Recently an astonishing thing happened at my house: My son returned from a backpacking trip and he wasn’t hungry.

This had never happened before. After any excursion to the wilds, he invariably returns with barely enough energy to stagger to the sofa, collapse and, after a moment, say, in a fading voice, “I’m so hungry. I could really use an In-N-Out burger. Animal style. Make sure they grill the onions.”

But this time, he was chipper as a bluejay. He didn’t even stagger once. When I finally asked if he was hungry, he looked surprised by the suggestion. “Mom,” he said, “the food was so good.”

The Boy Scouts of Troop 51 had made a discovery that speaks to all their survival training: Take a chef along when you head off to experience the wilderness.

The chef in this case was Kevin King, assistant scoutmaster for the Napa troop led by Ned Roscoe. King, 23, an Eagle Scout and outdoors enthusiast from Massachusetts, headed west to take a job at Julia’s Kitchen in Napa after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park. Although he’s putting in 12 hour days as a line chef at the restaurant, he still contacted the local Scout council to see if he could volunteer. “Ned invited me to visit,” he said, and King proved to be a good fit for Troop 51, where under Roscoe’ leadership the Scouts have done quite a bit of cooking on their own. I can testify to this, having tasted samples of their biscuits and backpacking bars.

For King’s first backpacking trip with the troop, King noted he had to “do some switching and pleading” to get the time off from his meat station at Julia’s Kitchen. The troop, with King’s help, planned the menu for the three-day trip.

As anyone who camps knows, simplicity is key. Still, King said, he makes a point to bring along “everyone’s favorite spices — salt and pepper.” In his case, it’s kosher salt and a small pepper grinder.

Some of the hits: peanut butter and jelly, rolled in a flour tortilla at lunch, and a pasta dinner made with packaged Alfredo sauce. “I think each Scout ate about a half a pound of pasta,” King said, “but what’s the point of packing it out?”

Another Scout pleaser was his dessert. “They say necessity is the mother of invention,” King said. “When I went to the store to get supplies they didn’t have marshmallows for the S’Mores. But I already had chocolate and graham crackers. We melted it down, dipped the graham crackers in it and called it chocolate fondue.”

Apparently, however, one of the most impressive things was the way King cooked eggs: He broke them into a zip-lock bag, added cheese, cooked bacon, and salt and pepper, and cooked them in the bag in a pot of boiling water.

We’ve not tried this recipe but I have assurances it’s first rate. King also noted you can pack eggs “for a couple of days,” without having to worry about them. “In France, they don’t refrigerate them, you know,” he said. They took their own eggs out of refrigeration at around four in the afternoon, and cooked them the following morning, “and they were fine.”

“I also showed them how to cook an egg in a cup,” said King. This is for people who forget their pots and pans but have a waxed paper cup. “You fill it with water,” King said, “and place it on the outskirts of the fire in the coals, where it’s hot but you can reach the cup without burning your hand. As long as there’s water in the cup, it won’t burn. Leave it 6 or 7 minutes. The trick is you have to add little doses of water so the water doesn’t all evaporate but not so much to stop the boil.”

And then, for people who forget pots, pans and paper cups, you can cook an egg on a stick, King said. The trick is to make two small holes in an egg, “at about 3 o’clock and noon. Put a stick through the holes and hold it over a fire,” he explained. “I cook it until the egg white, which will be dropping out of the hole, gets firm.”

The egg, he added, will be a little runny, but entirely edible.

King said he got into cooking as a teenager, when he got his first job as a dishwasher at a local restaurant in North Adams, the village in the Berkshires where he grew up. “I liked the bustling business,” he said. “And I liked that I never had to get up early.”

The best camping meal he can recall is a trip his Massachusetts troop made over the Thanksgiving holiday. “We cooked a turkey in a garbage can,” he said, “It was probably the best food I’ve had on a camping trip.

“Scouting done right, can teach you all kind of skills,” said King, and in a town like North Adams — “which makes Napa seem like a metropolis” —  it provided a lot of activities for boys.

“Scouting was huge in my family,” King said. “My father and brother were both Eagle Scouts too. Now, I’m in Scouting for the fun of it. It’s my excuse to have fun.”