Campsite cooking should be fun rather than a challenge. After all, you're on a holiday not a survival exercise and it can be as simple or as sophisticated as you like. On the one hand, you might want a simple one burner stove for tea and coffee with a barbecue for meals. On the other, you could rustle up several courses on a gas-powered double burner with grill. Whilst double burner stoves allow more cooking options, there are, of course, plenty of one pot recipes suitable for camping.

You'll need somewhere to keep cooking gear and food in your tent; stacking plastic storage boxes with lids are practical and durable. As you won't have loads of worktop space on site, a free-standing camp kitchen makes food preparation and cooking a lot easier as well as offering space to store pots and pans.

Coolboxes and insulated bags are real assets in storing perishable food and many sites will freeze your 'ice' bricks to use in them. Mark yours with your name (best done with an indelible pen). Ideally, you could have two sets (one in use; one in the freezer) and hand them over for freezing in a marked plastic bag to make finding them easier. Nobody wants to spend holidays bogged down with cooking and cleaning but a plastic bowl makes treks to the wash block easier and a couple of tea towels make light work of keeping on top of washing up on site. If you're new to camping, you'll soon work out what suits you, what extras to pack and what to leave behind.

Gas is the most popular stove fuel as it's clean, safe, reliable and convenient whether you're travelling by car or on foot. Our ranges of stoves and cookware offer safe and reliable ways of preparing hot meals and our stores stock gas canisters that will fuel your cooking without fuss or mess.

Meths-fuelled stoves, like the Trangia, work by burning vapour from a simple container. With no moving parts, they are simple, reliable and very safe to use complete with cooking pots and windshield in a handy nesting package. For many years, these stoves have been the first choice of youth groups and are popular with backpackers.

Planning meals can avoid disasters and wasting money so think about easy to prepare and cook meals and plan them out at home. A handful of camping favourites is far better than head scratching each day wondering what to have. Camping life is ideally suited to fresh food - salads, fruit, veggies - involving little or no cooking but loads of variety and taste. At home, cook and freeze an easy meal for the first night - spag bol, chilli or curry are ideal. It'll defrost whilst travelling and be ready for heating up whilst the pasta or rice cooks.

Keeping a small gas stove, kettle, mugs and the basics for tea and coffee in a handy 'brew box' mean you can get a hot drink on the go while you unpack, pitch the tent and assemble your camp.

Please see our notes on tent safety and cooking.


•  Organise your cooking area but don't become obsessive - keep it simple.

•  Use a separate insulated bag for drinks so as to cut down on opening the food cooler.

•  For your first meal, pre-chop veggies at home and store them in airtight bags. Cook the main meal and freeze it (it'll thaw as you travel) for quick meal preparation on site.

•  To get rid of burnt-on food from pans, add a couple of drops of washing up liquid to enough water to cover bottom of pan and bring to the boil.

•  Use an old work glove as an oven "mitt"; especially useful for barbecues.

•  Run a cord through the kitchen paper towel tube; tie the ends together to hang it in a convenient place so everyone knows where it is and you avoid sticky fingers on the tent.

•  Use lids on cooking pans - food will be ready quicker and you save on fuel; it will also help to keep out dust and insects.

•  Many stoves have a cover or lid which doubles as a built-in windshield (consider the Campingaz Camping Chef) to maximise the effectiveness of the burners. It makes sense to make a windscreen for your stove if it doesn't already have one; it saves fuel by speeding up cooking times.

•  Shop each day for fresh food rather than try to run your tent like your house.

•  Work out a number of meals at home that you know you can make reliably on site.

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