Camp Kitchen

Essential Gear for Your Camp Kitchen

When you pull into camp at the end of a long day, cooking dinner should be simple. Having the right setup for your camp kitchen can make the difference between spending a few minutes organizing dinner and cooking well past sunset.

What Do You Need for Cooking at Camp?

There are a variety of different styles of camp chefs. On the one hand, you can build the lightest possible camp kitchen, carrying only the bare minimum needed to make simple meals. At the other extreme, you can carry a full range of cooking gear to make a meal everyone in your group will remember. Either way, there are a few essential items that every camp kitchen needs to have:

Stove

The stove is the most important part of every camp kitchen as well as one of the most essential pieces of gear on any adventure. Without a reliable stove, your options for cooking food or boiling water for drinking can be very limited. There are two kinds of stoves: canister stoves and liquid fuel stoves. Canister stoves are lightweight and extremely simple to operate, but they don’t perform well in sub-freezing temperatures and the fuel canisters can be heavy and bulky. Liquid fuel stoves are more efficient and work well in any conditions, but operating them requires priming the stove – a technique that can take some practice. When choosing between stoves, the other things to consider are the boil time and fuel consumption. A faster boiling stove will let you get to dinner faster, but if it consumes more fuel in the process you’ll end up carrying more weight in fuel for your trip.

Cooking Sets

At a bare minimum, almost every trip calls for a pot to use with your stove. There are a ton of great single-pot options, including collapsible pots that save space and titanium pots that weigh almost nothing. But if you’re planning a gourmet meal at camp, you might need more than just one pot. Cooking sets often include multiple pots, or even items like a frying pan.

Plates, Bowls, Cups, and Utensils

If you don’t plan to eat out of your pot, you’ll need a full set of dining wares. If you’re keeping your camp kitchen as light as possible, a plastic or titanium bowl and spork may be all you need. But if you have a large group, it may be worth getting a set of plates, bowls, cups, and utensils. Don’t forget to include a mug in your pack – even if it adds some weight, there’s nothing as good as having a hot drink in the evening.

Kitchen Accessories

There is a huge variety of kitchen tools and gadgets that can make your life easier in the backcountry. From eco-friendly soaps and lightweight towels to coolers and sinks, a few small additions can take your camp kitchen from basic to advanced.

Camp Kitchen Essentials at addnature.co.uk

The easiest way to find everything you need for your camp kitchen is to browse our huge selection of stoves, cooking sets, dining wares, and more at addnature.co.uk. We offer a wide variety of backcountry kitchen items from major manufacturers all in one place so you can mix and match to fully customize your canteen.