We’ve been on the road now for a few months. I think it’s time to talk about some of my favorite mobile life gadgets that we’re really glad to have! In this post, I’ll talk about my Favorite RV Kitchen Gadgets.
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12-Inch Cast Iron Skillet
I’m a big fan of cast iron cookware. Back when we were in our sticks and bricks, we had a huge cast iron dutch oven, a smaller enameled oven, two 8-inch skillets, and a ginormous 16-inch behemoth of a skillet. I cook almost everything in cast iron for a couple of reasons.
- It is durable; I only had one pan ever break on me and that was over a campfire that was too hot, adding food that was too cold. You can really beat the crap out of these pans and they will last for years.
- My family has a history of low blood iron; cooking with cast iron can help with that.
- It’s easy to clean and maintain.
My 12-inch skillet is my new favorite Rv kitchen gadget because it has become my every pan. I’ve made toad in the hole in it, I’ve made lasagna, and even tried it out as a cookie sheet when I tried making power cookies!
By using it every day it’s beautifully seasoned. Cleaning it with my ringer, a stainless steel chain mail scrubber, keeps making it smoother.
Induction Hot Plate
A lot of living in a bus is managing energy. Be it solar power in the batteries, diesel fuel in the tanks, or propane. When you’re running as much solar as we are, you can afford to be electricity hungry, especially when clear skies fill the batteries so fast. In these conditions, we like to use our induction cooker as much as we can. It’s small enough to stow away when we don’t need it. It sits nicely on our propane stove when we do. In situations where we have electrical hookups, we don’t even use the propane stovetop.
One of the great things is this RV kitchen gadget only heats the pot or pan that is sitting on it, not all the air around it, so very little energy is wasted. The only drawback is that the pans need to be magnetic, so the stainless steel pans that we brought along don’t work unless we get…creative.
Instant Pot
We were gifted this years ago, and hardly ever used it. We had a stovetop pressure cooker, a couple of crock pots, and a rice cooker. Why do we need it? Well, when you’re living in a little space, it does make a difference! It’s been extremely nice to make one-pot meals with it. We enjoy finding new recipes to try. And it’s also been nice to have 12-hour stew flavor, using only 20 minutes of power.
Instead of those four plus appliances, we have the instant pot. We’ve figured out how to make rice in it (and it makes a LOT!). We can leave the lid off (and just use one of our regular pot lids) and make soups and stews. A lot of full-timers have an instant pot and use it for EVERY meal, and that’s all they use. We have other options but do use our instant pot frequently when we have hookups.
Popcorn Maker
We are a family that loves popcorn! So much so that when we were still in our Sticks and bricks home we had 3 different machines that made popcorn! Of them all, we chose to keep our stirring popcorn popper. Mostly due to it using less power than our hot air poppers. Also as it allows us to make kettle corn or other special popcorn as it pops!
We do have a lot of other kitchen appliances – our stand mixer, food processor, and coffee pot, but these don’t get used very often or are an energy hog and there’s always the question of “do we need this?” There’s always the possibility that we’ll decide to get rid of one of the items we don’t use very often. or find a more efficient or flexible replacement.