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Go to rummage sales and you'll likely find all the pans you will need. I always pick up any cast iron that is in good shape and other pans can be gotten so cheaply that if they get trashed it's not a big deal. But my go to is always heavy duty foil. I get the food service size from Sam's Club for about $20.00 and it lasts a long time and I use quite alot of it. A plus for foil is that you can cook most anything in it and no nasty pans to wash up when you should be enjoying yourself. Have fun!
Hey, so I'm going camping for a week, and usually in the past we just did hot dogs & whatnot (since it used to be a weekend affair, not a 7 day ordeal). What type of cookware should i look into for the trip? I'm going to be strictly cooking over a fire, not a camp stove....
Due to easy chipping I wouldn't buy enamel as attractive as it is. For over the campfire an iron skillet and a SS pot for veggies. Spuds go in aluminum foil. Most meat is cooked on the BBQ grill over coals.
Go to rummage sales and you'll likely find all the pans you will need. I always pick up any cast iron that is in good shape and other pans can be gotten so cheaply that if they get trashed it's not a big deal. But my go to is always heavy duty foil. I get the food service size from Sam's Club for about $20.00 and it lasts a long time and I use quite alot of it. A plus for foil is that you can cook most anything in it and no nasty pans to wash up when you should be enjoying yourself. Have fun!
I find we're using more foil also, especially for cooking the veggies over the fire or on the grill over coals.
Goodwill and other such stores have good CHEAP pots and pans for campers. I even bought some of our camping bedding there.
I would just use whatever you use at home, I take 2 non stick frying pans and 1 pot, plus my coffee pot but I cook on a Coleman stove so I can control the heat.
While I have a lot of high quality cast iron cookware pots/pans/dutch ovens/scotch bowls/griddles ... ranging in size from cooking for one person to feeding several dozen ...
what I've found works really well for car camping is to use a reasonable size cast iron griddle (or two) over a campfire.
You get the benefits of the even heat control of a "plancha grill" for those food items that a griddle cooks well ... be it breakfast items, or heating up sandwiches on the grill, etc.
But it's real benefit is that you can use regular cookware on it without having that cookware directly over the fire getting local hot spots or all sooted up. With this set-up, I use stainless steel pots and pans. Easy to clean up and a pleasure to cook in even in thin bottom cheap cookware. Personally, I avoid aluminum cookware even at home ... and have discarded all of my older "camping" aluminum sets years ago in favor of the lightweight stainless cookware.
Anyone who's gonna read this in 2019 do as this guy says. Sorry, I couldn't resist answering this topic. The thing is that I'm going camping soon too, that's gonna be my second time ever. I was reading this review and now I'm thinking about getting a few cookware sets from Amazon, but I'm gonna get pan, bowl and kettle from each set with me just because who would ever need all the pieces? Also it's just cheaper to buy a set instead of buying stuff separately, especially if you need both plastic and iron parts. But that's just my opinion.
Cast iron pots and skillets. I use to make breakfast on the grill outside here with them. You can still find them relatively inexpensively in the regular cookware at Walmart.
And your local Arc and/or Goodwill will also have a good selection of cast iron cookware. Just have to retemper them sometimes.
I know this is an old post, but: in my area, the fire danger levels have been so high for the past decade or so that campfires are not allowed in many places in July, August and September. Sometimes fires will be allowed in campground fire pits, even when the burning restrictions are high, but sometimes even that is not allowed.
Best to have a small camp stove or you might be eating a lot of cold foods.
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It’s now on my Christmas list. When I started out in van life I imagined that I’d be a campfire gourmet chef but in fact most of my meals are cooked on a camp stove. It’s so much easier to clean up because while I adore my cast iron pans, they are a mess after coming off the fire. Also, as PNW gal pointed out, you may not even be able to have a fire in many places. I’d get a stove. And cast iron. Lol.
It’s now on my Christmas list. When I started out in van life I imagined that I’d be a campfire gourmet chef but in fact most of my meals are cooked on a camp stove. It’s so much easier to clean up because while I adore my cast iron pans, they are a mess after coming off the fire. Also, as PNW gal pointed out, you may not even be able to have a fire in many places. I’d get a stove. And cast iron. Lol.
Thermos cooking is a variant of hay-box cooking. Maybe the shuttle chef is a good idea for you, or maybe something else would serve your purposes better, not to mention more cheaply.
Anyway, it's an old idea, and if you google around a bit, you'll find lots of creative ways to implement it.
I never plan to cook over a campfire. They're wonderful, but you can't always count on being able to build or use one. Plus, it forces you to breathe smoke, not a great idea.
If you're car camping, dutch oven cooking with charcoal briquets is much cleaner and less erratic. Lots of internet info on that too.
I think I'd commit suicide if I built a campfire and it turned into a wildfire. So for me, a campfire is for hanging out beside if/when conditions allow, but not for cooking.
Cast iron is great, and I'd never be without my mother's cast iron skillet, but stainless steel is also a cooking necessity. I understand why backpackers use aluminum, but I consider it inferior cookware, it gets too hot too fast. Great for rehydrating freeze-dried food packets, but that's not really cooking.
Last edited by jacqueg; 09-15-2019 at 11:17 PM..
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Camping cookware question
