The Hanging Wonder – Cooking Reinvented

My preferred spot for cooking from the beginning of our trip has been on the winch. It is always there and we don’t have to hang up the aluminum shelf. If there is a strong side wind I can hang up this shelf on either side of the Land Cruiser so that we’ll be cooking out of the wind

Our first encounter with an overlander that used a kitchen in the back was up in the Himalayas of India. We were instantly smitten by the simplicity and sturdy solution these Swiss had made on the backdoor of their 6×6 Pinzgauer.

It folds nicely inside a sleeve and stays attached to the backdoor. However, the Pinzgauer door is a big, one-piece door, so has plenty of space to stick a kitchen to it. By contrast, our ambulance doors are narrow and have limited space behind them.

We met Rob at the Overland Reunion 2014 and look what he built on the backdoor of his 70 series. Still a bit too big for our narrow doors, but this is close to what we had in mind.

Recently, when camping at Kon Tiki, on a hill overlooking Mancora, the wind was blowing full force around the Land Cruiser and I could neither cook on the winch nor the sides. The only option was to turn around the car or to cook at the back somehow. Fortunately, I spotted an apparently forgotten workmate

 a few meters away and placed it directly under the left rear door. A perfect fit and a good work height for the Coleman stove.

It reminded me to a similar setup Luis and Lacey of Lost World Expedition used at the back of their 60 series and how convenient all that looked. [image below by Lost World Expedition]

But when after a few days Juerg, the owner of Kontiki, came looking for his workmate and I got stuck with wind blowing all over the place again, I started thinking in earnest on how to make a hinging platform of some sorts on the left rear ambulance door.

I didn’t start sketching as I would normally do, but instead when I needing to access something I lifted the Coleman stove and placed it with one edge on the Spare Tire Carrier Cushion

 while holding it with one hand on the opposite top end. Then the gears in my brain started working and everything fell into place. Low and behold my simple Hanging Kitchen solution.

Two simple hooks that had been lying around for the last eight years finally came in handy.

We have been using it now for more than a week and apart from not being able to use the Coleman Camp Oven

image: http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=landcruadvent-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B0009PURJA

 in this set-uo, it’s perfect. So for our baking experiments we still depend on cooking on the sides, front or inside.

Here is a view from the bottom where you can clearly see its hanging. I connected two hooks with a piece of cord that I runs through the rear doorhandle and voilà. I hope you find this simple solution easy to incorporate in your vehicle. Let me know in the comments below what your preferred solution is.

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