Top Tips for Cooking while Caravanning

Most caravans have limited space for food storage, and you may find that you need to be more creative in the way you purchase, store and plan your food.
While having tins and packaged goods allows for longevity, balancing this with fresh foods provides a range of meals to enjoy.
Here are our caravan cooking ideas to make the most of your meals while on the road.

Planning Your Meals

When deciding how to shop, plan for 1-2 meals of either leftovers, simple meals or takeaway, as it invariably will happen.

It might be a morning of French toast, or reheating some of last night’s camp fire roast chicken and potatoes for lunch, or taking everyone out for fish and chips on the beach.

Quick Recipe: Simple French Toast

Using stale bread means you will use up leftover bread while making the cooking easier, as it holds the mixture better without falling apart.
Mix eggs, milk, cinnamon and sugar together. Soak the bread in the bowl of mixture and then cook in a medium pan until golden brown. When serving you can add maple syrup, fresh fruit, cinnamon sugar, or just eat it straight from the pan.

Pre-cook and Freeze

Make parts of some recipes at home before you leave that are easy to heat and use. Mince for burritos, chicken strips for tortillas, prepare a pie that just needs heating. Then freeze these items to take with you.

You could even bake some cakes or muffins and freeze them to help keep them fresher longer. If your caravan has very limited freezer space, you can put them in an esky with ice, just be sure to use them within the first few days.

Sprouts and Herbs

Make your own small herb garden for the trip, have living herbs of your favourites like Basil, Mint, Rocket, Rosemary… and you can have flavoursome meals.

If you like using sprouts you can seed and grow your own in a few days with a sprouting kit, and have fresh salad greens to add to your lunches or dinners.

Quick Recipe: Easy Salad

Chop up Tomatoes and Cucumber, add a drizzle of olive oil on and shred some Basil leaves over the top and toss. For a flavour boost add cracked pepper, feta cheese or olives. Enjoy on wraps, savoury biscuits or just on its own.

Fresh Fruit and Vegetables

Doing a little research before you go can let you know where the local outlets are for fresh foods nearest to your campsites. You could find a local market with home grown goods, or perhaps a shop on site with a range of items. Depending on your length of stay you may be able to take enough from home for your trip.

If you are completely limited for access to fresh ingredients, canned goods these days have
high nutritional value and can be a good option. You can use canned fruit on top of porridge, in crepes, or baked for desserts. Canned vegetables can easily go into a pie, a stir fry or a meatloaf.

Multi-purpose ingredients

Some recipes call for a wide range of ingredients to make them, being able to simplify your recipes to a few main ingredients that are interchangeable can save on precious space in a caravan.

Look at using the same flour for each recipe, and adding baking soda if need be. Instead of three separate ingredients for different recipes of coconut cream, yoghurt and cream cheese, choose one with the flavour that suits the most recipes and adapt.

Multi-purpose recipes

If you have a great scone recipe, you could make a larger quantity and use it as a flavoured damper. You want to bake pies but don’t have pastry, make a shepherd’s pie instead.

You want to make tacos but forgot the taco shells, use the same filling and put them in wraps, or as sandwiches. Being a little versatile with how you serve the food could make a new family favourite.

Quick Recipe: Tried and True Damper

There’s many variations for this recipe but essentially it’s Flour, Milk or Water and Salt. Mix into a soft light dough by adding the liquid slowly and constantly mixing. Knead for 5 minutes then divide into the sizes you want.

If you are cooking over an open fire on a stick, cook it over the embers, turning regularly until it is a golden brown and has doubled in size. Once ready, break open, add butter and enjoy.