Preparing meals can be challenging, especially when you’re preparing for several people. Just imagine doing it outside the comfort of your own home. Though nothing beats the satisfaction of a campfire grill and enjoying those meals with your friends or family, appreciating the outdoor scenery. You just need the best camping cooking gear such as a mobile camp kitchen to help you with cooking and prepping.
One thing a lot of campers overlook, however, is tableware. You may already have the best camping grill for preparing easy camping meals, but something you don’t want to do is dig through your kitchen drawers at the last minute just to look for suitable tableware because you forgot to purchase some durable, outdoor-friendly dishes and utensils before your trip.
In contrast to the meals you eat at home, good camping tableware should be super-durable, relatively lightweight, and easy to clean in the field. This is a broad category, but we’ve already sorted through it all to bring you the best dishes, utensils, and other rugged tableware for your next camping trip, from complete family sets to backpacking mess kits (and just about everything else).
Related Guides
Best overall: Stansport 24-Piece Enamel Tableware Set
If you’re looking for a simple, rugged, no-nonsense tableware set, this bundle from Stansport is the one. The kit offers everything you need for campsite meals with friends and family: plates, bowls, mugs, spoons, forks, and knives (four of each for 24 pieces in total). The silverware is made of tough stainless steel with plastic handles, while the dishes and mugs are made of steel coated with an attractive and rustic-looking enamel that’s as easy to clean as it is durable.
Also Great: Barbeqa Four-Person Camping Dinnerware Set
The Stansport 24-piece tableware set is our top pick, but it’s a little heavy to lug around. A lightweight alternative that’s also great is this four-person set from Barbeqa, which trades metal for sturdy, BPA-free plastic. It comes with four bowls, plates, and mugs, and for utensils, you get four all-in-one sporks (with a serrated edge on one of the fork tines), which further reduce heft by combining a fork, spoon, and knife into a single handy tool.
The bundle includes a handy mesh bag for keeping everything together as well.
Best Kitchen Set: GSI Outdoors Destination 24-Piece Kitchenware Set
Having dishes and utensils to eat with is one thing, but if you want to cook something more complicated than hot dogs while camping, then you also need some tools to actually prepare the meals. The GSI Destination 24-piece kitchen set is the perfect chef’s kit to pair with one of the above tableware sets: It packs a whisk, a serving spoon, a spatula, a paring knife, a spice shaker, condiment containers, a cutting board, a scrubber, and a small towel into a handy ballistic nylon carrying case, and it even includes a 12-piece set of thick plastic eating utensils.
Best One-Person Kit: GSI Outdoors Cascadian One-Person Table Set
If you don’t need something for several people, this one-person set — another winner from GSI — is perfect. The Cascadian camping tableware kit includes a plate, a bowl, a mug, and a three-piece utensil set, all made of durable and easy-to-clean BPA-free plastic. The bundle stows away in the included mesh bag when not in use. (This bag can also be utilized for hanging the utensils up to dry after you wash them if you don’t want to leave them lying out.)
Best All-in-One Utensil: Light My Fire Spork
Swedish company Light My Fire built its name (quite literally) on its ferro rod fire starters, but this brand also makes the best all-in-one eating utensil on the market. The Light My Fire Spork is a better design than standard sporks, giving you both a “normal” spoon and forkhead at either end of the handle, while a serrated edge on one of the fork tines serves as a knife — it’s like bread knife, though, so it won’t slice up your mouth.
Best Mug: Yeti Rambler Insulated Camping Mug
Aside from a hearty campfire dinner followed by some s’mores for dessert, there are few things more satisfying while camping than a nice relaxing cup of coffee in the morning as you watch the sunrise. The ceramic mugs you use at home are far from ideal for the campground, though, so it’s a good idea to invest in a quality
