First All-Electric Camping Trip - Failures and "Plan B"

[KBabione]

I'll begin by saying that I love camping - sleeping in a tent and cooking out. I've evolved from the classic 2-burner Coleman white gas stove to a propane oven/stovetop combo for cooking. After getting our R1S I was really looking forward to switching to all electric appliances and did so.

One of my daughters turned 30 yesterday and wanted to go camping as a family for her birthday. I was thrilled and have been planning it for months. There would be 11 of us: My wife and me, our four daughters, two boyfriends, a best friend, and my in-laws. The menu was relatively easy:

• Friday Dinner - Chicken paprikash over pasta
• Saturday Brunch - Pancakes and bacon
• Saturday Dinner - Steak, baked potatoes, and green beans with pine nuts
• Sunday Breakfast - Fried eggs cooked in a hole cut in buttered bread (kind of toad in a hole)

My gear? Here's what I brought to make it all happen:

• A Bluetti AC180 (up to 1800W) to act as a buffer between my power consumption and the 1500W Rivian inverter
• An induction single burner cooking surface with adjustable wattage
• My Joule sous-vide for cooking the steaks (which I'd then sear on a griddle over the fire)
• A Blackstone e-Griddle for breakfast fare

The first failure happened Friday evening as I was getting ready to heat the paprikash (I had made it ahead of time at home and par-cooked the pasta so really all I had to do was to heat it over my fancy new induction burner. I plugged everything in, put the paprikash in the pot, put it on the burner and immediately got an error code. Tried again with the same result. My ever-helpful wife looked up the error code on her phone and discovered it meant I was using a pot that was not compatible with an induction burner. That's on me...I made a triple-batch (9 pounds) of paprikash and did a last minute switch from my 8 QT All-Clad pot (which I had tested) to my 12 QT All-Clad Stock Pot (which, obviously, I had NOT tested). My wife reminded me after looking up the error code that the stock pot was a promo and was not the same quality of our other All-Clad pots. "What else did you bring to heat dinner?" My reply was "Nothing - this is it, but I'm on it." My only other pot was a small saucepan I needed to melt two sticks of butter for the pancakes. So - I quickly got a fire going and put the stock pot over the fire and stirred it constantly to keep it from burning. We had no leftovers:

A little Bar Keeper's Friend when we got home and you can no longer even see the scorch marks.

Brunch went well with the pancakes and bacon (I had pre-cooked the bacon on my Traeger at home so it was just a matter of crisping it up), and before long it was time to start cooking the "Saturday Night Birthday Dinner" that my daughter had requested. The stupid sous-vide required WiFi!!! I tried a number of things - even moving it from my camp kitchen to the back of the R1S and using the Rivian Hotspot. Personal phone hotspots didn't work either. I was sure I had used it at a VRBO without connecting it to the local WiFi, but perhaps not. So - "Plan B" again...

I had originally planned to sous-vide the steaks to 125 and then sear them on a hot griddle over the fire. Now I had to cook them on the griddle. Thankfully, it worked well and I think everyone had a steak to their liking - most were perfectly medium-rare with a couple a little closer to medium. After cutting into them a few people swapped, but it worked. Whew!

Because both dinners worked out my wife has forgiven me for taking "unproven" technology camping. Meals for 11 while camping is a lot of work in the best of times, but when your primary cooking mode doesn't work both nights it was almost too much! The moral of this story (if you suffered through my rambling to get this far) is to REALLY test everything you're taking while you can still make adjustments AND to have a "Plan B" in the back of your head if something happens.

Thanks for reading...I'm looking forward to our next trip!

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[Ingo B]

Ha.... I've had similar goofs during my girl's wrestling tailgate. Fortunately, the team of parents were into overkill and brought too much gear, so no one even blinked.

That said, cast iron works on all of the above. One pot, multiple options. Consider swapping out.

 

[mikehmb]

Oh man. I would beat the sous vide to death with a rock, put it on video, and post it to Amazon, along with an expletive-filled review.

Nice job recovering! Let nothing stop you from enjoying that amazing time with your kids.

 

[slillie]

I'll begin by saying that I love camping - sleeping in a tent and cooking out. I've evolved from the classic 2-burner Coleman white gas stove to a propane oven/stovetop combo for cooking. After getting our R1S I was really looking forward to switching to all electric appliances and did so.

One of my daughters turned 30 yesterday and wanted to go camping as a family for her birthday. I was thrilled and have been planning it for months. There would be 11 of us: My wife and me, our four daughters, two boyfriends, a best friend, and my in-laws. The menu was relatively easy:

• Friday Dinner - Chicken paprikash over pasta
• Saturday Brunch - Pancakes and bacon
• Saturday Dinner - Steak, baked potatoes, and green beans with pine nuts
• Sunday Breakfast - Fried eggs cooked in a hole cut in buttered bread (kind of toad in a hole)

My gear? Here's what I brought to make it all happen:

• A Bluetti AC180 (up to 1800W) to act as a buffer between my power consumption and the 1500W Rivian inverter
• An induction single burner cooking surface with adjustable wattage
• My Joule sous-vide for cooking the steaks (which I'd then sear on a griddle over the fire)
• A Blackstone e-Griddle for breakfast fare

The first failure happened Friday evening as I was getting ready to heat the paprikash (I had made it ahead of time at home and par-cooked the pasta so really all I had to do was to heat it over my fancy new induction burner. I plugged everything in, put the paprikash in the pot, put it on the burner and immediately got an error code. Tried again with the same result. My ever-helpful wife looked up the error code on her phone and discovered it meant I was using a pot that was not compatible with an induction burner. That's on me...I made a triple-batch (9 pounds) of paprikash and did a last minute switch from my 8 QT All-Clad pot (which I had tested) to my 12 QT All-Clad Stock Pot (which, obviously, I had NOT tested). My wife reminded me after looking up the error code that the stock pot was a promo and was not the same quality of our other All-Clad pots. "What else did you bring to heat dinner?" My reply was "Nothing - this is it, but I'm on it." My only other pot was a small saucepan I needed to melt two sticks of butter for the pancakes. So - I quickly got a fire going and put the stock pot over the fire and stirred it constantly to keep it from burning. We had no leftovers:

A little Bar Keeper's Friend when we got home and you can no longer even see the scorch marks.

Brunch went well with the pancakes and bacon (I had pre-cooked the bacon on my Traeger at home so it was just a matter of crisping it up), and before long it was time to start cooking the "Saturday Night Birthday Dinner" that my daughter had requested. The stupid sous-vide required WiFi!!! I tried a number of things - even moving it from my camp kitchen to the back of the R1S and using the Rivian Hotspot. Personal phone hotspots didn't work either. I was sure I had used it at a VRBO without connecting it to the local WiFi, but perhaps not. So - "Plan B" again...

I had originally planned to sous-vide the steaks to 125 and then sear them on a hot griddle over the fire. Now I had to cook them on the griddle. Thankfully, it worked well and I think everyone had a steak to their liking - most were perfectly medium-rare with a couple a little closer to medium. After cutting into them a few people swapped, but it worked. Whew!

Because both dinners worked out my wife has forgiven me for taking "unproven" technology camping. Meals for 11 while camping is a lot of work in the best of times, but when your primary cooking mode doesn't work both nights it was almost too much! The moral of this story (if you suffered through my rambling to get this far) is to REALLY test everything you're taking while you can still make adjustments AND to have a "Plan B" in the back of your head if something happens.

Thanks for reading...I'm looking forward to our next trip!

The beauty of sous vide is you can do it all at home and keep the bags in a cooler since sous vide pasteurizes while it cooks.

 

[Dark-Fx]

The first failure happened Friday evening as I was getting ready to heat the paprikash (I had made it ahead of time at home and par-cooked the pasta so really all I had to do was to heat it over my fancy new induction burner.

I would have used the sous-vide.

 

[vordo]

my boys have food allergies so when we go to soccer tournaments I’m stocked up with soups and premade sous vide chicken breasts. I have the thunderbolt supply camp kitchen and lots of pots and pans that work, also have done a fair amount of cooking whilst camping.

as for the sous vide, I’d never consider bringing one (mine will work without wifi) because it’s so easy to bring it already cooked and just seer and eat.

I also have a cowboy fire pit that I lug with me (I’m getting too old to cook on my knees LOL)

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