The must-have ‘ingredients’ for building the ultimate car kitchen

Gone are the days of soggy sandwiches and questionable fuel station hot box snacks because we’re about to delve into the essential ‘ingredients’ for setting up the ultimate car kitchen. So whether you’re heading off for a few months, a whole year, or you just want the perfect set-up for weekend getaways, here’s what you need to build the perfect kitchen in the back of your car.

Let’s start with the fridge

It wouldn’t be much of a kitchen without a fridge now would it? Choosing a fridge is a topic too large to cram into just a few paragraphs, but basically, there are three options when it comes to setting up a kitchen in your car: chest, upright and drawer fridges. You can read all about it below:

Once you’ve decided what type of fridge you’d like in your car kitchen, go ahead and check out our buyer’s guide below for things to consider, brands, specs and prices. 

A fridge slide for easy access

Leaning in the back of your wagon or reaching up to see inside the fridge mounted in your canopy wears thin very quickly. For the ultimate car kitchen, you’re going to want to improve your access with a fridge slide.

I tested out a Clearview Easy Slide earlier this year and particularly loved this one as it slides out and drops down with no effort required. This completely solves the ‘short people vs high car’ problem. Check it out in action here:

As you can see, it’s really easy to use and can drop down from the back of your vehicle or from within your canopy. Simply unlock the travel lock mechanism, pull down on the slide releases and pull the fridge out towards you. To lower it, pull on the magic yellow lever on the handle and push down. Use the same lever to disengage the lock and allow the gas struts to lift your fridge back up.

Grab yourself a cable saver if you’re worried about your fridge cable getting caught in the slide runners.

What about food storage?

Just like at home, not all of your food will live in the fridge, so you’ll need some kind of pantry. Not only for your food but for your cooking utensils and cutlery as well. This can be as simple as a set of clear plastic tubs or you can get fancy with a portable travel pantry specifically designed for car and camping kitchens. 

For the ultimate car kitchen, check out Clearview’s travel pantry. It features a clever, compact, fold-out design with 74L of lockable storage, two working tops and an additional pull-out worktop. Once you’re done cooking and washing up, it folds back up into one neat unit, and you can mount it onto a Clearview Easy Slide for even better access. 

As you can see from the photo below, you can use one of the three platforms to plonk your Weber or gas cooker on. Speaking of which, what are you going to cook on?

What are you going to cook on?

Well, that’s up to you my friend. Although many more people are jumping on the induction cooker bandwagon, I don’t think you can go past a portable gas cooker or a Weber Baby Q for the ultimate car kitchen. 

Can’t decide between a Weber or a Ziggy when it comes to camping BBQs? Make sure to read our article below:

Extra bench space

Making sandwiches on the go is a given, especially for those travelling with kids. But by the time you pull out all the gear you need, there’s no bench space left to make the actual sandwiches. Enter the Clearview Clip-On Tray. This simple piece of ingenuity clips onto the Clearview Easy Slide, essentially giving you another workbench for your car kitchen. It’s rated to 15 kilograms, so it will hold a lot more than just a few pieces of bread.

One problem you may not be aware of

When your canopy or the back of your wagon is loaded to the hilt, once you slide your fridge out to make something to eat, what do you think happens to all that stuff that’s piled up against your fridge? Yep, that’s right. It all falls into the void behind the fridge that you just slid out, and now you can’t slide the fridge back into place. This is usually followed by a lot of swearing.

A simple way to fix this is with a fridge cage for your car kitchen. This is exactly as the name suggests: a hard-walled cage for your fridge that prevents things from falling in behind it when you open the fridge. It also protects your fridge from other things in your canopy or the back of your wagon when you hit the rough stuff. 

So, in conclusion, yes, you could skimp on a few of these things or find alternative solutions to make it cheaper. But then it wouldn’t be the ultimate car kitchen, would it?