Our Complete Kitchen Setup
This year marks our five-year Overlanding anniversary, five years since we started doing vehicle-dependent travel as a couple (or rather, as a trio). Over this period, we’ve gone through two vehicles and countless setups, and we believe we’ve finally found the optimal solution both for our needs and for the truck’s storage capacities. Below you’ll find a complete list of components in our camper kitchen.
Stove
We have tried many different setups and finally settled on this one: an old, basic Campingaz two-burner stove. We’ve learned the hard way that less is more when it comes to essentials. We bought a nice kitchen in 2021, and it worked perfectly until it didn’t. The metal tube connecting the burners to the gas broke in Norway. This tube was actually one of the reasons we decided to get that particular kitchen as it seemed very robust, but when it broke we couldn’t find the spare part, and buying a whole new kitchen in one of the most expensive countries on Earth seemed like an unnecessary expense. Instead, we bought a simple burner that screws directly onto a gas bottle and cooked on it until the end of the trip. Upon returning home to Spain, we tried to replace the faulty tube, but the seller chose to refund us for the kitchen instead of sending us the spare part. We learned our lesson and now opt for a simpler setup. We started using an old stove we already had, recognizing that it had all we needed: two burners, and a setup composed of simple parts that are easy to find almost anywhere and that we could replace by ourselves. We also connected the stove to a big bottle of gas, in order to reduce the risk of running out of gas in remote locations or in countries where the specific gas bottles we require are not standard. The downside of the setup we have now is that the kitchen can’t be removed from the drawer shelf, as the gas bottle is screwed onto the bed of the truck, and it can be really unpleasant or downright impossible to cook in rainy weather. We still carry the burner we bought in Norway for emergencies like this, and if the weather is really bad, we just opt for sandwiches.
Jetboil + coffee maker
This piece of equipment predates the Ranger, the Jeep, and even our relationship. The Jetboil we use today has been following Enrique on all kinds of outdoor adventures for almost 10 years. Even though it’s beat-up and the gas dial is broken, it still works quite well, and we use it whenever we need to boil water: for coffee or tea, for pasta, and every now and then even for showers (or birdbaths). It’s an ideal tool for this, as the water boils extremely fast and the Jetboil doesn’t use up a lot of gas in the process. Many people also use it for cooking, but we prefer transferring the hot water into a pot and cooking our food using the stove. When we do get to replace this one (hopefully in the distant future), this is the model we’ll get. It features a wider pot, so we might use it for preparing food as well.
Anyone who spends an afternoon with us will know that we’re really, really passionate about coffee. We make and drink several cups on any given day, and we can be pretty snobbish about it - having good coffee is a must (we get our fix from Flat Tyre in Madrid and from places we find on the Roasters app on the road). The system we use is pretty simple: a coffee grinder, a plastic filter holder (which came from a set with a glass pitcher), and paper filters V60. We also carry an Aeropress coffee maker in case of emergency - we like the coffee made with it but the system is not our first choice as it has too many parts that are easy to lose (a lesson we also learned the hard way, also in Norway).
Toaster
The small toaster is the favorite piece of camping equipment we ever bought. We bought a lot of gadgets whose ads promised to solve this or that problem or make the car camping experience more comfortable. We ended up leaving behind almost all of them, or rather, all of them except for the toaster. Before buying it, we used this system which was functional but not our favorite. We love the electric toaster because it allows us to prepare a quick bite without using the kitchen, which especially comes in handy in bad weather. It uses only 650 W so it doesn’t drain the battery.
Pots, pans, cutlery
After several years of exploring our options, we go with the basics: one pot, one pan, two plates, two cups, two sets of cutlery. The pot we use is from the Decathlon camping set, and the pan is this one, with a removable handle, very convenient for packing. We avoid bringing anything breakable, so the plates we carry are made of bamboo. Our one luxury in this department is a wooden cutting board with a big sharp knife we got from no other place than Zara Home, but the design is sturdy and fits perfectly into our Nomad Fox storage boxes.
Washing dishes
We have a simple but effective system: a washing basin we hang from the side of the truck, next to the water deposit. We use biodegradable soap from Decathlon.
Food
Our setup constantly changes but one thing remains constant: the fridge. For the past two years, we have been using this Engel fridge and it has never failed us. We’re thinking about upgrading to a bigger model in the next rig. We also carry a Nomad Fox boxes system, a slide with four boxes out of which three are designated for food storage, mostly dried and canned goods and bread. We also have a Nomad Fox thermal bag that we use for fresh produce.
