Category: Cooking

Staying in a 27 foot long new travel trailer is not really the epitome of roughing it. Nonetheless having a good knife is an essential tool to camping. Knives these days can be crazy expensive, and regardless of price can still be easily lost. Here are the qualifications I sought out in a new knife.
– Had to be a folder, no straight blades.
– Needed a history of durability, no junk.
– The knife was not going to see a ton of heavy work, mostly light cutting and cooking duties so I wanted a blade material that would resist stains and sharpen easily.
– The knife had to be under $45

I settled on the Ontario Knife Company Rat I in Aus-8 Stainless steel.

I found the knife on Amazon for under $30 with free shipping. I went and added a small leather lanyard to it and so far it has been working great.

You can see a review of the knife on this youtube video, I like Nick’s reviews he seems on point with the content he is presenting (no pun intended)

Making good coffee while camping is a must. I have been a fan of percolators for a while and use one at home everyday. The one that we use for the camper is one that I bought a while ago for use on our boat on in emergencies when the power goes out. I bought a Farberware 8 cup stainless unit that has served us well. The great thing about percolators is that they get the water up to a higher temperature than a lot of drip coffee makers. This in my min makes for a much better cup of coffee.

I use store bought coffee and whole beans that I grind myself. The unit has a basket in it, but we still choose to use a paper filter to help keep the sediment out. There is a lot of flexibility on how you use this percolator. It will function on a cook-top, the Blackstone or any propane grill. The percolator can also be used over a campfire (just keep the handle away from the flame). There are two downsides to this particular unit. Being an 8 cup unit, the coffee doesn’t last real long, I tyically find myself making two pots when we have a full crew on the camper. Since this writing, there is a 12 cup version that I have not tried yet.
The other downside is that there is no heating element to keep the coffee warm after its brewed. I just use a Stanley thermos after I make it to keep it warm.

For camping purposes we needed some mugs that would hold up, I found some red enamel mugs on Amazon that have worked well. They won’t break in transit and match that camper in color. They mugs are metal so you do need to be careful that you don’t burn your lips with piping hot coffee as they will absorb the heat.

Is there a better way to start the day?

In order to keep the camper smelling as new as possible, we are not going to to any significant cooking inside. That being said we needed a setup that would allow generous meal prep outdoors. We looked at a few options and settled on a Blackstone Tailgater as our main cooking implement.

The unit has a conventional bbq grill on the left and a steel griddle on the right. The large burner under the grill is circular while the burner for the griddle is an H pattern. The setup comes with a hose to connect to a 20lb propane cylinder, we added an 18 foot hose to the unit so that it could plug into the camper propane feed, located under the outdoor kitchen.
Speaking of outdoor kitchens, yes ours was ordered with this option that includes a roll out sink, refrigerator and a small griddle. This setup is really handy for reducing traffic in the camper. Having drinks in the outdoor fridge, keeps folks from having to go inside for a beverage. In addition – having a spot to wash up and cook makes larger meal prep really easy.

The camper has one propane fitting under the outdoor kitchen. I sourced an adapter that splits it into two, this allows both cooking appliances to run at the same time.