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Reading about safety and practicality of cooking in tents I realised that I havn't seen a proper camping kitchen tent in use and wondered what the difference was between cooking in a tent/ awning/ extension and cooking in a kitchen tent apart from the obvious height advantage of the kitchen tent? Thanks

We use a seperate utilty tent.  For me the advantages are

Keeps all the kitchen clutter out of the main tent.

Keeps cooking smells, grease and condensation out of the main tent.

It's completely seperate to the main tent so if there was a fire my beloved tent should survive!

I can set it up as a decent working kitchen and go in there and cook relatively undisturbed.   Bliss.

Ours is a Outdoor Revoltion XL Outhouse, lots of room, tall head height, good ventilation, perfect!

We do both, depending on how long we are going for and which tent we are taking.

Weekends, usually involve cooking in the tent. The tent is always well ventilated - doors and windows open, plenty of air getting in and out. We use suitcase burners, and as far as I am aware, they dont give off any dangerous fumes, so as long as you are careful, there is no reason they cant be used safely in the tent.

For anything longer than 3 nights, I do like my utility tent. It means I can have a spacious, well laid cooking area. The clutter and "stuff" that takes up so much space is all in there, giving us more space in the main tent.

I'm thinking about a Utility tent and from the link above I can see they're quite cheap so it's just finding the space to take one and then my only worries would be about being charged for an extra pitch by the sites.

What's the score with site charges?  Does everyone normally tell the site up front or do you take it and see how much space you have when you arrive?  If you just pitch it when you arrive do the owners then come knocking on the door for more money?

We cook inside our large tent but with the same safety precautions as at home and well away from the sides of the tent. If there is a fire, modern flame retardant tents give you plenty of time to get out (as evidenced by tests) and we never use the stove when our son has gone to bed. Our son has a "no go" area when we are cooking and abides by it and the gas is turned off when not being used with any gas in the pipe burnt off.  Our large tent has metal poles so there is no risk of the wind or a ball hitting the side in on the stove and we have both high and low ventilation.

With the smaller tents we cook outside under the tarp or canopy, again well away from the sides and supervised the whole time.

Pitching time for us is kept to a minimum (as we prefer to be out and about) and our cooking set up is streamlined too so don't need extra space for kitchen units etc, fridges etc. etc. A separate unit that probably cost only slightly less than the tent itself would just add unnecessary time and money. A utility tent might keep unruly kids and animals away from the stove, but it would have to be some distance from the main tent to prevent any fire bridging the gap.