Omnia Oven – Could This Be The Best Campervan Cooker?

3 September, 2019 by Sebastian Santabarbara

We get tonnes and tonnes of a message from people who are thinking of living the van life every week, and the same questions always pop up. The biggest thing on our reader’s minds is whether they will be able to eat properly inside their rolling tiny homes.

Now I don’t mean whether they will be able to find their knife and fork and not have to eat with their hands, I’m talking about people worrying as to whether they will be able to eat all of their favourite foods once they are away from the comfort of home and the daily routine that they have come to know and live by.

I’m here to tell you that you can have everything that you want and more by making one change to your life – buy yourself an Omnia Oven.

There are so many vanlife recipes out there that you can try when parking up at your favourite van life travel spots, and not only do you get to eat your favourite foods, but cooking in your tiny house also helps to keep your van life costs in check and your budget in the black. One of the best ways to combat pot noodles and keeping hunger locked up until the morning is by equipping yourself with some top cooking accessories, or more importantly, one cooking accessory that can bake cakes, cook oven chips, make stews, and a whole lot more.

Welcome, hungry readers, to a brand new Van Life menu.

Pack An Omnia Oven Before You Travel And Never Go Hungry Again!

So, before we go any further, I guess we need to explain to you all what an Omnia Oven actually is. The device itself is basically an oven that you can use on the top of your stove, but it’s also so much more than that. Not everyone has the space to put an oven inside their camper build, and not everyone wants to either. For me, it was a little bit of both, and using up some of the available space for a big oven seemed counter productive when we were trying to make the most of our tiny house. Such choices come with consequences like not being able to make cakes for starters; cake is my kryptonite.

The Omnia Oven is a means of you still having all of your favourite tasty treats without compromising on space. All you need is a gas hob or similar stove top and you’re good to go. You can use it both inside and outside your camper, and it’s small enough to carry from place to place too. Make a cake next to Donner Lake, bake croissants on a barge in the French Riviera, and cook a casserole while you play a bit of footie in Montreal. The possibilities are endless.

How Does The Omnia Oven Work?

This small, easy clean device comes in three parts and slots together to make a cooking Megazord of epic proportions. Once assembled and placed on top of your hob, the stove generates heat from the top and the bottom, thus creating a sealed oven that will cook your food throughout and not just from the bottom up.

An aluminium food container sits directly on top of a stainless steel support bracket on top of your heat source, whether it be flame or hot plate. This is where my inner science geek comes out, plus it always pays to know how your food’s being cooked. Our friendly heat particles pass along the base of the container and then cross over the top of the oven itself thanks to the specially designed ventilated lid. Pretty clever, huh?

Tell Us More About This Van Life Cooker!

The best van life essentials need to be small and compact to work with our minimalistic alternative living lifestyles. The Omnia Oven has a total diameter of 250mm, a total height of 140mm, and it weighs just over 1lb. That’s small enough to fit in most drawers and cupboards or underneath your sink. It’s small and light enough to stick in a backpack or carry under your arm too; how many ovens can you do that with?

Almost everything that you can heat, bake, or cook in a conventional oven can be heated, baked, or cooked in the Omnia Oven.

Depending on which package you choose, you will have access to the Omnia Oven rack which is great for finishing off pre-baked bread, and also some silicone moulds which have a temperature range of -30˚ C – + 260˚ C (that’s -22˚ F – + 500˚ F for all of our American readers).

What Can You Make In This Genius Bit Of Kit?

Vanlifers all across the globe have been testing out recipes and inventing their own for some time now, but it’s not just the van life community that the Omnia Oven appeals to. Boat owners, overlanders, hikers, and even people who live in a terraced house in the middle of suburbia all use the Omnia Oven to create tasty treats for themselves and their group or family. I’ve mentioned a lot of cake over the course of this article (mainly because I’d really like some cake right about now), but what else are people whipping up on their stovetops?

The Omnia Oven website gives four tips straight off the back; it makes great casseroles, baking mixes are a breeze to cook, oversize potato wedges are no match for the power of the Omnia, and that the oven can be used on top of a trangia, further cementing the idea that this little beauty can be used absolutely anywhere. A quick click onto the Recipe’s tab on the website brings up a whole host of recipes that have made my mouth water so much I’m about to drool on the keyboa…too late.

Fig and hazelnut bread, lasagne, shepherds pie, roasted vegetables, pulled pork burgers, BBQ chicken wings, steamed cod with polenta mash; these are just some of the few documented recipes that Omnia suggest you try out with your new micro-mighty-oven. Type Omnia Oven recipes into the internet, however, and you’ll be met with hundreds of websites and YouTube videos offering up new recipes that people swear by and suggest you try the next time your tummy rumbles.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

If you are gluten intolerant and currently travelling around the world, then the chances are that gluten free products are either hard to come by or expensive to buy, eating into your food budget when you should be spending that money on fun stuff instead. With the Omnia Oven, you can make your own favourite snacks such as breads, doughnuts, circular calzones and more for a fraction of the price. Just stock up with gluten-free flour before you head off on your travels and you’re good to go!

If you don’t want to be constantly searching the internet for ideas as to what to cook, then there is a 59-page recipe book that you can purchase to stick up there next to Jamie Oliver and Gino D’Acampo on the shelf. The recipes are all small enough to screenshot too, so you could also keep a folder on your phone for inspiration on the go!

What Else?

The Omnia Oven is available throughout most of Europe and in the United States; we’re finally writing about an item that all of our readers can enjoy! It retails for £40 on Amazon which is absolutely nothing for the amount of delicious enjoyment that you’re going to get out of it. I love the fact that you can cook practically anything inside this thing and that it’s super lightweight and portable too. Obviously, if you’re heading out into the wild you’ll need to carry a heat source with you as well, but rocket burners and portable hobs are so lightweight these days that you can attach them to your travel backpacks and not even know the difference.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get my hands on one pretty soon and find a nice place for it inside my van. I normally make my Calzone’s in an XL Ridgemonkey, but I’m keen to see what they look like when they’re round! Baking my own bread and cake will be a massive money saver too, though it will have to lead to even more exercise than I already do now which scares me a little. Still, homemade brownies will make everything better. Click here to purchase one from Amazon!

Parting Words

Do you have a favourite Omnia Oven recipe that you want to share with the world? How have you found using your portable cooker on the road? Join the conversation over on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and let us know!