RV Cookbook Reviews

Best Ever RV Recipes: Good Sam Members Favorite Recipes- A pretty interesting recipe collection, contributed by Good Sam members. This 192-page volume should give you some ideas what to  cook on your next RV adventure. Some of the recipes are quite familiar and too many entree recipes include "cream of something" soup, but the Outdoor Cooking chapter makes up for the old stand-bys. In the Outdoor Cooking section you will find detailed instructions for deep frying a turkey and how to cook a turkey in a (new?) trash can, plus over 40 other ways to cook outdoors over a wood, deep fryer, charcoal or gas fire and as mentioned above, a trash can. And don't forget a beer can! R. C. Kremer of Mountain View, California contributed "R.C.'s Beer Butt Chicken": roasting a whole chicken propped-up on a can of beer in a BBQ grill. Instructions are included for basting the chicken (and the cook) with beer. The book is filled with cute quotes such as "Mosquitoes remind us that we are not as high up on the food chain as we think." 200 recipes for Breakfast & Brunch (Allegheny Al's Banana French Toast Sandwiches), Happy Hour Nibbles (a shrimp and crab dip contributed by Trailer Life columnist, Chuck Campbell looks easy - plus there are two pages of instructions on how to cook on your engine block!), Casseroles & One-Dish Meals (Broccoli Lasagna Bianca looks good and is low-fat too), Salads (Pomegranate Jewel Spinach Salad, contributed by the people at the Pomegranate Council no less), Soups & Stews (the National Five-Alarm Hormel Chili Cook-Off winning recipe is included), Outdoor Cooking, Entrees (Nacho Chicken Delight uses crushed nacho-flavored tortilla chips as the coating), Side Dishes (they include a heart-healthy "blooming" onion - it is foil-roasted and uses only 1 Tablespoon of butter/margarine), Desserts (Mile-High Cranapple-Rhubarb Pie was a winner at the Tennessee State Fair) and a recipe for home-made dog food! Recipes are also marked with icons indicating if they have 5 ingredients or less, are fast, or healthy. 192 pages, spiral-bound and RV-sized too.

The RV Cookbook is a fun cookbook to add to your collection as it delves into a few more exotic dishes and is health-conscious. Written by Amy Boyer and Daniella Chace, this book is for the more adventurous cook. 240 pages.

RV Goddess Janet Groene has written the best all-around RV cookbook (in my opinion). Cooking Aboard Your RV has 270 recipes for real people and dozens of ideas to make cooking in a moving house easier. The book also has pages of helpful hints and practical advice. Groene also has fun recipes for cooking over the campfire - and even a few meals prepared in tin cans! (Wouldn't the kids love that?)

The Open Road Cookbook by JoAnna M. Lund is a "Healthy Exchanges Cookbook". This is a pretty specialized cookbook for people on low-fat, Weight Watchers, or diabetic diets - but the recipes are practical and they are can be used in the home kitchen also. Nutritional information is given for each recipe, plus diabetic exchange information. I found that most the ingredients are low or no-fat versions, (she uses sugar substitutes, egg substitutes, etc.) of everyday recipes. Lund gives brand-name suggestions on most ingredients. This book comes spiral-bound.

If you love to travel the blue roads of America, I suggest you read Two for the Road - Our Love Affair with American Food and add it to your RV bookshelf and refer to it as you travel - and eat - around this great culinary country. Jane & Michael Stern, Yale-grads gone gastronomic - and authors of the famous Road Food guide to American diners - have written the story of how they became America's greatest grub critics - and describe every slab of ham, grits, gravy and banana pudding they enjoyed during the process. I think I gained five pounds while reading the pages, but laughed it off over their hilarious stories. The book is a gem. If you are fans of the Sterns and read their monthly column in Gourmet Magazine or listen to them on NPR, this memoir is not to be missed. In the back of the book is a state-by-state listing of restaurants mentioned in the book and many recipes of regional favorites.

How many times have you asked the family what they would like for dinner and they answer, "chicken"? It seems to be an international dilemma, but now Mary Ellen Evans, author of Bistro Chicken, offers The One-Dish Chicken Cookbook - 120 Simply Delicious Recipes from Around the World. The title is an honest description of what you will find inside. The recipes are easy, different, delicious, and - because they use only one pan - most are suitable for the RV kitchen. Easy cleanup is emphasized. Evans has lived and traveled all over the world and her recipes will take you to new places too.

Recipes are included for chicken prepared in a skillet, wok, stew pot, dutch oven, crockpot, and roaster - something for everyone's kitchen and a dish for everyone's palate. From the familiar to the exotic - simple Chicken and Dumplings to the exotic Chicken Vindaloo - this cookbook will certainly add new dimension to your chicken repertoire.

Every recipe includes side-dish suggestions for meal planning and, if applicable, Evans tells how to prepare the dish ahead - perfect for easy RV dinners.

We tested several recipes and found the type easy to read and the instructions easy to follow. We found that many of the baked chicken recipes could also be grilled outside. Though everyday spices are used, some of the spice combinations seem very out of the ordinary. Evans has developed all the recipes for use with everyday supermarket chickens and many of the recipes call for inexpensive thighs. A few recipes would be inappropriate for the RV kitchen - flaming brandy is required in the Apricot Chicken recipe, (photo, above) but it was fun at home. (Our tasters loved it.) The ease of washing only one pot is fabulous - at home or in the camper.

Here is a small sampling of recipes: Chicken Gumbo, Kentucky Burgoo, Coq au Vin Chez Mary, African Chicken & Peanut Stew, Portuguese Chicken and Sausage Stew, Chicken and Chickpea Tagine, Balsamic Braised Chicken, Soy-Braised Chicken Wings, Jamaican Gingered Chicken, Philippine Chicken Adobo, Chicken Jambalaya.

The One-Dish Chicken Cookbook - 120 Simply Delicious Recipes from Around the World will certainly have an answer when you have a request to prepare chicken for dinner! The paperback book is 212 pages, with no photos (except the cover). ISBN: 076791824X.

Now we're talkin'! The Gourmet Slow Cooker is a beautiful little volume. Many color photographs too - I really appreciate seeing a photo of the dish in a cookbook, don't you?  Lynn Alley has subtitled her book "Simple and Sophisticated Meals from Around the World", and the chapters are divided by country - USA, Mexico, Great Britain, France, Italy, Greece and India. Except for a few possibly-unusual (but readily-available in the supermarket) spices, even the Indian recipes are straight-forward and delicious. Recipe tested: The cover recipe is my favorite: Italian Pot Roast, served on a bed of polenta. I give this book two thumbs-up. Someone open a bottle of Chianti.