With the winter solstice behind us, I’m already planning our next big camping trip for 2022 and I’ve been thinking a lot about food prep. Until last year, our cooking was done on a fire ring at the campsite, on a portable camp stove that we set up on a picnic table (we have this) or on our Happier Camper HCT’s stove top. But at the end of last season we upped our game by bringing along a grill. I know - I thought the same thing. Grills are big and bulky and I just couldn’t see how it would work for us, but I’m really glad we tried it.

Grilling & camping is a thing for us now

I will be honest here and tell you that, at first, I really hesitated to do this. There were a couple of reasons… the first is that I didn’t want to look like a prat. I know it probably sounds silly but I felt self-conscious about looking even MORE like we are glamping than we already are and having a grill set up seemed pretentious. The second reason was that I was worried about it being too hot and needing to move our set up quickly. The third reason was that I wasn’t quite sure how to best transport it. But here’s the thing…

1. When you are sitting in wooden deck chairs with your candles lit and the music playing you really can’t look more like you are glamping than you already are. A grill wasn’t exactly going to push it over the edge.

2. I wanted to use a grill for the evening meal and we don’t pack up and leave a site until the next day, so barring an emergency we wouldn’t be moving it until it had cooled down.

3. Our grill is small so it only took a hot minute to figure out the transport options.

If you haven’t seen these before, this is a Solo Stove grill - it is super compact and travels really well plus it’s got some sort of induction design so it heats up fast. It is 22 inches across and it stands 30 inches high, including the stand and the top. This picture shows it with the small stand - I think you can still get the tall stand if you want it - but with this compact size we are able to just slide it into the back of our tow vehicle as is and literally just lift it out when we arrive at the site. And instead of getting a big bag of charcoal to lug around, we get these - 4 packages of briquettes and 16 fire starters - so I just throw those into the grill before we head out so everything is tidy and in one place.

But you know what the real game changer was for us? A charcoal chimney. I’m sure everyone and their brother already knows about these things but we didn’t. In fact, we were sort of intimidated about getting the grill going, the charcoals hot and timing everything so that we would be eating on time - and that was in the backyard. We didn’t get anything fancy - it’s just a simple mechanism for concentrating the heat around the briquettes - but we literally had no idea this was a thing and if you don’t either, you should get one. This one costs about $12 on Amazon.

I’m looking at two other options for 2022

Even with us now bringing the grill, I don’t see us not cooking over a campfire. It is one of the great pleasures of going camping but no matter how well I try to wash the gear down before I store it, it always seems to have some soot on it. If you know anything about our Adaptiv cubes it is that they don’t like soot. I usually wrap the pan in paper towels to keep it from marking the inside of the cube, but I was checking out this Bruntmor package and I feel like having the dedicated box could be a really good option for storing the cast iron in - plus I don’t have a cast iron griddle or saucepan and this would round out what I think I need when we are camping. I also think that this is another transport win - throw the box with the gear in it into the back of the car or into the camper itself and it is all in one place when we need it.

This next one seems a little over the top, even for me - but how cool is this?! I think at least one person in our Facebook group has one and I’ve been coveting it ever since they posted about it. It’s called a Nostalgia Retro 3-in-1 Breakfast Station and it’s got a lot of appeal. First - the coffee… we bring a French press with us when we camp so it isn’t like I don’t have coffee when I want it, but this looks cool. Second - the ability to make toast. Mike loves a bit of toast to start the day and I am sure we could even make cheese on toast for a quick light lunch so that would be great. And third - the ability to make eggs while those other two things are happening at the same time. I don’t know - maybe it’s the efficiency of it? Or maybe it’s just the styling, I don’t know. But this one does require a power source, so if you are thinking about getting one, make sure your plans include a campground with a hook up or if you are like us and have a Jackery, bring your extra battery power with you!

I know that we don’t really need any of this stuff to make for a great camping trip and that sometimes the simplest meals taste the best, but I have to admit that firing up the grill has, at least mentally, made me feel like we’ve got no limits on what we will cook in the 2022 camping season! What do YOU cook on?!