Cooking trout with esbit stove?

[Jeff M.]

Has anyone successfully cooked trout in a frying pan with an esbit stove? How difficult was it? I have two 4 day trips planned this summer where I plan to fish and eat it and I'm wondering if I can use my sidewinder stove setup to cook the trout or if I'd be better off using my canister stove. The canister setup is about 5-6 ounces heavier, but I don't mind using it if I'll be better off with it.

[Jameson Tisch]

I haven't done it but I think the esbit would burn too hot too fast if you're using the gram cracker stove in the sidewinder. You might wanna try and pick up one of Zelph's mini esbitmizers and a couple of 4g esbit tabs since you can simmer with it and control the flame as opposed to the gram cracker. Just a thought

[jimmer ultralight]

If you are going to use a frying pan ,you can use Esbit easily..A folding Ti Esbit stove with a windscreen works fine.

To control the burn of Esbit cubes, the most imoortant thing to do is control the amount if surface area of the cube exposed to flame. Just before you go on your trip, do the following-

1)Take however many 14g Esbit cubes you think you will need. 4 only weigh 2 oz..Thats the least I ever take.

2)Open each of the cube packages and take some heavy duty Alumnium foil and wrap each cube like a little Christmas package..It should be wrapped like a bullion cube.

3)Take a small snack or sandwich sized ziplock bag and carry the wrapped cubes in it, with a book of paper matches or wood matches.

4) When you need to burn a cube take a knife and peel off the foil from ONE side of cube. Top or side. Lay a lit match on top to start the burn . Since the foil is covering most of the cube,you will get a nice, long burn. The windscreen will concentrate heat around the pan bottom and you should be able to fry up a mess of trout.

I would not use too big of a pan, either. About 8" diamter or less due to the small flame pattern of the Esbit..

Just my .02

[rmeurant]

Interesting technique!

[jimmer ultralight]

And I missed the part about Jeff having a Sidewinder setup.
but with or without the gramcracker Esbit holder, it should work fine.
The prewrapped foil technique works well with either tablets like Bluet, Cooglans. and surpluss Hexamine and Trioxane tablets. You can even prebundle the smaller tabs in a package like say ,two 4 gram Esbits stacked for each burn. I am experimenting with 14g tablets cut in half and wrapped for a precise two cup per burn setup.
Bevsure and use the HEAVY DUTY aluminum kitchen foil – not the lightweight stuff.

[Jeff M.]

Thanks for the info. I'll have to give this a test run at home.

[rmeurant]

Jimmer,

Do you have any special way of cutting the larger Esbit tabs in half?

I use a sharp knife, but they tend to crumble – there ought to be a better way… Thanks in advance…

[Bill Giles]

As others have mentioned, Coghlan's Hexamine fuel tablets are 7 grams, half the weight of the Esbit tablets. 24 to a box, no cutting required.

[Author]

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