Cruising Iceland in a camper is an unforgettable experience. The open road, passing magnificent waterfalls, dramatic black sand beaches, gigantic glaciers, and more. But just like your camper, you’ll also need some gas in the tank, and with a camper's convenient kitchen area, making delicious, budget-friendly, and easy campervan meals couldn’t be easier.
This article will teach you all the tricks of the trade when it comes to campervan cooking. From getting the most bang for your buck at our local grocery stores to prepping for stress-free cooking and making high-energy meals to give you enough energy for a day full of adventure. Getting hungry already? Let’s get into it.
Why Cooking in a Campervan is Different in Iceland
The Land of Fire and Ice is a unique destination, and there are certain factors you’ll need to consider when cooking here on the island:
Weather, Storage, and Ingredient Access
We have a local saying, “You can experience all four seasons in a day in Iceland.” This means that you’ll need to be prepared. If you’re planning on cooking outside on the camping gear, you might have to contend with rain.
Iceland is also famous for its winds, which have been known to rip car doors straight off their hinges. This can also make cooking outside extremely challenging, and even cooking in the camper can be a bit of a swaying-boat-on-land type of experience.
Another thing to keep in mind is that storage in a camper is limited, not only in terms of cupboards, but also in fridge size. Most campers will have a fridge no bigger than a mini-bar fridge. This means that you can’t buy groceries for a month’s worth of meals, and you’ll need ingredients that can be mixed and matched in various recipes.
You’ll also need many ingredients that don’t easily spoil, especially if you’re planning on visiting our more remote areas, where stores can become a rare sight and prices can become pretty steep. We’d generally recommend that you stock up in our larger cities and towns.
Advantages of Eating in vs. Dining Out
Dining out in Iceland and trying our authentic local cuisine is an absolute must, but we recommend making this a once-off special occasion. Dining out in Iceland can gobble up your budget quicker than you can chow down on our delicious Bæjarins hot dogs. So, be budget-savvy and stick to cooking in your camper as much as possible.
There are loads of benefits to cooking in your camper:
- You're saving money.
- It’s super convenient: you can eat what you want, when you want, wherever you want.
- You have better control over cooking methods, what you put in your food, as well as portion size.
- One of the best things about exploring Iceland in a camper is being able to park and camp with absolutely breathtaking views. So, cooking and eating at your camper means you could have a “room” with a view that very few restaurants have to offer here on the island.
- There’s a comfort to it. You can just curl up on the couch in comfy clothes and enjoy a good meal (an especially comfortable option when the weather goes bad).
How to Plan Your Campervan Meals in Iceland
When planning and prepping your van life meals, remember the following:
Shopping Tips for Icelandic Grocery Stores
We have a few grocery stores that are all the go-tos for different reasons:
- Bonus & Kronan: The go-tos for budget-friendly shopping.
- Hagkaup: A more expensive shop, but a go-to for products not commonly found on the island, including imported favorites.
- Netto: Probably the most common grocery store in Iceland. It’s also known as a budget-friendly option, although Bonus and Kronan have still taken top spot in that regard.
- Costco: An excellent way to save money, especially on longer trips to the island. Just like its American counterparts, you’ll need a membership card to shop there (but this is available to anyone who walks through its doors). There’s just one snag: we only have one Costco on the entire island, and it’s found in the capital city of Reykjavik.
Essential Cooking Tools for Your Camper Kitchen
When renting a camper in Iceland, you can rest assured that your rental agent has already taken care of most essentials for you. Depending on the make and model you rent, your camper is likely to have a built-in or portable stovetop, a mini fridge, and a few other essentials such as pots, pans, cutlery, etc.
However, there are a few things that you may want to consider bringing/buying/or renting here on the island. This includes outdoor cooking gear as well as storage containers for meal prep and leftovers.
The other advice we’d like to give is that you need to keep your camper neat and organized throughout your trip. Not only can any clutter make the limited space feel incredibly cramped, but you also don’t want to end up looking for a missing chopping knife when cooking.
Storing and Preserving Food on the Road
Limited storage space can make storing and preserving food challenging, but with a bit of planning, this can be easily taken care of. Just follow our advice below:
- Buy perishable, fresh produce sparingly. With limited fridge space, you don’t want to have to store any excess outside, and you want to ensure that you’re able to eat everything before things spoil.
- Depending on the season, storing items outside is one of our Icelander’s secret storage weapons. This is also the reason why you’ll often find bottles of beer or sodas on our porches.
- Stock up on non-perishables like pasta, rice, oats, and canned goods like beans. Not only don’t you run the risk of unnecessary waste, but these items also make for quick and budget-friendly meals.
- Get yourself a couple of ready-made frozen meals as back-up for those times you really don’t have time to cook.
- Ensure that your storage containers are properly closed and air-tight to ensure that food doesn’t spoil quickly.
Quick and Easy Campervan Breakfast Ideas
Campervan breakfasts are crucial for tackling the day filled with adventures around the island, but you also don’t want to spend most of your morning in the kitchen when you could’ve been out traversing a volcano. Below are a few ideas for nutritious, but quick campervan breakfast meals:
No-Cook Breakfasts
These are the easiest and quickest meals that’ll still give you the energy you need:
- Overnight Oats: Just mix your oats with milk and whatever else you’d like in it (seeds, fruit, nuts, etc.) and leave in the fridge overnight, ready to be eaten early morning.
- Skyr with Granola and Berries: Skyr is probably what you’d relate to as yoghurt, since it’s similar in texture, but ours is incredibly protein-rich. You literally pop some Skyr in a bowl and mix with whatever else you’d like to add.
- Rye Toast with Avo and Cheese: This is yet another quick and easy option that is packed with nutrition for the day ahead.
- Sandwiches: This is an age-old classic, but it works exceptionally well if you make a few extras to take along as a snack when visiting some of our local attractions throughout the day.
Skillet and One-Pan Morning Recipes
With limited space inside the campervan and limited time, the following cooking-required recipes promise to be no-mess-no-fuss:
- Scrambled eggs with smoked salmon or mushrooms. Just scramble, add, and eat!
- Breakfast burritos. Mix and match your favorite ingredients to create delicious breakfast burritos using tortilla wraps. Think of ingredients such as scrambled eggs, beans, and cheese, which offer loads of energy.
- A one-pan veggie mix. Chop up some potatoes, onions, and other veggies, and fry them in the pan with some seasoning.
One-Pot and Minimal-Cleanup Lunches
Lunch is often sacrificed when one is out and about, but you’ll need to keep your energy levels up for the rest of the day. The meals below will make it easy to take that quick breather and regain your strength for the rest of the day:
Meals You Can Prep in Advance
One of the best ways to ensure that you eat lunch without compromising on your exploring is to prep meals in advance. The following examples work really well:
- Bowls: Store a mix of grains (rice, quinoa, etc.), beans, veggies, and whatever else you feel like adding in a storage container, so you merely have to dish and eat.
- Pasta Salad: This is yet another great dish-and-eat option. Simply mix cooked pasta and additional add-ons you’d like, such as cherry tomatoes, cheese, ham, etc. Make enough to store in the fridge for at least a couple of lunches at a time.
Iceland-Friendly Ingredients to Keep on Hand
Keep a few local ingredients that can be easily thrown together to make a quick lunch. This includes:
- Rye Bread (even more special if you buy some of our bread baked in volcanic heat!).
- Deli meats like ham, turkey, smoked lamb, etc.
- Canned fish.
- Veggies (a frozen bag of mixed veggies also works extremely well).
Hearty Campervan Dinners for Cold Nights
What could be better than ending your exciting day of exploring than with a hearty meal? The following promises to be delicious but without the hassle:
Foil Pack Meals for Campfires and Stoves
Whether in a pan or foil over the campfire, the following mixes will have you drooling:
- Salmon, lemon slices, and asparagus drizzled with olive oil.
- Chopped root veg such as carrots and potatoes, seasoned with herbs. Add chopped sausages for some protein.
- Mixed veggies with butter and topped with cheese.
Comfort Food That Works Well in a Van
There are a few classics that can also work well in a camper setting. These include:
- Pasta dishes.
- Stews.
- Stir-frys.
These dishes also work extremely well when you make a large batch that can be stored as ready-made meals throughout the trip.
Sweet Treats and Simple Desserts on the Road
A campervan is definitely not the place to try to recreate your famous Crème Brûlée. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a little something-something after meals.
No Baking or Cooking Desserts
Try the following to satisfy that sweet tooth:
- Skyr with berries, drizzled in honey.
- Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on our volcanic rye bread.
- Some local sweets.
Campfire and Skillet Options
There are a few easy-to-cook recipes that will definitely hit the spot. Try some of the following:
- Wrap a banana with chocolate sauce and marshmallows in foil and heat over the campfire. Simply delicious!
- Pan-grill some chopped apples with cinnamon and serve drizzled in syrup.
- Make an Icelandic S’more version using local ingredients.
Vegetarian and Vegan Campervan Meal Ideas
If you’re a vegetarian or vegan, you’re in luck; you’ll find a wide variety of products on Icelandic shelves.
Plant-Based Ingredients Readily Available in Iceland
The following are a few ingredients that are commonly found here on the island:
- Delicious fresh produce from local farmers (anything from vegetables to fruits).
- Canned options such as lentils and beans.
- Tofu.
- Plant-based dairy products.
- Plant-based protein products (mince, bacon, sausages, etc.).
Simple Recipes with Big Flavor
A few lick-you-lips vegetarian and vegan campervan meal options are:
- Lentil stew with vegetables, seasoned with herbs and spices.
- Chickpea salad wraps with whichever add-on ingredients you enjoy. Season to taste.
- Foil-Roasted potatoes and vegetables drizzled in olive oil and seasoned using herbs and spices.
Pro Tips for Cooking in Your Icelandic Campervan
If this will be the first time cooking in a camper, the following tips and advice will prove very helpful:
Safety Tips for Cooking Inside or Near Your Camper
- Ensure the camper is well-ventilated. Moisture is not something you want to capture inside your campervan. Open windows, open the doors, open any roof vents, whatever can help to get rid of moisture the quickest.
- Don’t cook with the engine on or the camper moving. Only cook when you’re safely parked somewhere.
- Always ensure you cook on a stable surface. This may seem like a no-brainer inside your camper's little kitchenette, but wait till you try cooking outside and our legendary winds pick up. In these instances, many don’t just look for a stable surface, but also often create their own makeshift windscreens.
- Always ensure that you keep the temperature of your oil in check while cooking. Dealing with a grease fire in a house is a completely different ballgame than dealing with it inside the confines of a campervan.
- As with the rest of the kitchen wear, ensure that all your cooking gear is safely secured again before driving. You don’t want to dodge kitchen UFOs.
- Icelanders have a lot of respect for the environment, so please only use biodegradable soap when washing the dishes. Not only is it the safest option for the environment, but you also avoid ingesting all sorts of dubious chemicals and ingredients found in standard commercial washing soap these days, negatively impacting our health.
Cleanup and Waste Disposal in Campsites
When living in a tiny home like a camper, cleaning up becomes even more important, and waste disposal looks a little different than it does in a home. Here’s what you need to remember:
- Wash dishes immediately. You don’t want to leave unwashed dishes around the camper. It can become extremely unhygienic.
- If you don’t have a kitchen sink in your camper, you will find dishwashing basins at most campsites.
- To avoid clogging up basins with leftover grease and fat, please give plates a wipe with a biodegradable kitchen towel before washing.
- Dispose of food waste properly (this even means in the right bins!). As we already mentioned, Icelanders take sustainability seriously, and most places will have special bins or even compost heaps for food waste.
- If you have a washing-up basin inside your camper, the run-off will be collected as grey water. Please don’t just empty the grey water anywhere. You will find designated waste disposal areas at campsites to do that.
- Always ensure that all food used for cooking is properly packed away after use, and any leftovers are stored away. You may not find giant grizzlies at our campsites or any mosquitoes, but we do have other types of insects and critters, and what can end up being a very annoying bird problem.
Final Thoughts: Enjoy Every Meal on the Road
As you can see, enjoying healthy and nutritious meals on your campervan road trip doesn’t need to be a laborious or expensive undertaking. With the right grocery shopping list, a bit of prep, and some of our trusted recipes, you’ll be eating like kings and queens, irrespective of where you may find yourself on the island or what the weather looks like.
So, just follow the advice in this guide and you’ll be feasting on some of the best and most budget-friendly campervan meals you’ve ever tasted while on a road trip. What are you waiting for? Get your campervan rental, stock up, and hit the road with all sorts of camper culinary delights up your sleeve!
