Food

I batch cook portions of bolognese sauce, chilli, curry, chicken casserole, stew and dumplings, etc., freeze them and transport them in the caravan freezer.  We lift out whatever we want to eat that evening and add appropriate accompaniments.  We also eat steaks and a fair bit of chicken with either chips or salad (weather dependant).  We usually do at least one rice dish whilst away - mushroom strogonoff, risotto, chicken fried rice, cajun chicken jambalaya, sweet and sour chicken.

I have a Remoska, a multi cooker and a slow cooker which I can also take, depending on my planned menu.  My caravan has a microwave and an oven but I find I can cook most things without gas now.

Thanks so much. I had to google Remoska but that and some of your ideas sound perfect!

I'm also a Remoska convert, love cooking and my approach is much the same as JillwithaJay. We eat very much as we would at home. I usually take a lot with us, ie a small table top size freezer full when a way for a couple of weeks. so all we have to do is match up with good fresh local veg and salad bits.

I gave up on a BBQ many years ago and recently got rid of our Cadac. When cooking outside we use a single ring induction hob on an extension lead, or if power supply is low as on the continent a basic single gas ring off a Campingaz bottle.

Colin

We have two burners and occasionally the Remoska. Tonight was falafels and salad with cold potatoes.  Tomorrow is kidney beans, rice, onion, tomatoes. Pasta and mozzarella salad. Burgers and pasta and stir fried peppers. You get the idea. Perhaps a bolognaise in colder weather. Easy versions of what we eat at home. We do take quite a few tins with us. Don’t eat much meat.

If on a longer trip away we preplan some meals and prepare sauces, gravies and the like at home. These are then bagged up and frozen ready to transfer on the morning we leave on our holiday. Like many I’m sure, our freezer in the van is small and space is precious so carefully minimising that available for use is key. Doing this we always have at least four almost ready made meals available to us. Curries, pasta meals, Swedish meatballs and stews are regular inclusions. Those ‘zipped’ freezer storage bags are a godsend. We have a ninja health grill air frier which we use outside the van to conjure up our meals, brilliant piece of kit.

One trick I've learned about freezing food is to flatten the freezer bags as much as possible, even soup can be laid flat. It might allow for a bit more freezer space. We only have a fridge with a freezer compartment. Finding farm shops on holiday is a good way to top up supplies, they often stock good ready meals etc. I've never tried "Parsley Box" but their meals are vacuum packed and don't require freezing. I like a break from cooking on  holiday so I only take enough food for a few days at most plus emergency tins and packets.

We never really cooked in a caravan in the way we would have done at home. Warming things up was about the limit of our endeavour.

That was partly because we only ever had simple caravans with limited equipment - no microwave, no freezer, no remoska, no electric grill, no barbecue - but really because we never wanted to spend time prepping and cooking from scratch and then washing up afterwards. And with no freezer we never took much more than tea bags from home.

So in the UK we would buy ready meals and ready prepared stuff in the best avaiable supermarket, and heat it up if if needed. There’s such a choice these days - though in the past shopping in the remoter parts of the Scottish highlands was a pain!

In France we would buy a cooked chicken or paella, or roasted rabbit in mustard sauce, or what ever else there was in the morning market to eat at lunch time with salad,  and snack on cold meats  cheeses  fruit and wine in an evening.

It was step up from when we had a tent.

In our first motorhome we were rather lucky to have one of those large fridge/freezers. In the current van we only have an under the counter fridge with a small freezer compartment which, in total, holds a lot less. So planning is more important. Generally we can make do for four days and this tend to be the time we spend in one place so relatively easy to stop at a supermarket en route to the next site. As we tend to stay near to things usually a bit of extra shopping is not a problem. We do tend to buy ready meals for their convenience and as ET said there is such a choice now. We will occasionally eat out or even buy something from food vendors on the campsite, we had a couple of lovely pizza's at Clumber Park.

David