By Cheri Sicard
Kristy Michael from the Long Long Honeymoon [255K subscribers, 54M views] is here to share her top five RV propane oven tips. This appliance, perhaps more than any other, is much maligned among RVers. Some people never bother to use their RV’s oven at all. But you are missing out on some great functionality by doing so. Not to mention, cooking in the oven can help warm up your RV in colder weather (not that you should ever use your oven as a heat source alone).
It doesn’t have to be that way and you can get good results from your RV propane oven. Kristy’s tips provide a great place to start.
The propane oven tips start with how to properly light your RV oven. This step alone keeps a lot of folks away. But it isn’t difficult at all. Kristy shows you how and she shares some nifty little RV oven tips while doing it.
Home ovens are notoriously inaccurate as to temperatures, and RV ovens can be worse. That’s why an inexpensive oven thermometer like this one can be the RV cook’s best friend.
More propane oven tips from Kristy
- Try to use cookware that evenly distributes heat. Cast iron is a great option. Personally, I use my large cast iron skillet as much to bake in the oven as I do on the stovetop for this very reason.
- Use a pizza stone. I concur with this one and I always have a pizza stone in my RV oven to help evenly distribute the heat. (You can also use it to bake pizzas and breads.) Kristy’s is round, but I prefer this small square one that fits in my RV oven.Â
- Check dishes in the RV more frequently than you would at home. Heat is often more unevenly distributed so check your food, make sure the bottom is not burning, and rotate things around every 10 to 15 minutes.
- On that same line of thought, turn and flip food more often than you would at home to prevent hot spots and burning.
- Don’t forget you can adjust and move your RV oven racks as you need.
- Likewise, there are different areas of the RV oven you can use to bake on, some you may not have thought about, such as directly over or under the flames. Yes, your RV oven has a broiler!
Do you have other RV propane oven tips? Please share them in the comments below.
##RVDT2207
In our previous rig, a fifth wheel , had an oven that was a decent size. We actually used it to store extra bread. The oven, a Furrion, in our new rig does not have racks to adjust and is not tall enough for an eight inch cake pan. The worst oven ever. If I could opt for additional cabinet space I e.
The other tip I would add is that I cook as much as possible in cast iron in my RV oven as this also holds heat and distributes heat well. So I will even use my cast iron skillet as a baking sheet in many instances.
We’ve owned two trailers over the past 26 years and have always used the oven. We use it more in the colder months to help heat the coach than in hot weather when we try to keep all sources of heat OFF. Wifey uses the oven as much in our trailer as she does at home. No issues whatsoever. The only difference with our oven and the one in the video is that you have to depress our oven knob while lighting. After watching the video she tried to light it without pressing the knob and it wouldn’t light.
Anybody retrofit their RV oven with a spark ignitor similar to what is used for many gas BBQ grills? No RVer I know leaves the pilot lighted on their oven.
Our oven is behind an island sink. When the oven door is open there is no room directly in front of the oven, so it has to be lighted from the side. It is difficult to see the pilot, let alone light it even with a long butane lighter.
An alternative to a pizza stone for distributing heat is a sheet of copper – pure copper seriously wants to be the same temperature everywhere and will move the heat from a hot spot all the way out to the corners. Just make sure the sheet does not block the holes at the sides of the steel shelf above the burner, or has the same spacing if you prefer to put it on the oven rack. And of course you can remove the sheet (when cool) to clean outside the oven.
Our sheet is about 1/8 inch thick. I measured the oven and approached an artist that specializes in copper. He buys his copper in bulk and was happy to obtain material and cut it to my specified size. Copper is expensive and the sheet will cost more than a pizza stone, but copper will outperform a pizza stone in your smaller RV oven. Also, that copper sheet will retain nearly all its value if you sell it to an honest scrap metal dealer.
I used to use a pizza stone, which did work. But now I use an airbake cookie sheet. The oven heats up faster, since the stone doesn’t need to get hot first, and the double layer of aluminum helps diffuse the heat perfectly.
We use a square pizza stone in our oven. As stated in the article it does a good job of distributing the heat. My wife has an aluminum pan we have used for years to cook biscuits but we had a problem with the bottom of the biscuits burning before the tops got done. We solved that by using a cooling rack for cookies between the pizza stone and the aluminum pan. Our biscuits come out perfect.
I almost never use our oven unless it is for storage of pots and pans! It is too finicky to stay lit. I have gone through every troubleshooting option from the manufacturer and YouTube! Our microwave is a convection unit, so it is now the go to for all of our oven cooking.