solo cooking help

If — like me — your "cooking" is just boiling up to 2 cups of water to rehydrate your meals, then I would recommend the Firelite 550 for its compactness and light weight. I fit my stove, windscreen, spork, towel, 2 BIC's, and up to 4 oz. of fuel inside the pot and with the lid on snug.

But since you mentioned you want to cook a meal in the pot, I think that would be hard to do with the 550 or the Peak 600 or 700. The 900 – maybe. Moi, I think I would go for the AGG 3-cup pot for cooking purpose. But yeah, having to carry a pot gripper can be annoying.

My favorites for solo cooking:

[simple]
Trappers Mug .5 L (1.3 oz) with
Caldera Cone OR Ti Wing solid fuel

[high fun factor]
SUL-1100
Bushbuddy Ultra wood

[for purely nostalgic reasons]
I recently used my MSR Dragonfly

Get the AGG pot and make a bale out of stainless wire from the hardware store. Easy to do-drill 2 holes in pot, bend wire, cut wire. A bale is a handle like on a bucket. Works great for cooking ,especially over fire . Also works great with a cozy.

Jeff, you're pretty much right on the money with the AGG 3 cup pot. They are cheap, and have a non-stick finish (admittedly i haven't cooked a real meal in mine). The other thing is, because they are fat and short, they have better efficiency in boiling water. They also are already black in color, which helps the efficiency. Because of their shape, the SP series of titanium cups are only really meant to boil water. With the AGG, you can make pancakes, eggs, soups etc, because of the wide surface area to cook on. The aluminum is plenty durable. Titanium is terrrrrrible for cooking. Goodluck not burning anything. I def think you're going to be good with what you have in mind. And dont be a fool like me and buy the stupid heavy neoprene zippered cozy.

O yeah, who needs a pot grabber when you have an extra pair of socks to cover your hands? Wool is naturally flame resistant

If you don't want to go to the trouble of modding the AGG 3-cup pot, there is this:

http://www.opencountrycampware.com/category_fbd677dca775/product_9ac9c84058f4/session_1058e882ef77/

It is the AGG pot, only with a wire-bail handle. Too bad you can only get it in the kit.

"Wool is naturally flame resistant"

Did you mean flame resistant or heat resistant?

Wool burns pretty good, and it smells.

–B.G.–

hmm, maybe i should have said flame retardent. If you hold it next to an open flame, yeah its gonna burn. But it burns slow, so sparks, embers, etc won't do damage. But either way, they make good pot grabbers

I cook oatmeal and instant mashed potatoes and thai noodles and ramen and make coffee in my pot which is a heineken keg can. My complete setup is:

BPL esbit wing stove .3 oz
Heineken Keg Can and lid 1.2 oz
Durable paper towel to wrap dirty stove .3 oz
Aluminum windscreen .4 oz
Light My Fire Spork .3 oz

Total 2.5 oz

I use my bandana or glove liner as a potholder and have never had any problems with it. I've used the same setup with a tea light stove, works great.

Does anyone know what the lining of the AGG 3 pot is? Is it as safe as what's used on the Evernew Ti pots?

The AGG 3 cup and 2 quart non-stick pots seem to be made by the Metal Ware Corporation in the USA and sold as the 5 piece Sierra set under the Open Country brand. This includes both pots, lids and a pot holder. This set was removed from Open Country's website within the past 3 weeks but may be found on Amazon for as little as 14USD.

Open Country lists the material as Xylan. REI has a two quart bare aluminum pot with bail handle made by Open Country for comparison. The metal is thin and light, but appears adequately durable and the pieces are inexpensive and well finished.

I get by just right w/ the 600 for solo cooking (also just the right size to nest my stove (Esbit/wood), windscreen, lighter, spork, fuel)- I added a "custom" lid to it as well

I use a Trapper's Mug and Ti Wing stove (or a small fire).

We love our AGG pots. The hard anodised finish is very non-stick and scratch resistant. But it's also slippery on the outside, and we found that to use it on an standard stove (ie not Caldera Cone) we needed to 'rough up' the exterior with sandpaper to keep it from sliding off! Best solution is to use the cone ;) I can't recommend the Ti-Tri enough…

If you're looking at the SP 900, the Evernew 0.9L short is about the same price, weighs about 2 ounces less, and has greater heat efficiency, easier to eat out of. I've futzed w/a couple different wire bails on the EV 0.9L, but ended up just going back to the standard handles. They're easy, and pretty light.

Like Lynn, I'd suggest a Ti-Tri. Great stoves, super efficient, stable. I've found that I'm actually able to cook oatmeal in that setup w/o burning anything.