Anyone can pack sandwiches, sausages and burgers and throw on a BBQ and satisfy some hungry mouths. Don’t get me wrong very often that is all the we do on a lot of our trips, but sometimes it makes a trip more memorable to cook proper food. You can only really do that if you are properly equipped for the task.

Last year I purchased my first piece of cast iron cookware – a Camp Oven (whooo hoo, sailor) It has different names in different parts of the world, a Potje or Black Pot in Africa, a Dutch Oven in Europe but I prefer to call it a Camp Oven. I have seen a lot of people use different versions, cast iron, stainless steel, but I knew that I wanted a decent sized cast iron pan to use in live fire cooking (Silly expression for cooking on coals)

Having seasoned my new pot carefully, a process involving cleaning, oiling, heating,  burning yourself, cooling, drying, oiling, heating, burning yourself again and cooling the pot to create a natural non stick surface, I was ready to embark on my first camp oven dinner. But (as is often the way with new kit) having a camp oven showed up weaknesses in my equipment. I did not have a good complete kitchen solution. I set about creating one in earnest.

I now have a good collection of cast iron pots, pans, skillets and griddles which rattle away in the back of the car ready to burn me at any opportunity I chose to start trying to cook with them. I love it, its the best way to cook as the pans add flavour and taste created through half hearted washing techniques and layers of past conquests.

So here is my guide to the best kitchen camping set up for weekend’s in the desert. Like all advice only listen to what you really want to hear, you’ll work the rest out yourself if you ever need to.

My number one piece of advice is to keep everything in bags, not boxes. Heavy duty canvas bags that can be squashed and don’t smash into pieces on the road. I use a collection of Tool bags and purpose built equipment bags to keep all of the kit below from smashing about in the back of the car.