How do you cook?

[FruitSaladIsNotPudding]

I'm fairly new to camping and am trying to figure out the best way to cook - we have a two burner and grill camping stove and last year I cooked inside the tent, but I've since discovered this is a big no no because of the fire hazard. oops!

Anyway, how do you seasoned campers cook outside? I'm thinking maybe a low table and a windbreak? But what if it rains?

Also, our stove is really bulky - it's got one of those heavy refillable camping gaz cannisters. Anyone care to recommend me their wonderful (and not too expensive!) stove?

Thanks in advance.

We had a camping kitchen table and to put it on and used a pop up gazebo for rainy days which was most days!!

I also used to take my huge pressure cooker to make stews and soup quickly to save on the gas!

Well the first thing you do is cook a big pan of pasta sauce or stew or whatever and freeze it in a lunch box or similar. Then when you put it in the coolbox it acts as another source of cold. When it has started to defrost properly you heat it in a pan. That is the first night dinner taken care of without much fuss. Generally it will last frozen into the second day also and be fine if you want to do that.

Thanks. Good idea to freeze the food.

When you say kitchen table Twinklebum, do you mean one of those units with several shelves?

Yes, they fold up nice and flat and are handy for storage

I can't do links as im on my phone but if you look on Argos at item 9278163 or 9278383 if your going for longer than a week

Longer than a week!? Wow, I'm not that brave yet. Unless it is abroad perhaps.

Thanks for the info, they look perfect.

I would say that 'the seasoned camper' has learned how to arrange their kitchen so that they do not set the tent on fire.

My childhood camping memories include cooking in the porch of the tent. We cooked in tents or dining shelters on Guide and Scout camp. We cook in the porch of our two man tent on the rare occasion when my DH convinces me it would be fun to stay out on the hill.

Ensure the door is open and all flapping tent parts secured. Make sure the table/surface your stove is on is solid, fire resistant and away from the tent walls/roof. The gas bottle should stay outside, but arranged so any DC (yours or otherwise) can't be jumping over it or the pipeline.

I would cook outside if I could, but mainly to avoid filling the tent up with steam.

The big refillable gas bottles (Calor/Camping Gaz) are the most economical. If you're cooking for your family, using it for week long holidays, then what you have is the way to go. Other stove types will go through a lot more gas.

2 burner stove on a foldable "kitchen" - storage underneath - and a portable bbq. We camp for 3 weeks in the summer.

I am a scruffy low tech ill equipped camper and have the two ring burner stove on the ground. The pipe wouldn't reach from the ground to a table top, anyway.

In light rain I just cook outside, wearing a waterproof. If I had to cook in the tent i would take all the precautions Abzs says plus I would not allow any child to be inside the tent while I was cooking in the portch, or have the stove between them and the exit. I'd probably create a total exclusion zone - if we were camping with other families the kids would go in someone elses tent while a couple of us cooked in another tent.

I do have a single ring cooker, but those cannisters run out SO fast, and they do not cook as efficiently as the CampingGaz 2 ring stoves.

We use the stove, and base a lot of meals on the BBQ, as well, with cold accompaniments - bread, salad etc.

And this year i am getting a pie iron to cook things on the camp fire.

OK, thanks everyone. Sounds like i'm better off keeping my old stove. Will invest in a windbreak and a small bbq and maybe one of those kitchen units.

Hmm, thought camping was supposed to be cheap!

Basic campingaz-type two ring stove on foldup Argos table, Poundland windbreak, old golf umbrella if it rains......camping CAN be cheap especially if you mostly eat beans, ham and bread or go to the chippy

Oh yes, forgot we have a windbreak too!

There is always a new gadget to buy when you are a camper

We invested in a big porch and a huge windbreak last year.It's more of a village than a tent now. It was very amusing to watch DH (who hates camping and leaves it all to me) swell with pride when a neighbouring camper admired it and asked for tent buying advice . Seriously though, it makes camping a lot easier, especially in bad weather, when we can still sit out and play games, eat, cook etc.

last summer there were lots of posts on here warning about cooking inside of tents as there had been a few deaths due to CO poisoning (this is not CO2 which is slower, CO poisoning can happen very quickly and people tend to black out before they are aware of what is happening). I'm sure everyone on here knows what they are doing but just thought I would mention it as it made me a little nervous, I think there are a few people on here that take CO alarms with them which I thought was a great idea. Happy camping!

We have one of these. We no loner take our stove and cook over the fire, though we doo have a little gas cansiter stove for boiling the kettle for a cup of tea! And you're right though, camping aint cheap !

Dutch ovens are your friends :o
They ROCK and are easy to cook in,use very little fuel and you can cook ANYTHING in them :o. They also dont care if it rains and you only need to go out and rotate them every 15 mins or so and that takes seconds. I LOVE mine :o

I like the idea of dutch ovens but I tend to avoid campsites that allow fires because I thought they would be noisier. Am I wrong? Can't stand being kept up until late and then woken by toddler at 6!

We have a cadac that uses a big gas bottle and a single ring canister thing for boiling the kettle.

That set up did us fine for 2 weeks last summer. The single ring goes on a low table, the cadac has it's own legs, very low to the ground though.

I won't cook in the tent under any circumstances. We have a windbreak and I wear a waterproof.

We have a single ring gas stove which is mainly for the 1st tea/coffee of the day and everything else is cooked on the campfire.

FruitSaladIsNotPudding you dont actually need a fire for a dutch oven. Just heat up some bbq bricket things in a charcoal chimney,tip them onto a slab or flat stone and put the dutch oven on top of them,then add more hot brickets to the lid. There is actually a formula for working out cooking temps using this method,if your interested Ill post it for you.
I often cook in mine in my back yard in the summer when its too hot to switch my stove on. I LOVE THEM :o

IME campsites with fires are much quieter!

We now cook on a camping gaz bivouac stove and a Cobb. The combination suit the type of meals we tend to eat when camping.

We did have a camping gaz grill thing, with the legs and the shelf and the gas bottle with the tube and the bulldog clip thing and it all took up so much space in the car, and time to set up with all the fart arsing about with connectors, and all for really only a single ring on the stove that was mostly used for boiling water in a kettle of cooking pasta and rice. The bivouac stove does the kettle/pasta just fine and all packs into the saucepan. The much smaller (but admittedly more expensive) gas bottles are emminently more squeezable into the general detritus in the boot.

As we seem to be progressivley downsizing with stuff I tend to cook under the tarp at our camping table (photo on profile) or if we are doing a minimal w/e camp just under a golf umbrella if it is tipping it down.

Cadac and single burner here too!

Can you put a two ring gas burner on a laminated type camping table or do I need a proper kitchen unit?

I've always had it on the grass but I set the grass on fire a few years ago and havent dared use it since!

We have a 2 ring burner and a field kitchen/windbreak arrangement but find the Trangia to be a godsend for when you just need one hot burner - for hot drinks it is ideal. V good in bad weather too.

another vote for a cadac and a single burner. I also never cook in the tent but occasionally we get an electric pitch so we can do hot drinks and cup-a-soups / pot noodles if the weather is awful.