Camping Cooking Equipment

The best camping cooking equipment to get is the minimum cooking gear you need to get by with.

Some folks only like to go camping in commercial campgrounds with all facilities, including a nearby cafe or restaurant. Others are happy just to be able to boil water for a cup of coffee, tea or chocolate... Thenagain, if you have hot to boiling water, you can easily use that to make hot soup from powdered or instant soup mix, or make oatmeal porridge from instant rolled oats.

How To Cook At Camp

How you cook at camp depends on who you will be feeding and who you are trying to impress. There is certainly nothing as romantic as cooking over a wood fire, or preferably the hot coals and embers of a wood fire that has been allowed to burn for a while. You only want flame for boiling a pot.or kettle. But all this is a skill it takes practice to master and, remember, it can't be mastered overnight.

As long as you have patience and are willing to learn, you can become good at cooking over an open wood fire. I have known hundreds of youngsters who can do it. It is a skill they learned in the Scouts! Just be prepared to make a few foul-ups before you get reasonably proficient, and by that time you will be a good camp cook, who is sure to impress any guests!

To cook over a wood fire, and only where wood fires are allowed, please, you will have the most success if you use cast-iron cookware, such as a Dutch oven or a cast-iron skillet. Cast iron cooking has been well tested over many generations, and is still a favorite. This is because this old-fashioned type of cookware is made of dense and heavy metal. The pots and pans conduct the heat slowly but surely, and they were intended for use over a wooden fire or a wood stove.

Cast-iron cooking equipment make it much harder for an accidental flare-up from your fire to burn your food to charcoal. But it is very heavy to carry, and it needs to be looked after properly. For starters, your cast iron skillet of dutch oven needs to be seasoned when you first buy it and before you cook in it for the first time.

You season the ironware by heating it up, and then taking a wad of clean cloth (or newspaper) and spreading lard or cooking oil all over the hot iron surface, especially on the inside. Then place it back in the oven to bake on for an hour or so before letting it cool.

Don't Burn Yourself!

Hot iron is VERY DANGEROUS to handle, and will burn you extremely badly if you accidentally touch it while it is still hot. Please take every care, and have a bucket of cold water handy to plunge your hand or fingers into immediately if you think you have been burned. Or run and stand under a cold shower for several minutes. You have been warned!

When your iron pots have all been seasoned, you can cook in them normally. But to clean them after use, just rinse with boiling water and dry. Do not use detergent or you will lose the glossy coating you created in the seasoning process. In which case, the iron pot(s) will have to be seasoned all over again.

If you use a thin aluminium skillet and a flame jumps up, your breakfast will be cremated. So they are not a very good idea over a wood fire. However, a lightweight frying pan like that is perfectly manageable on a portable gas camping stove, where the size of the flame can be carefully adjusted as required. And lightweight cooking pans are all the go if you will be hiking or backpacking your camping kitchen with you as you go.

As a rule of thumb, you will need at least one frypan or skillet, and a couple of cooking pots with lids, in different sizes. The frypan will be used for frying, (duh!), and the cookpots will be used mainly for boiling or making soups and stews. Whether you choose pots and pans made of cast iron, aluminium, painted enamelware, stainless-steel or cheap tin is entirely up to you.

Tin gets rusty and enamelware gets chinned and then it gets rusty. Aluminium dents a bit easily. Steel is pretty good, and you know iron pots are heavy. Heavy is no good for backpacking your camping gear, but it is fine for car camping.

So if you have trouble making up your mind, you could borrow a few pots and pans from your home kitchen - just as long as you are cooking on a camping gas stove or a camping alcohol stove. Try not to damage them or your spouse may not forgive you easily. You certainly cannot use ordinary household cooking pots or pans on a wood fire. They will be badly blackened by soot, and it only comes off with a harsh steel scouring pad. And that will scratch the pans badly.

Be prepared to experiment a little, over several camping excursions, and you will be able to put together a set of camping cooking equipment that does the job exactly the right way for you. And you will be able to produce at least a few decent camp meals with them. Once that's been mastered, you will be able to impress your friends and loved ones with your camping cooking skills.

Once you have learned how to cook at camp, your culinary skills will serve you well for the rest of your life. After all, it is much easier in a home kitchen with mains electricity or gas stoves.