Van Kitchen Essentials

Love cooking but not sure how in a small space? Read on for tips on kitchen essentials for your van.

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Setting up your van kitchen for cooking is all about making the most of a small space. Our #1 An essential for a van life kitchen is an easy and compact way to make coffee. 

We love just about anything collapsible for van use, and especially this collapsible electric kettle. We typically make coffee in a french press and we usually heat two kettles of hot water to make our morning coffee. This electric kettle heats quickly. Then easily compresses back into a compact travel container that nests with our pots and pans.

Another great tool is our manual coffee grinder, with a removable handle for easy storage. 

For doing dishes, we prefer to deal with the mess outside of the van. We use two collapsible buckets, one for soapy hot water and one for rinsing the dishes. If using a non-toxic soap, the wastewater can be dispersed away from the campsite. These tuck away in the back of our van when not in use. 

Because we love to cook meals in the van, we invested in a high quality one-burner induction cooktop. 

A few things we love about this cooktop:

• It’s portable! We often use this cooktop on a table outside of the van, which is nice if cooking something smelly or greasy
• It has options for what wattage to use which makes it a flexible option depending on the size of your inverter 
• It is incredibly efficient! 
• The one-burner size works well when cooking for just the two of us. A family might prefer a two burner but its important to consider the extra storage space this will require in your van

Out of everything in our van kitchen, these are the most used items by far. We also have a simple set of cookware that works with our induction cooktop, a set of classic blue enamel camp dishes/silverware, cutting boards and a few kitchen utensils. Our setup is quite simple but allows us to still cook great food while on the road.