When we first started tent camping, we use a small portable charcoal grill. The thing was such a pain in the neck, cleaning hot charcoals, black soot, and grease. We navigated to a Coleman Camp Stove and it was a bit better, using real pots and pans on it.
Eventually, we had our first, then our second travel trailer, and by now we had 2 Coleman stoves and used them both for quite a long time (years).
I used a 20 pound propane tank, got the Coleman Propane tree and even had the gas lantern that mounted to the top of it (great for fishing at night by the way).
Many times we used both stoves at the same time.
One stove had 3 burners, the other had a grill and one burner.
The Coleman grill came with a flat griddle, and actually, we used the flat griddle the most. The regular stove was great for boiling water, and keeping things warm. But our primary cooking was on the griddle. (pancakes, eggs, steaks, pork chops, you name it. The flat surface was great!
We did not like using the stove as a grill. The reason why? because of clean up. It was awful. We went through cans and cans of oven cleaner, and the black grease had to go somewhere. We used paper towel and wiped off the oven cleaner grease mess, and then had to throw all that away.
Eventually, we started using aluminum foil on the bottom, even with the flat griddle, to make clean up much easer. But that still did note stop grease splatters on the cover, sides, hoses, everything. It still required messy clean up. But the flat griddle was wonderful!
We've had gas grills at home, and they were always messy. The though of having to pack up a black, sooty, greasy, grill into my travel trailer for transport is just something I did not want to do. Our Coleman stoves we cleaned as clean as the dishes we ate from, after every use. They were washed right along with the dishes. I also had separate bags I stored them in, so they would not get anything greasy in the event I missed a spot. Plus, the smell of charcoal, or fire, or burned T bone stake permeating through the camper was something we didn't want either. So, clean-up was very important (it still is). Thus, the reason for electric... easier, clean up easier, temperature consistent, and in the event we really want something over a fire, there is always hotdogs on a stick.
Now, one more word about us. At home we have a fire place and the fire place is used 24x7 in the winter for supplimental heat. We have a fire pit at home and a wood smoker grill. We do a lot of food preparation at home over fire. And at least at home, the grill can just be pushed in the corner, and the fire pit ashes can be clean up once a month and tossed into the field behind the house. Cooking over fire IS messy! We get enough mess at home. When camping, when water and resources are a bit more limited, clean up is still important, but we make the mess to begin with now, just a bit smarter, to make clean-up easier.
Sometimes we use both stoves and electric Presto Griddles when we camped with friends.
When we got our Outback TT, it came with the outside camp kitchen (2 burner propane stove) and sink on the outside. Well, that changed everything. By now, we'd kind of switched over to using ELECTRIC flat griddles, which made clean up much easier! So with the Outbacking having the outside camp stove, we saw no reason to continue dragging around an extra 20 pound propane tank, 2 Coleman stoves, all kinds of propane hoses, connections, and lantern. We now use those Presto flat griddles and an electric skillet along with the outside camp stove that came equipped with the camper. For us, we are now happy with this arrangement. We do almost all our food preparation outside, almost never use the stove inside. So all the mess is so much easier to clean up now.
Before the room got remodeled:
After the room got remodeled with our Coleman inflatable portable hot tub:
