Cooking System for 4

You probably need to provide a little more information to get the answers you want. Are you cooking in the pot or just using it to boil water? What kinds of meals are you eating?

I have a Compact Caldera Cone system with the 1.0L Evernew Pasta pot that I’ve used for 4, but we only boil water. It takes a while to bring 32 ounces (which we needed for some of our PackIt Gourmet meals) to a boil, but it worked.

The other thing I’ve found to be critical when preparing 2-person meals for 4 with just one stove is to take a pair of coozies to keep the first meal hot while you boil water and prepare the second portion. It then allows you all to eat together.

If you don’t already have coozies, Ultralight Designs has some that are inexpensive, light, and work really well. The Solo model is big enough for any 2-person meal I’ve found.

With all of that said, one of the guys on my last trip (I normally carry the only stove) had just purchased a JetBoil and was dying to use it so he brought it. After the first night my alcohol setup stayed in my pack – It just couldn’t compete. He was able to boil two liters of water before I could get one to boil!

Kevin, your situation is similar to what I expect to need. I just need to boil water for freezer bag or dehydrated meals. Probably 1.5 to 2 liters twice a day.

Despite the weight, it seems like a JetBoil might be worth considering for speed and convenience.

Anyone else have experience with groups of 4?

If your family of 4 is Dad, Mom and 2 younger kids I would cook together. But once the kids are big? I would split off into 2 stove setups – due to the kids eating as much as an adult.

We like to cook elaborate meals. So when five of us are together on a trip (our youngest is in college) we bring a Coleman Powermax Xtreme stove and an MSR 4 liter pot, often with a 3 liter pot as well. We also bring a large wooden spoon.

With this setup we can cook multi-part meals, and heat plenty of hot water for cleanup. The stove is about 11 oz, the pots with lid a little under 30 oz, total about 40 oz. But if you divide by 5 it about 8 oz/person, not UL, but not ridiculous.

For four people smaller and lighter pots should work fine.

Elliot,

I have a MSR Flex 3 system that is well worth the weight for big groups – 2 pots – gotta say for gourmet cooking it is nice!

“What stove / pot system do you use to cook for a family of 4 in the backcountry?”

I have 5 kids. Three are married now and I now have 5 grandkids.
Anytime our family went backpacking, I never had more than 3 kids at a time, so I cooked for 5 several times on the trail (2 adults, 3 kids).

I used a 1.3L titanium pot (4.8oz like http://www.ultralightdesigns.com/products/cooking/evernew13-pot.html ) and a .95L pot (4.2 oz http://cascadedesigns.com/MSR/Cookware/Fast-And-Light-Cookware/Titan-Kettle/product )

We do freeze dried cooking that just requires boiled water and we had to boil twice to get everyone fed. However, cooking and eating time rarely went over 30 minutes. As a side note it took 45 minutes to feed 12 people on 2 alcy stoves.

We used and still use the only stove that had no problems on the 2175 mile Appalachian trail—the alcohol stove.

Stove, pot stand, wind guard for one pot is 1.5oz. However, I had 2 going at once. The fuel container weighs 0.5oz

Thus total kitchen weight is 4.8 + 4.2 + 1.5 + 1.5 + 0.5 = 12.5oz

We used 3 oz. fuel (weight of HEET) / day. For 3 days we take about 7 oz fuel (that includes extra). This is for 2 breakfast and 2 suppers.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: total kitchen setup + fuel for 3 days = 19.5oz. This is for 5 people for 3 days at the beginning. It’s about 13.5 oz at the end. That averages to 16.5oz/day for 5 people or 3.3oz/day for 1 person. It’s hard to beat that kitchen weight and at the same time not play the partially-used-canisters game.

-Barry