Kmart Grease Pot tips and mods?

Its already black so the soot from your wood stove wont show up.

2 paks of ramen fit so nice in the pot and cook so easily, even a cave man can cook with one……..

<center>

</center>

These things are famous on other forums.

Hard to find at some K-mart these days.

Badass for solar oven use also.

Can you explain further on the solar oven/greasepot concept?

I replaced the heavy knob in my grease pot with one of the Ω-shaped clips from the side of a binder clip. They are easy to remove by pinching together then sliding out of the clip. I then used needlenose pliers to squeeze the clip ends very tight, to the point where the ends went past each other, then twisted it into the hole. Now I can simply slide a stick through the hole to lift the lid. I do that because I pack a bunch of items in the space between the lid and the strainer (herbs, matches, scrubby, utensils) and then use the strainer as a "kitchen caddy." But I do use the strainer as a strainer sometimes also. :)

hmm…mine did not come with the strainer.

You can make a (efficient, even if it doesn't sound like it) solar oven from cardboard and oven bags.. They make these in africa to give to people that still cook over wood fires, of which they have alot of deaths related to all sort of smoke inhalation issues. Some of the cardboard ovens have been in use for 10 years.

They have all sorts of elaborate designs, but anybody that knows about these things will tell you that card board and ovenbags will do the trick. Easy to make one that folds.

All you need is a pot painted black, which the grease pot already is, to help absorb heat inside.

Search for "solar box cooker", I'm planning on showing some I've made for camping here soon.

Useless if you're doing 20 miles a day, but if you're camping, or have some down days, these things kick ass. You can bake anything in them, and even pasteurize water (most people don't realize that you don't need to reach boiling temps for water to be safe).

Oh yeah, and that's just box cookers, you can make parabolic, or concentrator cookers that cook real fast and reach higher temps for more "pot" oriented cooking..

I think the reason the backpacking community hasn't been more into this type of stuff has to do with culture of "bombproof" style gear, that works under as many variables as possible.

There do seem to be some applications here to me though. Especially if you consider it in the context that many people in developing countries do put their lives in the hands of these devices on a daily basis.

Sorry, rambling.

> That won't work. It has holes in it silly.

The holes look pretty small, though, so I reckon it would still stop a lot of heat loss.

If not, since it's recessed, you could stick in a circle of Thermawrap and make an insulated lid (seal the edges, or it'll fill with condensed steam…). And take it out if you wanted to strain water from your pasta…

[edit]
Ah, you're almost there already, with your Reflectix cosy. My suggestion just means that the Reflectix/Thermawrap lid is in the sieve lid.

> The grease pot kit could use a food grade plastic bowl that fits snugly inside or around the pot and can handle boiling water.

My house is littered with plastic pots bought from pound stores that almost, but not quite, fit one of a number of the cook pots also littering my house. Sod and his Law are apparently hard at work deep within the packaging and cookpot industries, ensuring cookpot/plastic pot incompatibility…

Finding these grease-pots has been a problem for me in my area, (Northern Utah). I've heard a lot of good things about them and wanted to try them out. I went to K-Mart, WalMart, cheapmarts and couldn't find one so I bought another 2 qt(liter) aluminum cook pot, (I buy a new one every so many years. $10 for the last one).

I think I would prefer my little two qt. cooker, anyway, as it has a wire hanger and the recessed lid is used as a frying pan, eggs, sausage, bacon, etc. I have larger and smaller versions of the same style pot, very similar to the grease pot, and find them just as useful. I have put a smaller, 1 qt. pot with lid and wire handle inside the 2 qt-er and baked biscuts and muffins in it but I don't bake a lot except on very short trips.

The cost of a ti-pot has always been a problem for me and as a metal, being a former sheet metal mechanic making items for jet aircraft, I know how unevenly it heats. That why it's used for heat-shields etc. as on the F-16's I worked on. As a cooking pot it seems to work just fine, but I still know what a dirty metal it can be. I much more prefer the low cost and even heating/cooling properties of aluminum.

The strainer, however, seems to be a very useful item. Seems to be a great idea. We can all get the same results, I think, from a number of different materials and techniques. Great ideas.

Johann,

We keep the Stanco Greasepot in stock always. It’s a great cheap utility cookpot. We don’t ship them with the strainer unless someone specifically asks for it.

George, you should then mention that the strainer exists so the customer can decide if they want it or not.

The $4 shipping is about the same as the cost of fuel to get to a K-mart/Walmart, especially if you don't find it at the first place.

John, duly noted. I'm doing maintenance on the website tonight so I'll make the change.

Eugene, even cheaper if you order something else with it ;-)

yeah, I got mine from George but I had no idea the strainers existed.

@Kevin Beeden (captain_paranoia):

Reflectix in top of lid. Better even be a better idea then aluminum foil. I like it.

I'd leave a tab or corner sticking up so it could easily be pulled it out so you could then easily use the screen-lid as a strainer.

Re:Sod's Law.

Not as farmiliar with sod, just murphy. Same difference I guess, but my limited research tells me this is of British origin, perhaps you're british?

That said, yes, I totally get what you mean. There needs to be a special law for "standardization of goods" or more the ability of manufactured goods to purposefully deviate from standardization. This is however opposing the forces of Chinese manufacturing which similar to Open Source seem to be restandardizing goods. The yin and yang of manufactured goods.

Also… I didn't know what you meant by "pound stores" untill I looked up sod law… that must be the british equivelent to the U.S. dollar store. I pictured gift shops in dog pounds at first. Dog bowls?? :)

Anyway, it sounds like you have checked every bowl, but if not please do.

Why second contaners rock:

One of the things I loved about my Heineken can pot was that it fit nicely in a Ziploc Twist-lock container which seemed to be the perfect width and height. (see Tinny @ Mini Bull Designs complete kits for reference) I'd boil some water, pour it into the container and then start throwing in all my favorite foods… ramen, peas, maybe some summer sausage… just make a big old stew or whatever I fancied. This worked superbly especially with a Reflectix cozy that fit very nicely under the rim of the Ziplock so it wouldn't slide or get any food in it. Such a nice setup.

On the other hand you might argue that a reflextix insulated kmart pot is much more capable and appropriately sized then a Heineken can pot for eating out of, washing, etc… therefore perhaps one doesn't need a second bowl. However (particularly for winter camping)… you're probably going to want to continue to boil water / melt snow while eating or letting your food finish cooking off the stove so a secondary bowl would be nice.

@Johann kuester (whirlpool): What is this alternative you speak of with the recessed frying pan id? Can you post some pics?

== absurd brainstorms ==

I've been sort of brainstorming some way to make an utralight fry pan that's versatile enough and light enough to work with different pot systems

== teflon coated foil? ==

If I had an imaginary dream product it would be a material like aluminum foil that had good teflon coating on one side.

Probably an impossible product though.

== metal sheet pan? ==

Alternatively what about a sheet of some sort of metal.

Stainless steel perhaps. Just heavy enough to support the weight in it. Mostly rectangular but with rounded corners so you could bend up the sides bit to give it some extra stiffness and to ensure stuff wouldn't fall off.

THink of it like a cookie pan, but without the permanently rolled sides. You could then roll this up and it'd pack well. Plus stainless steel is at least easily cleaned if not anti-stick.

This would work well if laid in hot coals… still it would offer uneven heat dispersal and I can think of no way of improvising a handle.

== the one egg wonder again ==

The best idea still seems to me to buy something like the one egg wonder that roughly fits with whatever pot kit you're using and swapping out the heavy handle with a riveted in handle mount. i.e. the slotted type or something that might work with wood (i.e. a stick from the woods), ti stakes, or something of that nature.

== getting even heat in thin pans? ==

Another idea I've been meaning to try for heat dispersion is to use a frying pan on top of the grease pot with a little boiling water in the grease pot.

The quesiton is will this have anywhere near the heat necissary to fry something?

To this end I was thinking of putting aluminum foil inside the Kmart pot's screen-lid… and maybe seeing if i could get it hot enough to fry some bacon. I doubt it though.

This might however work if had two shallow stacked pans with only a little water inbetween (and little / no air). the water would then disperse the heat thouroughly around the upper pot. You would have to avoid the scalding steam while frying but you could be vented to one corner of the pan.

To apply this crazy idea in more practical terms one could line the inside (or outside) of their thin walled pan with aluminum foil and fill the inbetween space with water being sure to leave a vent on one corner.

== why bad ideas are good for you ==

Again, these ideas may all be just be an absurd brainstorm but if we don't list out and even try out all the bad ideas then how might we end up with any good ones?

Put another way, even bad roads can lead to good roads. You have to be willing to take them sometimes even if you know they're bad. This is the whole idea of brainstorming… no idea is bad… there are just ideas that don't warrant further discussion. Less then good ideas need not called out to be dismissed or further mentioned unless some spark of another good idea be found in them.

@Javan Dempsey (jdempsey):

You said: "These things are famous on other forums."

May I ask what other forums?

I'm interested in mining those other discussions for ideas.

> Not as farmiliar with sod, just murphy. Same difference I guess, but my limited research tells me this is of British origin, perhaps you're british?

Yes; my 'Locale' gives a clue ;-)

A second, lightweight, insulating container makes a lot of sense for a dehydrated food cook system, meaning that you rehydrate food in the second container & cosy whilst your cook pot is on the stove again. That's why I'm constantly searching for lightweight pots to fit inside or outside my Ti pot.

The disposable pots used for ready meals and other foodstuffs are often much lighter than 'kitchenware', but the right size and shape is proving elusive. Ideally, it would have a near-vertical wall, and a small radius edge around the base (for easy cleaning). The lid could be screw or snap fit, but, again, shouldn't have any features that make cleaning difficult by trapping food residues.

I actually proposed a custom plastic pot as a slightly tongue-in-cheek entry to Alpkit's CoLab08 competition; some enterprising person might specify a suitable pot from an injection moulding firm to suit, say, an MSR Titan. Quite why MSR (etc) don't do this, I'm not sure.

Of course, nothing comes weight free, so you make a trade-off between weight of insulated second pot and extra fuel weight for a non-cosy cooking system, and somehow factor in the extra convenience that a second pot brings.

> Another idea I've been meaning to try for heat dispersion is to use a frying pan on top of the grease pot with a little boiling water in the grease pot. The quesiton is will this have anywhere near the heat necissary to fry something?

I don't think it will either be hot enough (temperature), or transfer heat fast enough (power). Essentially, you seem to be proposing a bain-marie, which is used as a very gentle cooking method. You wouldn't get nice crispy bacon that way…

I sometimes use a generic, small, shallow, non-stick aluminium baking tin as a fry pan (it's probably a biscuit/cookie tin: 192mm diameter, 22m deep, weighs 89g). It happens to fit my (now rarely used) Trangia 27 set.

Kevin Beeden (captain_paranoia) said:

"I sometimes use a generic, small, shallow, non-stick aluminium baking tin as a fry pan (it's probably a biscuit/cookie tin: 192mm diameter, 22m deep, weighs 89g). It happens to fit my (now rarely used) Trangia 27 set."

Perhaps this is a wise choice. Up until now I'd been looking at frying pans. It hadn't occured to me to look for non-stick baking tins or cooking pans. Indeed if I can find a rectangular one with shallow sides I may be able to fit it in my bag without any problem.

This would probably only be useable on coals though.. to big for even heat dispersion on a stove top.

Kevin also said regarding a bowl:

"Ideally, it would have a near-vertical wall, and a small radius edge around the base (for easy cleaning)."

Pretty much agree there. Would prefer 90 degree exactly though.

I hadn't mentioned I do have a collapseable sea-to-summit bowl. This does fit fairly nicely in the Kmart pot but it weighs 2.8oz which is more then the pot itself. It's well insulated and has a bottom you can cut on. It's of a decent size but I find it a hare to shallow for my needs. I much prefer something that's good and deep with a rigid side so I can easily grap abd hold it with one hand.

Well, I'm off to do two things.

1) examine all the cooking pans in my kitchen

2) examine every piece of tupperware/plasticwear in the kitchen

> Pretty much agree there. Would prefer 90 degree exactly though.

That's pretty hard to do and release from the mould.

> Well, I'm off to do two things.

Good man… ;-)

whiteblaze.net, the other "bpl" bplite.com, for example.. threads have been going about these greese pots for a couple of years.

Ti goat modifies these to fit on their cylindrical tent stoves if I recall correctly.

There's mention on the zen-stoves site even.

@ Javan Dempsey (jdempsey) said:

"whiteblaze.net, the other "bpl" bplite.com, for example.. threads have been going about these greese pots for a couple of years."

Thanks, I've not really checked out either of these, but I will asap. Will let you know if I find anything interesting.

"Ti goat modifies these to fit on their cylindrical tent stoves if I recall correctly."

Awesome… didn't know that. Off to check this out.

"There's mention on the zen-stoves site even."

Sweet… exactly the sort of background I'm talking about.

Research. Research. Research. All of it good no doubt.

@Kevin Beeden (captain_paranoia)

Re: 90 degree side pots being hard to release from molds.

I have an MSR blacklite kit. It has a bowl exactly as we're describing to a T. It has 90 degree sides, a nice rouded corner bottom, and nests beautifully inside the smaller pot in the kit.

Indeed carrying this one bowl and one pot would be my ideal kit were it not for one problem. They're to big and heavy. The pot weighs 5.4oz. The bowl 3 oz. This weighs almost as much as my entire UL woodgas stove and cook kit, lol.

Re: my two things

I had no luck finding a bowl to fit in the Kmart pot yet, nor any luck finding a bake tin that might work as a frying pan.

I think I'm going to chill on fry pan idea… it was always a long shot. Of course I'll probably still keep an eye out for the next year for something that might work everytime I go in a store, but I'm not going to make it a priority.

Thus far my kmart pot kit is still missing a bowl to claim perfection.

Meanwhile my UL Heineken can pot kit is perfect in every way with a Ziplock Twist-n-lock container. Fits my UL woodgas stove, two ti stakes, spoon, bio-soap, optional alchy stove, alum lid and prime stand and weighs in at about 10-12 oz. Still finishing some diecuts in the wood stove to drop an oz or two.

Also I need an alternative to fiberglass wick insulation on the heineken pot which is both heavy and dirt collecting. I'm thinking reflectix band around the middle of the pot wrapped in a single layer of aluminum foil

I do love how I can grab the heineken can immersed in flame from the fire with the fiberglass without burning myself. It's just so darn hevy and dirty though.

Peace

-Mike

I put a wire bail on my heine with a hole punch and some picture hanging wire.