letting people have their share.

Here’s a few of my favorite crowd-pleasing sandwiches great for easy vacation meals:

• Pioneer Woman’s Hot Hawaiian Beef Sandwiches (makes 24 servings)
• Chicken Parmesan Slider Bake (makes 12 servings)
• Stromboli Sandwiches (makes 16 servings)
• Cuban Sliders (makes 24 servings)
• Hawaiian Roll Egg-in-a-Hole (makes 12 servings)
• Chicken Bacon Pull-Apart Rolls (makes 12 servings)

These make great lunches on vacation, too. Here are 14 more easy vacation lunches.

One-Sheet-Pan Meals for a Crowd

What could be better than putting all your ingredients for a group meal on one large sheet pan…and putting it in the oven? I’m sold.

Here’s some of my favorites:

• Pioneer Woman’s Sheet Pan Sausage and Pepper Hoagies (makes 6 servings, so double or triple, as needed)
• Sheet Pan Fajitas for a Crowd (makes 10-12 servings)
• Sheet Pan Egg Sandwiches (makes 12 servings)
• Sheet Pan Pancakes (makes 8 servings)
• Sheet Pan Grilled S’mores (makes 15 servings)
• Sheet Pan Egg-in-a-Hole (makes 12 servings)
• Sheet Pan Sugar Cookie Bars (makes 40 servings)

Psst: trying to feed 20? Here are 13 easy meals for 20 people.

Homemade Pizzas to Order

My husband absolutely loves to make pizzas from scratch. So, for him, packing up our pizza stone, our pizza peel, some corn meal, and then picking up ingredients to make the dough and toppings on the way into the beach house was a piece of heaven.

And he chose several different toppings/varieties to satisfy all kinds of people – such as a Hawaiian pizza with ham and pineapple, a meat-lover’s pizza with sausage and pepperonis, and a veggie pizza with green peppers/onions/mushrooms/etc.

Two ways to make this a very convenient option:

• You can prep a bit more than he did if you like this option – make several batches of pizza dough ahead of time and pack them in a cooler.
• Opt to make this the night that everyone gets in, because people will arrive at different times. You can easily just prep the pizzas, and then stick them in the oven for 14 -25 minutes to cook as they’re unpacking. Who doesn’t like a hot, homemade pizza? It’s a pretty no-fuss way to feed a crowd who arrives at various times.

We also made a salad dressing ahead of time that we brought with us, then put together a salad for people to help themselves. Easy-peasy!

Even better, there was enough pizza leftover that people could chow down on cold pizza the next morning for breakfast, or heat some up for lunch! Score.