Cooking In The Truck

150 watts is about the max for lighter plug inverters. Good for small tv's, computers, etc. Anything that heats uses quite a bit more. Check the wattage of any 120 volt device/appliance on the box. You will get your answer. Glad you are back out of the shadows CM!

I bought a little propane grill slightly larger than a tackle box with legs that fold down at a WalMart. It uses the tiny canisters and we place it in a plastic bag and store it in the side box. Weber makes one that's about $60 (also at walmart) but I only spent $20 on my non-name brand one. It will grill 6 really large burgers or 4 t-bones at one time.

Oh and I also want to add, it cools down very quickly. We keep a spare 2pk of the sealed canisters under the bunk. They run about $6/2 in the camping equipment area, also at walmart. We've used it 4 times on 1 camister.

It seems like you guys are talking about charcoal or gas grills, but I'll throw this out anyway. George Foreman grills. No fire. You can get a very small one and it will work off a medium-sized inverter. Most of the newer models have completely removable cooking surfaces, so you don't have to take the whole grill into the truck stop to clean it, just the cooking surfaces.

Other than that, if you have some bungees and a bit of space, a crock pot. One of my trainers used a crock pot in the truck. He always had good food simmering, and his food expenses were very low.

I cook with a crockpot all the time. On the low setting it pulls 110v off the inverter. We make one meal and it last 2-3 days. Right now we are eating "baked" tortellini I made in it. 3 ingredients, 10 minutes to put it together while on a 30 minute break and 3 hours on low. It's awesome and we got 3 days out of it. It's good cold but I plan on reheating it tonight in the microwave.

This is awesome! i like the ideas. my plan was to have just a simple hot plate, one that I could put a pot or a pan on. I could boil my own iced tea, and use a pan for cooking things like hamburgers, hamburger helper. I could use a crockpot to make my own homeade soup, which would last me a few days.

I always thought it would be cool to store a lawn chair or two in or under the bunk, a small folding table and maybe a small canopy or some such that, when you shut down for the night at a truck stop, you could pull this stuff out, and if you had an external plug or a small extension cord, you could cook outside on your small table, and have a little camping picnic. You'd have a spare chair in case another driver wanted to come and sit down with you and chat and have a cold glass of tea. Would definitely make it feel more homey, only problem would be is if you were out there cooking up something that smells really good, you might have more than 1 other trucker show up at your rig

This is awesome! i like the ideas. my plan was to have just a simple hot plate, one that I could put a pot or a pan on. I could boil my own iced tea, and use a pan for cooking things like hamburgers, hamburger helper. I could use a crockpot to make my own homeade soup, which would last me a few days.

I always thought it would be cool to store a lawn chair or two in or under the bunk, a small folding table and maybe a small canopy or some such that, when you shut down for the night at a truck stop, you could pull this stuff out, and if you had an external plug or a small extension cord, you could cook outside on your small table, and have a little camping picnic. You'd have a spare chair in case another driver wanted to come and sit down with you and chat and have a cold glass of tea. Would definitely make it feel more homey, only problem would be is if you were out there cooking up something that smells really good, you might have more than 1 other trucker show up at your rig

You can set up a little picnic spot in rest areas or some of the nicer truck stops, but I'll be frank here, in the parking areas, most truck stops smell like **** and asphalt, a combination that I don't want to smell when eating.

If you cook your own food, you are a lot less dependent on truck stops though, and rest areas are very doable in most states. A lot of them even have tables and chairs in covered areas.

Back in the day (18 years ago) when my ex and I had trucks, we did indeed only utilize truck stops for showers and fuel, preferring to stop at parks and nice rest areas. We carried folding chairs and a table too. Since we hauled produce, we often took breaks at the shippers too, whom we had great personal relationships with. They were always loading us up with free fruits and veggies to carry home to the kids and use on the road, We'd arrive, break out the grill, table and chairs and often the owners and managers would come out and join us, even offering to run to a store for steaks, burgers or whatever lol. We had so much fun.

I agree with the "truck stop picnic" Ewwww some drivers are literally so nasty the parking areas do smell like P. The small grill I carry now.. we tend to use it when we are stopped at one of our terminals.

For in truck cooking, a crock pot, aroma, or burton lunch box stove are the bomb.