Travelling with your Big Green Egg

Packing your Big Gree Egg for travel

Despite what you may think, the Big Green Eggs are pretty resilient to travel. Big Green Egg used to have three of these ex-London taxis with the roof cut off behind the cab, and the back seat replaced by either two Eggs in one of their mahogany tables, or for one of them, the original XXL in the back. While I was working for Big Green Egg, I used to have one of the cabs at home, ready for my travels to dealers for demos. Each Egg was supported from the base on a piece of fireproof matting, and that was it as far as travel prep for them. I did thousands of miles in the cabs and broke just one fire ring and a fire bowl, both could have happened anyway with use.

We have a MiniMax that lives in our campervan. It just sits on the floor of the van in the back, wedged lightly between the front seats. Normaly it has a stainless steel grid, a cast iron grid, its ConvEGGtor, and a small cast iron skillet, all stacked inside the Egg in that order. The charcoal and ash are in there, too. I don’t do anything to protect it further. So far, in about 40K-50K miles, I’ve not broken a thing, not even lifting it in and out of the van.

I once, in a moment of distraction, took a corner too fast and rolled the Egg over, hitting my kitchen cupboard in the van. The only damage was a dent to my kitchen door, which is still there to this day as a reminder. Being a campervan, it’s not taking corners like a sportscar, so maybe if your car ‘handles like it’s on rails’, slow it down a little. Our van though has done many an alpine pass with hairpins galore, and the MiniMax always seems to do better than Mrs MeatSmokeFire!

Travelling with a larger Egg

We’ve taken our XL away with us a few times for Christmas and a catering gig. The key with the larger Eggs isn’t how they travel, or how you pack them, both are important though. What’s most important is how you move them about.

I’ve said this to many customers: if you’re moving your Egg, take it apart. Never, never try and lift it whole. It’s so much safer to spend 5 minutes undoing a few nuts and bolts, and moving your Egg in parts.

When we move our large or XL Eggs, I take off the dome, take out the innards, and lift all the pieces one by one, before popping them in a car or my camper. I actually put the innards back in for travel, and often put the dome back on top of the Egg. Again I’ve never broken anything, but no emergency stops have been involved.

If I was taking my own larger Eggs a long distance, then I would try and put a little padding inbetween the fire bowl, fire ring and the Egg’s case.

What to pack

We pack a number of things to take with us when we’re travelling with our MiniMax in the camper van. We’ll list them here:

• Charcoal – the MiniMax uses so little that even half a bag will last us a week on the road, if not way longer. It’s the only time I use Big Green Egg charcoal, as the smaller pieces are great in the MiniMax (see my article on charcoal).
• Tongs – I use a smaller set with the MiniMax, a 12″ set I got from Thermapen.
• Skillet – we take our Big Green Egg skillet, it’s fab for loads of cooks.
• Tefal Ingenio pans – our set, which is stainless and includes two frying pans and three saucepans, all with a removable handle, lives in our van. They are brilliant for paella, pasta, curries and stews.
• Oven gloves – we prefer the silicon ones. If you do happen to get them wet, they’re much safer to use than any material ones.
• Fire starters – we use the natural ones from Amazon.
• A lighter – we have a small lighter in our van that runs on compressed lighter fluid.
• The MiniMax folding stand – it’s so much nicer to use your MiniMax at a sensible height.
• The MiniMax clip on shelves – just having somewhere to pop food and utensils is great. They just clip on and take no space.
• Aluminium Foil – we always travel with a roll of Kirkland foil. It’s the best and I wouldn’t be without it. Wrap you food, or clean your grills with it scrunched up. 

Where can you use your Egg

If you’ve never travelled with an Egg, you might not have thought about where you can use it. However, there are places you’d love to use it and probably won’t be able to get it there. Big Green Egg does some great marketing with Eggs being used on the beach, but this isn’t always possible and for a couple of reasons:

• In the UK, many public places forbid the use of BBQs, including many beaches and parks.
• How far can you carry it – the MiniMax is 35kg. The lovely picture of the MiniMax at the top of this page was taken at Harlyn in Cornwall. We love it there. However, even carrying the MiniMax 40 yards to get this picture was a huge effort. Unless you have a trolley to fit it into, you won’t be able to take it far from your car or van. 

Using your Egg abroad can be difficult too. In many areas of Europe, and especially in France, campsites ban charcoal BBQs because of fire risk. This makes sense, especially in areas that are very dry and forested. We’re currently travelling, and on about 50% of this trip, we’ve not been allowed to use the Egg, and are even considering whether, due to its weight and bulk, we will bring it to Europe next time. We probably will, but it is a consideration.