Cooking Meals On The Road

Will be riding along with the hubby once he gets hired somewhere. Been hearing a lot about saving money by preparing your meals on the truck. How does this work? What kind of appliances do you need and can you eat healthy while OTR? Thanks 🚚

Electric skillet or slow cooker,if equipped with apu. I only run one appliance at a time.while truck is running,to prevent electrical issues. Eating healthy? Stirr fry would be your best bet.

APU:

Auxiliary Power Unit

On tractor trailers, and APU is a small diesel engine that powers a heat and air conditioning unit while charging the truck's main batteries at the same time. This allows the driver to remain comfortable in the cab and have access to electric power without running the main truck engine.

Having an APU helps save money in fuel costs and saves wear and tear on the main engine, though they tend to be expensive to install and maintain. Therefore only a very small percentage of the trucks on the road today come equipped with an APU.

Well depending on what you have in the truck as far as inverts and a fridge would be something to think about, however those can be got around some what easy. For fridge you could use a cooler to start but you will want to look into getting something that works like a fridge, these are expensive but well worth the investment. Second thing to look at getting are things like toaster ovens, rice cookers, electric burner/gas burner (use extreme caution with the gas), some kind of wooden tv tray (a tall one if you can find it), a slow cooker, crockpot, RoadPro 12 stove (Lots of ideas on that amazon link, aluminum trays, plastic silverwear, paper plates, and so on. I believe at some truck stops you can use the points you get from fueling to buy thing, and while buying a meal would seem like a good idea I feel those points would be better suited for things to help you eat healthier. If you use your imagination you can think of things to cook with the aboves items to make healthier eats. Just some ideas to get you pointed in the right direction.

The easiest thing is a one pot meal. That lunch box oven is awesome for heating hotdogs, chili and a bunch of other stuff. Gonna try to cook a small roast one day with some carrots and potatoes. Heck that thing heats to 300 degrees. Just have to cook it a little longer.

If you want more options for cooking, try and find a company with inverters. At least 1000watt to 1800watts would be ideal.

I had a Forman grill for doing steaks, burgers and chicken on, crock pot meals, electric tea kettle for hot water (coffee pot works too but if not clean good it'll leave a coffee flavor to water.

Also had a nutribullet and made fresh juice for lunch to help get more nutrients in me. Worked great sipped on it for.most the day tell dinner.

Cooler is the primary thing to look at.. though expensive I bought an Arb Fridge Freezer 37qt. Well worth the money. Never had an issue with it.

There are also trucker fridges that you can get that are a bit cheaper. I went this the arb so I could go 4x4ing in our suzuki and still have a cooler too.

You can get a cheap koolatron from a truck stop but they die very quickly. And only keep the Temps at 40 degrees under the outside cooler temp. So if it's 120 in your truck your cooler will sit around 80.

The ARB I have fit perfectly where I'd put a fridge. It also plugged in via 12v or 120v (house plug)

Oh and it's not just eating healthy, but also staying active. It's hard to want to do anything after a 14hr day.. but it can be done. 30min walk after driving does wonders for the body. Helps get blood circulating

The easiest thing is a one pot meal. That lunch box oven is awesome for heating hotdogs, chili and a bunch of other stuff. Gonna try to cook a small roast one day with some carrots and potatoes. Heck that thing heats to 300 degrees. Just have to cook it a little longer.

You could do small salmon in it for sure, and if you had a rice cooker you could veggies and rice with it was well. Sadly now I am hungry LOL.

Bird's Girl, love that Avatar!

I like to use a Crock-Pot. I started out using the 12 volt models, but the heating elements in them don't hold up very well under heavy usage. So I got a 120 volt one at Wally World for under 15 bucks and use a 400 watt inverter that plugs into the 12 volt receptacle in the truck. The lunch box cookers work well also.

Recently I made a homemade (truck made actually) chicken noodle soup. Here's a shot of the small bird when I first put it in the pot to "stew"

I drove for about four or five hours with that bird getting "fall off the bone" done, and then I took my thirty minute break and de-boned the chicken, throwing the meat back into the broth, adding some sausage and later on some noodles. It came out delicious, economical, and a healthy alternative to the two Hot Dog special going on at the Truck Stop that night.

Here's the final product before I consumed it. With the Crock-Pot you can leave your left overs in the crock, put it in your cooler for the night and set it right back into the base to heat it up the next day.

I have a crockpot and rice cooker as well as an Igloo 12v cooler. Had a Coleman but it fried after 2 months, the Igloo is much nicer and keeps things quite a bit colder in my opinion. Also drips less water into the fridge.

Since I team it is sometimes difficult to stock up on fresh foods (especially things like meat and produce, which spoil quickly and few if any truck stops carry). Walmart is an option sometimes, but not often enough to cook fresh meals for us both every day. The cooler can also only hold so much, and one big package of chicken or a large roast uses up any space that isn't already taken by fruit and veggies.

So, I found a solution that is working well for us: canned meat. I know what you're thinking, but I'm not talking about Spam or corned beef hash or anything like that. I can meat using a pressure canner and wide mouth pint jars when I'm at home. It works with any type or cut of meat, and the results are not mushy, salty or anything else you might expect from canned meat. I make canned pot roast that is to die for. The jars can be stored at room temperature as long as they are kept out of direct sunlight and extreme heat (I store mine under the bunk in cool weather, in a cabinet in hot weather). They will keep for years and still be perfectly safe to eat, although texture will start to degrade after the first year or two.

They make really convenient one jar meals, simply rinse the jar when done and reuse it for the next canning session. I make a couple dozen every time I go home. It's very simple and takes almost no time (you have to hang out in the kitchen for 1-2 hours to make sure the pressure stays constant, I read a book or surf the internet). Please note if you decide to try this please use a pressure cooker to can, and not a water-bath. Water-baths are fine for high acidity foods like jams and jellies, anything else needs to be pressure canned to kill potentially dangerous bacteria and prevent serious food illness.

So every day out front of his truck he had himself a little BBQ just left it out there all night long after he got done eatin. then cleaned it up moved along in the morning.

I try not to eat a whole lot like I would at home because I've been sitting most my part of my days man.

but I got a little fridge to my Pepsi's in it cranberry juice I got them I got a cantaloupe, applesauce just fruits and vegetables mainlyI got some packets of beef jerky. i like the slow cooker idea...ima take my wife's little one.

aluminum foil and burritos in the engine compartment always always always worked when doing pipeline leave the motor on toys the burrito in. come back at lunch its HOT but not burnt.