Cooking away from home

[Beefy]

spent 30 minutes searching for a cooking in the motor home thread. any help? I want to stay away from the boring burgers, hotdogs menu.

[pasdad1]

Try these links for starters....

https://www.irv2.com/forums/f99/rv-cooking-431613.html


https://www.irv2.com/forums/f84/pre-...el-361576.html


http://rvlife.com/the-art-of-one-pot-meals-for-rving/

[TXiceman]

We cook full meals from scratch in the RV and always have. When we were weekenders and vacationers, we did partially prepare some items to make for easier preparation in the RV.

We have done small turkey dinners with all the trimmings to cookies and brownies.

Ken

[Jayco19]

If you can cook it at home you can cook it in or outside of the rv. Most of our cooking is done outside on the grill-griddle-propane stove and in the dutch ovens. We really like cooking in the dutch ovens.

[dix39]

We eat about the same while living in the RV as we do at home. About the only difference is the substitution of paper and plastic eating utensils that to a large degree eliminates washing dishes. That is done to save both time and water as we are boondocking in one form or another most of the time. We also don't spend much time in "camp", just enough to eat, shower, sleep and go. Our trips are to see and do things and visit people, not just to "camp".

We usually have cereal with fruit for breakfast, a sandwich of some kind for lunch, and a cooked dinner, which is about what we do at home. It is seldom ever hamburgers or hotdogs.

There is always a container of bananas, apples, peaches, and other fruit we pick up along the way to eat anytime desired, as well as ice cream in the freezer, and many other snacks to eat when/if desired.

Steve

[docj]

Originally Posted by TXiceman

We cook full meals from scratch in the RV and always have.

Our Beaver has a big kitchen by RV standards. In addition to the built-in microwave-convection oven and residential-quality propane cooktop, we are carrying a Breville countertop oven, two induction burners and a sous vide cooker, along with a Cuisinart food processor and a KitchenAid mixer. We can tackle the toughest cooking jobs out there! It's our home and we enjoy cooking and eating!

[astrnmrtom]

Our cooking is little changed in the motorhome vs our house. You have to be more creative using less prep space, and we only have a small counter top oven vs a full size oven at home. That's a minor issue because we use a convection toaster oven 95% of the time anyway. Two burner cooktop vs four at home. The biggest impact is sometimes my wife and I have different things for dinner so do separate prep and cooking. It's a delicate balance in full size kitchen and I was recently told there won't be two parallel cooks in the motorhome kitchen! We purchased our Safari because they have more kitchen counter space than a lot of similar rigs. In the Safari there's a pull out cutting board at one end of the kitchen and my wife doesn't use it so I'll do as much prep there as I can there which keeps me out of the way. We haven't done it yet but I expect times like that I may use the table as a prep space wile she uses the counters.

We cook stinky/greasy stuff like bacon outside on the Blackstone but I've done that at home for years on a small covered porch.

For us the transition is minor, but then it's been just the two of us for many years so we don't fix large meals. Other than a pan of brownies or an occasional frozen pie she doesn't bake much and most of our meals are pretty simple.

One thing I've been doing at home which will transfer to the RV well is when I prepare certain types of chopped vegetables that I use in various dishes like Poblano peppers I'll chop up more than I need and place the extra in ice cube trays and stick them in the freezer. When they are frozen, I pop them out and into a zip lock freezer bag and keep them in the freezer and they are ready anytime I want to drop a couple cubes into a dish without needing counter space to chop up more. Of course this doesn't work when you want fresh, crunchy veggies in a meal. I use the same ice cube tray trick for left over spaghetti sauce or other sauces to be used later. Another new trick I've used is place left over gravy or sauce in a zip lock bag, place it on the counter with the bag mostly on its side and spread the liquid until the air is nearly gone, zip it closed, flatten it out, mark it and freeze it. They stack in the freezer and are ready to be used the next time we have a similar meal. I've bought larger packages of hamburger and done the same thing pressing each portion flat in a zip lock back and stack in the freezer. If we do a meal that include cooked hamburger, sausage or even shredded meat, we'll pre cook it, and freeze it, or if cooking it for a current meal, freeze the extra and it's ready for the next meal. We've been doing the same thing with one pan meals - cook once - divide, bag, and freeze flat for next time.

Transitioning to cooking in a motorhome vs a home will be more difficult for someone who cooks a larger amounts or meal that require a lot of prep space. Who is going from a large gourmet kitchen to a tiny one. They may have to change how they organize the steps and do prepping in stages. i.e. chopping and moving item to bowls in the refer till cooking time, purchasing and pre-cubing or slicing meat before putting it away. At home, when I purchase the ingredients for doing something like meatloaf, I'll do enough for a couple small ones at once, divide it, place it in small pans and freeze one or two. You can use disposable foil pans or line a permanent pan with foil or clear wrap, freeze, and pop it out to place in a freezer bag. The frozen loaf can be returned to the pan to thaw and bake later.

I've found we haven't given up anything when cooking in our RV. We haven't done a pie yet, but we chose a counter top oven that had good reviews for things like that so I don't see that as being an issue but as you can see our current cooking style transfers very well.

[slickest1]

We prepare and eat the same meals as we do at home. As a celiac we also bake our own bread and cakes cookies etc. The coach we have now does not have an oven but soon will.

[momdoc]

We also basically cook the same way and same type of foods as we do at home. We also tend to eat out a bit more then when home.

[dix39]

Another thing we do is cook food at home, store it in freezer bags, then heat it in the micro for meals. We also use the micro to cook frozen vegetables in the bag, and I sometimes buy frozen pre-cooked smoked pork chops and heat them in the micro.

And sometimes we cook on the three burner stove, it depends mostly on how tired we are and how much time we want to spend cooking.

Steve

[Itchytoe]

I'm full time, so everything I cook at home is done in the RV. The stove isn't quite big enough for three large pots, but I can work a big dutch oven and two smaller pots on it just fine. Never had any issues cooking nice full meals in the RV.

[Janjim]

I remember tent camping 30yrs. ago in Bar Harbor, Me. We bought lobster Duh! made linguini in a cream sauce all on the wood fire pit at the site. With 3 kids 1 at 6 wks. We enjoyed our linguini and lobster with a large bottle of chardonnay. Many comments from passerbuys most wanting to join us.

Your kitchen can do anything you put your mind to, like the time our elec. oven broke while baking lasagna , so I finished it on the propane grill. Perfect.







































































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[Bobby F]

Originally Posted by docj

. . . we are carrying . . . a sous vide cooker

I always sort of celebrate when I hear someone who even knows what this is! It has amazed me for years that this hasn't become a staple of cookware for most people. I use mine more often than my oven.

But it can be a challenge when working only with battery power while boondocking. I finally figured out that I should be pre-heating the water on the propane stove and then working with an insulated container. Once the initial heating is done that way, power consumption is quite low.

[SLOweather]

The only thing we do differently from home cooking is reducing the recipes to minimize leftovers. We just got a Slow Cooker Recipes For Two for our big spring trip.



So, I'll throw you a couple of "recipes".


First, I ran across a 2 ingredient cream biscuit recipe on the net. Basically, it's whipping cream and self rising flour. You could google it.



My modification:


Trader Joe's sells shelf stable whipping cream in 8 oz boxes. One of those and 1 1/3 cups of self-rising flour make a recipe that makes 5-6 biscuits. While Lily flour is supposedly preferable, but we have to order it on line out here.


The thing is, one box of cream and the zip top bag of premeasured flour makes one of my recipes, so you can make biscuits for breakfast or dinner any time. We carry 2 or 3 kits with us.I haven't tried it yet, but carrying the flour in the right bag, you could probably mix it all in the bag with minimal mess.



Last trip, two weeks ago, I made up a batch and we cooked them over the fire in pie irons.


Second tip.


Get a bag of Betty Crocker corn bread/muffin mix. Make it according to the directions on the bag EXCEPT, add a little more milk to make it the consistency of pancake batter. Then, make it like pancakes... in a skillet, on a a griddle, etc.



Now that I type all that, I gotta try the corn bread mix in a pie iron.