Top Campervan cooking tips; To Make Your Life Easier On The Road!
Table of Contents
Living in a campervan is what can be described as – an emotional roller coaster. However, within this post is some epic campervan cooking tips, which will make your life a little easier.
Embarking on a campervan adventure is usually on most traveller’s bucketlists. We got to do New Zealand in a campervan, Sydney to Melbourne and Sydney to Cairns. These are epic adventures. However, it’s not all fun unless you follow these campervan tips for living life on the road. Cooking and eating in a campervan is not as simple as it sounds. You can soon find yourself stressed from the rubbish, out of date food or maybe, lack of food. This is why you need some smart motorhome recipes Don’t worry though we’ve got your back. Use these essential campervan hacks to live a stress-free life in your wheels!
Let’s look what’s in this post for you;
- Storing food in you campervan
- Free campervan food
- Campervan cleaning tips
- Managing food in a motorhome
- Keeping food cool in a campervan
- Campervan cooking equipment
- Food essentials for the motorhome
- Best motorhome recipes
- Final thoughts
1. Storing food in your campervan
This is one of the most important campervan cooking tips I’ll give you! You will want to store your food in the most orderly fashion possible, I’m serious about this tip. If you’ve had a Jucy campervan, then you’ll know that you get a little box for storing your food, kitchen utensils and sauces etc. If this is not sorted, you’ll end with sauce on window and food in your seats. Believe me!
So what’s the best way to stored food?
You will want to use Tupperware whenever possible. Put your rice in tubs, cereals in there and anything you can! Same goes for your camper fridge, make sure food is placed in there like a jigsaw. Every inch of space is crucial.
2. Free Campervan Food
Yes, there are things in life that come for free and this is in the form of free food for you. It’s not uncommon for people to leave food at campervan campsites in New Zealand and Australia (more New Zealand).
Also, it’s very popular for other travellers and campers to randomly give each other food when they’re leaving the campsites.
At the end of your campervan adventures, it’s good to repay the karma and give your food away.
3. Campervan cleaning tips
Keeping clean falls hand-in-hand with these campervan cooking tips as the last thing you want is dry chilli in a pan. So, one of the best things we can do is to clean our pans as soon as we’ve eaten. This is when the pans are easiest to clean. Don’t let the food dry up, you’ll have an absolute nightmare trying to scrub them.
Moreover, water is limited in the campervans and we don’t want to waste it all on one dishwashing task. Also, another tip. if I made a hot drink, I’d use the leftover hot water to put in the sink to wash the dishes. This helps!
4. Managing food in a campervan
It is essential you keep an eye on leftover food, leaking food such as yoghurt and general storage of condiments etc. okay, let’s drill down in each one;
Leftover food – We have made this mistake. Letting food fall down the sink is a BIG no no! The smell that comes with this is not a fresh one lol. So, any leftover food, just bag it straight away and get rid.
Leaking food – This is most common with things like yoghurt and drinks. Your campervan fridge will most likely be small. So, we tend to just try and cram all the food and meals in there. However, expect things to leak if they’re not organised properly! Okay, so the best thing to do is to stand everything upright and try to keep it tightly compact.
Storage – In The Jucy campervans do provide a little storage area under the sink for things like tins of food and your coffee etc (I think it’s for these). But when you’re doing your Roadtrip and you’re up and down hills, it’s likely things will fall over. So, this campervan tip is to use elastic bands and bags to store things in. The last thing you want is sticky coffee all over the storage area. So, the bottom line is to store your food in the campervan wisely and spend a little time planning on where you want to put everything.
5. Keeping food cold in the campervan
Okay, so what’s the best way to keep your food cold in the motor home?
To be honest the fridges do a good job. A campervan’s fridge is only supposed to keep the food cold for roughly 10-12 hours when the campers engine is not running. However, we found out that they stay cold a lot longer than this.
Moreover, if you’re travelling to Australia in a motorhome, expect the food to melt. Unless it’s in the fridge, food will melt – easy. I can’t tell you how many chocolate bars we left on the back seat and they just turned init liquid.
To summarise this part, only buy food that you know will fit in the fridge if it has a chance of melting. All over foods such as tinned food, cereals and vegetables should fine. Just don’t keep them in direct sunlight.
6. Campervan cooking equipment
Whether you’re renting a motorhome or buying a campervan, there is some essential cooking equipment you will need. A lot of rental campervans come with most kitchen utensils and cooking equipment that you will need. But you can still use this equipment checklist to make sure you have everything you need.
Okay, let’s have a look at the campervan cooking tips checklist;
- Gas stove
- Gas
- Knives, forks and spoons
- Bowls
- Plates
- Cooking oil
- Tupperware
- Tinfoil
- Lighter and matches
- Chopping board
- Sieve
- Tin opener
- Bottle opener
The more stuff you have the more storage you’ll need. However, you’ll definitely need each of these kitchen items for the motorhome.
7. Food to take in a campervan
I’ve already briefly discussed foods to take in your campervan. However, let’s drill down a little more into what foods you should take to make some easy campervan meals. Okay, here’s the list of pointers;
- Eggs
- Cereal
- Pasta
- Rice
- Sauces
- Biscuits
- Vegetables
- Soups
- Tinned food such as beans
- Cordial
- Tinned tuna
- Peanut butter
- Fruit
8. Best motorhome recipes
There is a list of amazing campervan meals you can make. Just because you only have a little gas cooker doesn’t mean you can’t create delicious meals on the go. We want to eat we’ll still right?!
Let’s check out some simple best motorhome meals that require little effort recipes;
- Meal 1 – Salads are really easy to make.
- Meal 2 – Spaghetti is another simple meal that requires few ingredients
- Meal 3 – Wraps are filling and easy to make and only require lettuce, chicken, wrap and sauce
- Meal 4 – Curries such as red and green Thai curry. These are mega tasty and easy to make
- Meal 5 – Mexican food such as nachos
- Meal 6 – There are plenty of different chicken meals to make
- Meal 7 – Greek yoghurt is one of my favourite foods and you can have this with things like fruit or granola
- Meal 8 – There are plenty of meals to make with eggs (superfood). For example, omelette or scrambled eggs on toast
Final thoughts
I hope these campervan cooking tips help you in your motor home adventure around the world.
I wish I would if had these tips before we started our motorhome bucketlist itineraries. But o well you live and learn.
Have fun and making living and cooking in your campervan an easy life.