RV Cooking Hints and Tips

Food Safety Guidelines and Cooking Accessories for Your Camper

© Elizabeth Borer

Jun 3, 2007

Since so much time while camping is spent planning, preparing and eating meals, having the right equipment for outdoor cooking will be both convenient and safe. Cabela's and Dick's Sporting Goods are stores with a great selection of outdoor supplies and the most up to date accessories available.

Food Safety

• It's a good idea to keep thermometers in both the refrigerator in your RV or in coolers to assure that your food does not drop below 40 degrees. A meat thermometer is a good tool when cooking on open fire to get the meat to the proper temperature in order to kill bacteria and prevent food poisoning. Heat ground meats, hotdogs and leftovers to 165 degrees, fresh beef or pork to 160 degrees for medium doneness, chicken to 180 degrees, and fish/seafood until it turns opaque and firm. Make sure not to overcook fish/seafood or it becomes tough and chewy.
• To stay sanitary during the trip, pack anti-bacterial hand gel and wipes to clean up hands and surfaces after handling and cooking food.
• It is important to the park and the safety of your camp to bring plenty of trash bags along and if possible, dispose of them in the appropriate location each day. Debris and spills not cleaned and food not secured in airtight or watertight containers and left outside will draw bugs and animals to your camp.
• Keeping perishable food cold and sealed in plastic containers will maintain freshness.
• Invest in high quality coolers for items like milk, cheese and lunchmeat. Check this cooler often to monitor temperature and replace the ice when needed. Water, soda and juice boxes can be kept cold in any cooler since the temperature does not need to stay below a certain degree. Fresh juice will need to be treated as other perishable food items.

Cooking Tools

• A cast iron dutch oven can withstand very high temperature and is a good tool for heating soups, stews, chili or leftovers. Cowboy cooking uses these dutch ovens to boil beans or even to bake desserts by sitting the oven on top of hot coals and placing more hot coals on top of the lid. Recipes are available in cookbooks and online specifically for cast iron cooking.
• A cast iron skillet is just as durable as the dutch oven and can easily be used for frying food, browning meat to be roasted on the grill, or to saute fish or vegetables. Since it's not advised to wash cast iron with soap and water, because the oils used from cooking help to season the skillet, this makes for easy clean up. Since cast iron skillets hold up so well to the high heat, they can be placed directly on the grill or grate over an open flame. Lodge is an American manufacturer of quality cast iron goods that available in every shape and size and most preseasoned and ready to use.
• Foil packets are easy to clean up and can cook nearly anything. Meats and vegetables can be wrapped pouch like in foil and put on the grill or the grate of an open fire and cooked for about an hour turning every 15 minutes. Vegetable side dishes such as baked potatoes or baked sweet potatoes, corn on the cob and sturdy cut up vegetables like carrots, onions, green beans, peas, mushrooms, asparagus, broccoli and cauliflower can easily be wrapped in foil and prepared the same way as the meat.
• Propane stoves are available at sporting good and outdoor stores. These stoves run on small propane tanks designed for the size of the model. Some have one burner or two, and work the same way as the propane on a gas grill. These stoves work similar to home stovetops and can hold small skillets and pots.
• Charcoal grills are available at many public beaches and select campsites. If public grills are not available, small grills can also be purchased at sporting good stores. Charcoal and lighter fluid as well as matches or lighter will need to be packed as they are not provided. Nonstick cooking spray or oil on the grill as well as allowing it to preheat will prevent food from sticking. Aluminum pans are a great and disposable dish that can be placed directly on the grill for boiling fish or seafood, beer onions and peppers for sausage or vegetable that would easily slip through the grates.
• Most if not all modern campsites come with an open-fire pit. In order to use the flame directly a grate will be needed to cover the top. An affordable way to do this is to get a rack from an old oven to use as the grate. A pie iron is a product designed for open flame cooking and it make out of cast iron attached to a long pole with a wood handle. Sandwiches, desserts and hotdogs are easily made in these as they hook and enclose the food and the iron can be held in the flames. Bread slices or canned biscuits can be used, one in each tray with as many fillings as you can come up with. Sandwiches can be made out of cheese, lunchmeats, calzones with pizza toppings, or desserts with canned pie filling. Long metal forks are available to use for hotdogs or marshmallows instead of using sticks.
• Sinks inside older or smaller size RVs are not designed for heavy dish washing with large amounts of food debris. Leftover food should be scraped directly into the garbage in order to wash plates, cups and silverware indoors, if not using disposable. Pots and pans should be washed in a tub outdoors and many times a dump is available for dirty water. Special biodegradable dishsoap and cleaning supplies are available for camping, it is not advised to throw dirty soapy water into the woods, lakes, rivers, etc.
• Cooking and washing with bottled water can become expensive quickly. Keeping bottled water for drinking and bringing water from home in large cooler jugs will be cheaper and easier. The 5 gallon cooler jugs filled with water and kept outside will stay relatively cool, but not cold for the extent of the trip. These jugs with a push button tap are convenient for washing dishes, filling pots to boil water, washing hands or even rinsing off items with grass or mud. Coolers of this variety also come in smaller sizes, 2 gallon for a days worth of a powdered drink mix for the family, or 1 gallon and 2 quart for taking to the beach.

RV and campfire cooking is an article listing travel ready foods and meal planning ideas.

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