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Cooking
Kitchen Equipment
April 16, 2020 by TLO in Cooking

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.

Camp Oven on coals

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.

Camping kettle on gas cooker

Larder

    1. Salt
    2. Pepper
    3. Tabasco
    4. Chilli flakes
    5. Chilli powder
    6. Curry powder
    7. Hot chilli sauce
    8. Stock cubes/ gel
    9. Tomato puree
    10. Bisto
    11. Baked Beans
    12. Coconut Milk
    13. Instant coffee (Emergency supply!)
    14. Olive oil (Decant it into a plastic container)
    15. Garlic puree
    16. Ginger puree
    17. Mayonnaise
    18. Ketchup
    19. Mustard
Camping Larder

Kitchen Equipment

    1. Plates
    2. Mugs (Coffee for adults and crisp for kids)
    3. Steel glasses (Wine is amazing from a steel cup, but crap from plastic)
    4. Cutlery
    5. Dustbin bags
    6. Kitchen roll
    7. Tin Foil
    8. Marshmallow skewers
    9. Scrubbing brush
    10. Fairy liquid
    11. Folding Bucket (never ever used this)
    12. T Towel
    13. Cloth
    14. Table (proper 6ft trestle is ideal for big groups)
Kitchen Equipment

Cooking

    1. Grill (Cast iron is ideal)
    2. Camp Oven
    3. Griddle
    4. Frying Pan/ Skillet
    5. Kettle
    6. Long tongs
    7. Long Flipper
    8. Wooden spoon
    9. Grater
    10. Big sharp knife
    11. Chopping board
    12. Welding gloves
    13. Gas Cooker 
    14. Spare gas bottle

 

cooking on grill

Storage

    1. Kitchen Bag
    2. Camp oven Bag (
    3. Larder Bag (Tool bags)
    4. Food chiller bag
    5. Drinks chiller bag
    6. Frozen packs (Better than ice for 1 night)
    7. Tupperware (With lockable lids, not cheapo ones that explode)
    8. Bag clips (for sealing crisps etc)

You can’t have too much storage stuff, bags inside bags, inside bags. It protects your food and drinks from exploding all over the place and potentially dinner being ruined!

Camp bag storage
2 Comments
  • Adventure
  • Cast Iron
  • Cooking
  • Desert
  • doha
  • Equipment
  • Experience
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TLO

There are 2 comments on this post
  1. Colin Hackwood
    April 17, 2020, 7:48 am
    Leave reply

    Amidst the sea of inane and all-too-frequent updates of life in our current times that we all seem to be pre-determined to trawl through each morning (despite our understanding that there is not going to be anything new to learn about this beast of a thing), I found this post justifiably positioned – like a piece of unwanted flotsam or jetsam, that has been carried along wilfully with the currents for years, and washing up one day on my beach, (without permission, no less!), forcing me to exert unplanned energy to remove it, disposing of it before it brings harm to someone.
    Just sayin’…

    • TLO
      April 17, 2020, 8:11 am
      Leave reply

      Do you really think it’s that good? I thought better of you.

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