Cooking At Your Campsite With Jim Sexton

Alright, so we’re talking cooking set up now. I told you this- that sleeping was the most important thing. Eating is the most important too, so they’re 1A and 1B.

So one of the things with camping is the more organized you are, the easier it is to just kind of pick up and go. And so we bought this kitchen organizing kit several years ago and it’s super simple.

Big plastic box.

You open it up, it’s got your stove in it. It’s got a pan in it and then in here it has cups– silver ware- your bowls– a cutting board.

We’ve got utensils in here–

For both cleaning and cooking.

And then over here we’ve got plastic plates.

Both the kind that you might throw away- and then the kind that you would keep and just clean off.

You know the ultimate thing–

Sometimes for camping, you don’t have to spend a lot of money. Rather than buying those plates, you know- if you’re just getting started–

Take paper plates. They’re great and you got less cleanup. You can throw them in the fire or the garbage can.

And before you invest in these nice plastic utensils, just take some some of the disposable type type utensils, making it convenient.

And the more convenient you can make it, the easier you can make it– The happier mom and dad are.

So mom and dad are all stressed out from the 400 things they gotta do – then it’s not as fun for the kids.

So this is my cooking setup.

The next thing we’re going to do is fire up the stove and this is your basic, old school camping stove. I think they’re probably 40 or 50 dollars now.

We’re going to take this down here.

They run off of a small tank of propane fuel, so it’s–

Once you fire these up, it’s like cooking on a gas stove at home. You can see this one’s been used a little bit over the years.

You just plug it in.

Right here.

And then tighten it down.

We gotta make sure you get it real tight.

So that gas isn’t–

Isn’t leaking out.

Sometimes you gotta give that a little bit of–

Elbow grease or adjust it — just a little bit to get it–

Get it to go in there.

And we are all set.

Once it’s nice and tight in there- you got a two burner setup. This is like cooking at home. It’s really– it’s really no different.

So turn it on.

You hear a little little, hiss typically–

And–

There you go. We’re cooking with gas, so to speak.

I’m going to go ahead and set a pan on there and get that heated up because–

We’re all hungry.

And– We’re going to let that heat up for just a minute.

Terms of the type of food to take camping, it’s really just up to you in terms of how much you want to be super convenient and easy with pre packaged foods.

Once you’ve camped a little while — you might want to get a little bit more adventurous and cook some one pot meals or–

You know– you can always heat up stews and soups and that kind of thing.

One little trick that we have done occasionally is make a one pot stew of some kind at home– put it in the cooler — and then all you gotta do on the campsite is set it on the stove and heat it up –so your time for enjoyment is increased and you spend less time cooking.

So let’s grab, grab something to eat here.

These windscreens are kind of important. We’ve got a breeze today and the windscreens keep the flame from rolling around too much, and if you’re cooking two things at once–

Just fire up the burner-

And–

There you go..

Put a coffee pot on over here or something like that.

Some people ask the question– should you do coffee or not while you’re camping?

And for me that’s 1000 percent yes. I have to have coffee every day.

You can brew coffee. I’ll show you a really old school way to brew coffee and–

this is kind of a fun story– in my family, this coffee pot was the first coffee pot my parents ever had when they got married– and it’s a percolating coffee pot.

You put the– Put the coffee grounds in here. Put the lid on.

And when it starts percolating up to the top. You gotta pot of coffee.

Me- honestly–

Sometimes all I want to do — it’s freezing cold. You may not want to do that.

I bring instant coffee.

I got one that I like. It’s the Starbucks Pike place.

These just come in nice little packets– and heat up your water, empty it in and you got a pretty nice cup of coffee. But there’s cheaper ones as well. All kinds of instant coffee, but those are good.

They work for me. They’re important for me. Get a good night’s sleep and then you gotta have something to wake up.