My mom started asking me a LOT of questions about meal strategies and cooking in little kitchens in campervans like ours. It sparked a good afternoon’s worth of discussion. In summary, I told her how you stock your rig’s kitchen and prepare meals or go out depends a lot on trip duration, time of year, and personal level of joy in cooking. For example, the quantity of food carried and prepared depends a lot upon if you are camping for a weekend, vacationing for a week or two, taking an extended cross-country trip or living more or less full-time in the van, as we are now. Our eating preferences vary based on the weather and season we are in. Finally, some folks prefer cooking at home. Some prefer not cooking at all anywhere. Some, who are like us, gravitate toward cooking from scratch wherever they are. No right or wrong. Our Winnebago Travato campervan with its fairly complete tiny kitchen allows us to do whatever works for us in the moment.

Why does length of trip matter?

Weekend warriors or shorter trip campers can purchase or prepare enough meals in advance to cover their trip if they so desire. They may prepare meals to refrigerate some and to freeze some. Cooking while camping becomes a simple matter of reheating, after defrosting if needed. That way time spent cooking and cleaning up is minimized and time available to enjoy a travel destination is maximized. An added bonus is that this strategy doesn’t require much in the way of needing a pantry full of staples. You simply bring enough meals, snacks, and beverages readily prepared to grab and go. If a campfire is in the cards, then some classic camp foods to enjoy around a fire are likely to make the trip. In some situations, folks on shorter trips might use disposable cutlery and dishes to minimize dishwashing requirements and minimize inputs to their gray tanks. This is especially true when the availability of potable water is limited (i.e., camping off the grid, or “boondocking”) and/or the van is winterized (thus, without running water).

Those heading out on a week-long vacation may incorporate the same pre-trip meal prep strategy and plan to add in a few more stops at restaurants as part of their travel experience. Programs such as Harvest Hosts (a membership program that provides unique overnight camping location, website here)  offer some interesting opportunities to get to know local farms, vineyards, breweries, eateries, and the like while enjoying an overnight stay. We love Harvest Hosts as we see locales on a more personal level and feel good about supporting these small businesses that welcome us overnight.

Going on a longer trip – more along the line of many weeks or months – van travelers are much more likely to stock a pantry a bit more in order to make favorite seasonal meals from scratch, as we tend to do.  What we like to eat, month in and month out, directly impacts what kitchen gadgets add value and are worth bringing. Getting the kitchen pantry and gear in order is a winnowing process for each and every van owner. It seems fairly universal that we all bring too much kitchen stuff. Going on a long trip everyone seems to cram in everything they can – thank goodness the kitchen sink is already included -and by the end of a trip, there is a recognition that certain ways of preparing food simply didn’t take place while traveling in the van. Likewise, after a trip, we have realized there are certain things we would have liked to have more available. That has resulted in Rob modifying storage to better meet our needs, my removing items that failed to prove they merit the space, and our trying out new gear the next trip. For example, we don’t have an oven in our camper, so after a couple of trips, we brought along a small toaster oven popular with Travato owners for storing easily in the overhead cabinets. Fine for toasting, but the model is so slim, I can’t really bake in it. I can burn things on the heating elements, but not bake, and I enjoy baking. If I were on a trip with a well-defined ending, I could live without the ability to bake, but full-timing now, I value being able to bake on the road. I purchased an Omnia Stovetop Oven for baking on our propane cooktop. So far, we have enjoyed pizzas, brownies, cinammon swirl pastry and corn bread and look forward to ad libbing more recipes using this oven.

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Do you always cook?

If we have just had an epic day of adventures, then cooking is not be how we want to wind down our day. A meal out and about, every now and then – especially after a challenging hike or ride or paddle or on travel days- can make for less tension, less hangry peeps and pretty happy campers all the way around in our van. We are not on vacation. This is how we live. Someone on vacation might choose to eat out a lot more than we do. When we do “eat out”, it is most likely take-out because we don’t want to get to a campsite too late. We tend to read online reviews, watch for comments on how happy and comfortable people were with their dining out choices and of course now, read up on how/how well covid-19 safety protocols are followed.

If our adventure requires a drive to a trailhead or kayak launch, we are more inclined to consider a dine-out take-out meal before returning to a campsite for the night.  What is great about the van is our takeout meal can be enjoyed as soon as we pick it up, so no more spending money on takeout that feels more like an elaborate, but cold, leftover by the time we get to enjoy it. If we and our van are all tucked into a site and we don’t need to take the van to get out and about that day, we are more inclined to discuss a meal plan for the day and get that set up before heading off.

So, what food stuffs do you always have for cooking?

Thanks again to Rob, I have a complete suite of spices in a custom rack he built into the concave space on our kitchen window wall. It has taken us a several trips in every season, but now we have a better sense of the shelf stable pantry basics we should always have on hand – just like when we lived in a house. I may pay more now for the smaller sizes versus larger value sizes. I still tend to buy meats in value packages and immediately re-wrap them in individual sized, weighed portions for easy defrosting and use in downsized recipes. I appreciate fresh produce that does not require refrigeration and that has decent shelf life and build a menu plan around those a bit more.

Before heading to a new locale, we think about the weather we anticipate experiencing (for so many reasons). Chili or a chowder might be perfect with rapidly falling temperatures, but we would prefer a lighter chicken tortilla or fresh vegetable soup if nights are mild, but cool.  With high heat and humidity, we are more likely to want interesting salads with tasty proteins and to cook outside more to minimize creating more moisture or heat in the van. How we re-stock the pantry is definitely influenced by the weather we expect to encounter – just as cooking changes with the seasons in a house.

We tend to loosely plan a menu and then develop a shopping list for about a week to a fortnight’s worth of food on board. Having a shopping list is key.  It’s easy to while away time in a grocery that is new to you.  A list keeps the effort focused. A list keeps the purchases on task and thus, on budget.

What do you have and what do you bring to do the cooking?

The appliances we use to cook our meals rotate among the van’s built-in options and the implements we have added. The kitchen has a regular microwave (not convection), a two-burner propane cooktop, a small round kitchen sink and a 7.3 cu ft refrigerator-freezer with separate doors for each compartment. Rob added two storage compartments under the dinette bench seat -perfect for an InstaPot Duo Mini with its various cooking inserts and for an Omnia Stovetop Oven and its inserts. We still carry an Oster Toaster Oven in our van kitchen’s upper cabinet. I have a stone toaster pan and a silicone baking mat that I use to crisp items in the toaster oven, and we store them in the oven when it’s not in use. We mostly use a Duxtop 1800W Portable Induction Cooktop Countertop Burner for stovetop cooking in or out of the van. The portable cooktop is stored in the large cabinet under the kitchen sink – yet another space Rob has artfully rearranged to expand its storage capacity.

Kitchen gear we use for beverages includes a 6-cup stainless steel coffeepot for boiling water. It’s actually a percolator but we leave the percolator pieces in storage. As I am the only coffee drinker in our van, I may bring a Manual Burr Coffee Grinder and an AeroPress for making coffee or espresso one cup at a time, but lately, we both have been enjoying tea or an occasional hot cocoa. I have a simple immersion blender capable of crushing ice, making smooth purees, or blending ingredients. I am on the fence about it.  When I use it, I love it – I’m just not certain I am using it enough especially as I am not drinking as many protein smoothies as I was last year when I used it daily.

We have an 8×8 Pyrex with storage lid and a special plate for making bacon in the microwave. We store these in the microwave, so we have to remove them every time we use the microwave. It’s not a problem as I think we’ll always have something stored in the microwave when not in use, but I am not sure if we’ll continue to bring them because we don’t seem to use them. We do use a small box grater and collapsible items like a salad spinner (for the large bowl, if not for spinning veggies clean) almost daily as well as a small set of tongs for picking up hot items or serving salad.

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For prep work, I love our compact battery-operated kitchen scale that tucks neatly into a drawer. I have sets of measuring spoons, cups, and Pyrex liquid measures.  My favorite measuring cup is a two-cup tin cup with other measures engraved inside. I am thinking my measuring cup nesting set may be left off in the future, but I’ll still need the 1/8^th cup (a standard coffee measure is this size) because I use it to measure so many things every day. My measuring spoons are a great stainless set, but I might look for a more compact option if smaller teaspoon sizes are included – downsizing recipes these smaller measures are key.

For all the cutting needs, we have a lot of options with us. We have a compact peeler that slides onto a finger and is super at peeling veggies and fruits. We have a compact can opener, church key and a nice wine bottle opener. We have a spreader-knife, a short (broken) serrated knife that I love since the tip of it broke off years ago, a small paring knife, a cheese slicer (might part with that) and a classic full-sized bread knife we both love that is just as good with slicing a tomato as it is bread. We could not live without kitchen scissors – not to be confused with regular scissors for objects like paper etc., which we also have. I used to bring an apple slicer that I used daily, but the broken serrated knife does that job and many others, so the slicer now is stored. We have several small cutting boards that also keep the rattles down in transit. For stirring or flipping, we are still sorting out the best spoons and spatulas. I am liking some small silicone ones and the ones that came with our InstaPot.

While we are still culling the collection of smaller implements, we have settled on “larger” cookware. We use a 1.5-quart Avacraft stainless saucepan, an 8” Avacraft stainless skillet and a Lodge Cast iron griddle. We prefer the Avacraft for its always cool handle, the glass steamer tops, measurements engraved on the inside of the saucepan and lighter weight of the saucepan and skillet as compared to our seasoned Lodge cast iron versions of comparable size. Honestly, all of them work well on our induction cooktop. I love cooking with all of them, but since the van cannot carry everything, the bulkier cast iron pieces now stay behind, except for the griddle which is easy to store and to reach under the van’s kitchen sink. The 3-quart InstaPot stainless steel pot is what we use when we need a “large” pot. I have bought and tested out larger cast iron and Avacraft pots, pans, and skillets (much to Rob’s dismay) and have settled on these smaller sizes as they work best for our meals and our van storage limits. Since it is just the two of us, we are steadily mastering how to downsize the kitchen as we downsize our recipes.

What do we like to cook?

When we are off the road for longer periods – generally near ,if not with – family, I like to test out new recipes in their kitchens and consider how van friendly they might be. Burgers and chili and salads only get you so far. Currently I am loving slow cooker recipes and thinking that they may be adapted for the InstaPot on the road. The slow cooker in a home kitchen is great because I can put dinner together in the morning when I am fresher and then enjoy the rest of the day. Essentially slow cooker meals are a protein, chopped/diced/shredded veggies, a key liquid (broth, coconut milk, tomato juices) and diverse spice combinations. On the road I might bring sliced/diced frozen veggies to ease prep needs. While I can set the InstaPot to slow cook, for safety and energy resource concerns, I am more likely to prep and put the ingredients together in a stasher silicone bag or two in the frig and then throw them altogether and cook the ingredients under pressure in the InstaPot at the end of the day, especially if we are away from the van for a good part of the day.

We have just become aware of a cooking device from a company called HotLogic where folks can slowly reheat and cook individual to family sized meals using a plug-in portable heating device that heats foods to 165 deg F as they travel or explore. We haven’t tried this, as we tend to cook from scratch in the van, but it is on our radar to consider. Apparently, campervan friends report that nothing burns, just simmers slowly and cleanup is a snap. This might be great for travel days, as it could save us time and money spent on late day take-out, but it’s another device to store and we aren’t sure where, so we are not ready to go for it – yet. We’d love to hear your thought on this if you use one or two!

So how do we serve it up and clean up after?

For dishes, we use Corelle square dishes as many van folks noted that they store better than round versions in van drawers. The large bowls are great for mixing things, cooking in the microwave and making salads. The medium sizes are all purpose. I like the smallest bowls to keep portion sizes small, while tricking my eyes into telling my brain I am having a full bowl. We have two microwaveable bowls with lids and handles from Pier 1 that we use daily and make me wonder if we couldn’t reduce the number of bowls we bring, but as we have the room, there isn’t a compelling argument to limit them.  We take lunch plate sized plates as well as smaller dessert sized plates and one round dinner plate which is used mostly for defrosting things in the microwave. We use a small set of stainless flatware for eating and serving utensils. We try to keep our garbage to a minimum, so we use cloth napkins. Being full-time in our van, we like these homey touches. 

For clean-up, we do have a collapsible dishpan which is a handy bucket option too. Rarely, we do dishes at the campground dishwash areas – especially if hot water is available. Mostly, we do dishes in the van’s kitchen sink but use a small container to help carry and empty the dish water into the black tank instead of draining it into the gray tank – better for both as our gray tank fills more quickly from showers and the black tank could benefit from some additional soapy kitchen water.

Home is where we park it, so we do a lot of what we do in a kitchen in a house, just smaller in scale. So that’s how we two geologists in one campervan with no deadlines manage to plan, cook, eat and clean-up after enjoying many vistas from our Winnebago Travato, which we call the Greywacke Van.