Clean up?

[doc holiday]

Forigve me if this has been asked but i did look and i just couldnt find what i was looking for. When you cook at camp how do you go about cleaning all your pots, pans, ovens and dishes?

[SunTzuNephew]

While camping rough (ie, not in the toy hauler):

As soon as the meal is cooked, all the food is removed from the pots (scraped out), and a large pot of water is heated. The dirty dishes are washed with hot water and soap (usually campsuds) thoroughly, rinsed in hot water and air dried.

Kind of like at home (it's what the dishwasher does). There's no point in getting sick from poorly washed dishes and pots. I don't use dirt or sand because I don't want to scratch the finish (creating a place for dirt or bacteria to gather). If I have a wood fire I put the food scrapings into the fire, otherwise I'll either bury or carry out. The soapy water goes into a grease pit that gets buried.

[Black Dog]

Some people do a 3 step system. First is the hot soapy water that scrubs all the chunks and stuff off, then is a warm water dip with a tiny bit of bleach for sterilization, then a dip in clean hot water for the final rinse before air drying. Storage is important too, as soon as they are dry get them put away. A lot of parasites like ring worm are in the dirt, so if you leave some dishes or something out overnight and the wind blows you're just getting little nasties on your clean equipment. If you can do your cleaning out of the wind that would help too.

[rusty_tlc]

For dry camps I wipe as much out as possible then use a wet sponge with soap on it to clean, then rinse. This saves a good deal of water. If water is really short I'll even wipe the most of the soap residue out with a wet towel before I rinse.

If there is plenty of water just do them like you would hand wash dishes at home.

Back in the day we would use sand, wet or dry, to scrub pots and dishes before we washed them. Horse tails also work well for pot scrubbers. Probably not PC these days though.

[UNI]

We clean up, pretty much as mentioned. Here in the midwest water is hard with minerals. Because we use a french press for coffee (We drink a lot of coffee), we seem to use one pot (Stainless Steel) for boiling water. The pot will calcify with mineral deposit, we always carry a small bottle of distilled white vinegar. Just pour a small amount of vinegar in the pot, let it set for a few minutes and the mineral deposit wipes right out with very little effort.

[Desert Dan]

When "dry" desert camping I use paper plates, bowls and paper towells and teflon pots and pans that clean up easy with paper towels. We try to grill most dinners so that makes clean up easy. All paper waste gets burned in the campfire.

Hot water and camp suds in the frying pan to was the pan and utensils etc.
I also try to plan meals that are easy to prepare and clean up.