We headed out on a 13 day RV trip through South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. I really wanted to be proactive on this trip and prepare as much food as we could ahead of time. I knew if I made it easy we would be more apt to eat in instead of eating out. Eating out for a family of 9 can be very expensive and I had planned to eat out only a handful of times.
When we are in the RV, I use 2 instant pots. I have an 8 quart instant pot which I cook our main meals in and my 6 quart instant pot which is perfect for side dishes like baked beans or a veggie. On this trip, we were roaming quite a bit and so we didn’t have time to cook in the crockpot or over a campfire. The instant pot has been a game-changer because I can put dinner in and it cooks while we get camp set up.
In the RV we have a good size freezer and refrigerator so I did have some room to work with. I knew if I didn’t plan carefully I would run out of room quickly so I chose meals that wouldn’t take up too much space.
These are the meals I chose:
Tacos are an easy “heat and eat” meal. Plus you can turn them into nachos or a taco salad. I froze just the meat and beans so it did not take up too much space.
We cooked the Pork Pot Roast in the instant pot before we left. I couldn’t freeze this at all since it had potatoes in it. You have to treat those potatoes a certain way in order to freeze them and I haven’t figured that out yet so I planned to eat this right away. We ate it one night with Cole Slaw and the next night over bread for a hot sandwich.
CrewTip: The Concept Behind My Crazy
Nacho trays were the perfect dish to serve the kiddos things like Pork Pot Roast and coleslaw without getting it all mixed together. It was so quick and easy especially since we were on-the-go!
I cooked the chicken ahead of time for the chicken pasta because I wanted to make sure it didn’t contaminate anything when we thawed it out. I packed my chicken along with the spaghetti sauce in a ziplock bag labeled Chicken Pasta. When I prepared it, I made the pasta in my instant pot first, then added the chicken and sauce and heated it through. I didn’t cut up my chicken before I bagged it and I would definitely recommend you do that. It was a bit hard to cut the chicken around all the pasta. I prepared the corn on the side in my 4 quart instant pot.
Cooking pasta in the instant pot is a breeze! For every pound of pasta, you add four cups of salted water. Put the lid on the instant pot and put it under manual pressure for 2-3 minutes. Once it’s done, manually release the pressure. Your water cup will fill up and leak so I generally put it close to my sink so it will drain. Make sure you follow your manufacturer instructions for manually releasing pressure and operating procedures. Yep, that’s my disclosure!
I made a huge pot of chili with some extra pork tenderloin because we had some leftover. We love to turn our chili into Frito Pie by layering corn chips, chili and adding our choice of sour cream and salsa. I also planned to have a meal of Chili Mac. I made the macaroni in my instant pot, added the chili, and topped with some cheese. We all like to add our choice of sour cream, salsa, relish, or mustard. If you like spicy stuff, Prairie Farms has a Jalapeño Dip that is awesome on this. Well, I eat it on a lot of things.
Sam grilled cheeseburgers and packaged them into 2 ziplock bags. I seasoned a big can of baked beans and divided it into 2 bags. This was so easy and we had the grill taste but didn’t have to slave over it while camping. It hit the spot and was another “heat and eat” meal.
Sam also grilled Cheesy Pepperoni Chicken and packaged them into 2 bags. He grilled the chicken, removed them from the heat and topped them with pizza sauce, Pepperoni, and mozzarella cheese. They were the highlight of the trip. I served the first meal with some leftover pasta and a salad. The second meal, we served on hamburger buns as a sandwich.
The last meal was Mississippi Chicken over rice and green beans.
We had this meal at Yellowstone when we had just pulled in from a long day of sightseeing and the kiddos really wanted to go swimming. While the kiddos got ready I popped the chicken in my 8 quart instant pot and the green beans in the 4 quart instant pot. When we got back I added the instant rice and we had dinner!
Watch our YouTube video to see how this came together!
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