Critique my cook setup

Before you make money decisions about cook gear, you might want to decide how much cooking you really intend to do. For example, some of us do no more than boil water in a simple pot. Others really need multiple pots and skillets.

First, figure out what kind of meal you expect. Then the cook gear will work itself out very easily.

–B.G.–

I am mostly rehydrating meals, but sometimes I grab the Knorr meals for short weekend trips on a budget. Those require a constant boil to cook…hence the need for simmering.

In terms of volume, I usually have one other person with me and it's a rare outing where the other person doesn't have their own cook set. So I only need to boil 3-4 cups each day: 2 cups for breakfast (if I feel like a hot breakfast) or 1 cup if I only want coffee, plus ~2 cups for dinner.

It sounds like your sitting good. If you want to do more real "cooking" a canister stove can certainly make that a bit easier, however it can be done on an alcohol stove with a simmer ring as well. I use a stove from zelph that can hold 3oz of alcohol, so for times when i want to steam bake something or simmer something for a nice long time I am able to. I routinely steam bake, make pancakes, and fry fish on my alcohol stove. Though if I am going on a trip where I will be doing alot of that then I bring my canister, its a coleman ultralight exponent or something like that, i forget the name.

I think your pot is fine, i personally don't like having a pot any smaller than yours. But thats a personal preference.

For merely boiling water to rehydrate meals or for the morning cup of joe, any stove and pot (with a lid) will do fine. But for actually simmering, the game changes slightly. A narrow burner stove like your Lite-Max will concentrate the heat in one small area of the bottom of the pot, and this will tend to burn your food if you don't stir it constantly. The issue is magnified with a titanium pot, because the heat doesn't spread like it will with an aluminum pot.

Stove concerns: Some canister stoves have wider burner heads, which spreads the flame heat out over a larger area (these stoves are 2-3 oz. heavier). Backpackers Pantry sells a steel heat diffuser which works well to spread out the heat, but at a weight cost. Some stoves don't do very well with simmering, and you just can't turn them down low enough.

Pots: If you want to simmer in a titanium pot, I would suggest using one with a non-stick lining. Then you would use a "Teflon-safe" spoon or spatula to do your constant stirring.

Having said all that, my usual pot for simmering 1-person meals is the Snow Peak titanium bowl with handles (not non-stick), and a matching lid from FourDogStoves. I use a Coleman F-1 Powerboost stove (Wide burner and great simmer capabilities, but no longer available), and I pay pretty close attention to stirring and not overheating things. I often remove the bowl from the stove to let things cool a bit.

I seldom do simmer meals when I'm in griz country due to the food odors, but I'd much, much rather eat the good stuff when I can. I've come up with 6-8 really tasty concoctions that I've seasoned to my tastes, and they are far tastier and healthier than Mountain House.

"A narrow burner stove like your Lite-Max will concentrate the heat in one small area of the bottom of the pot, and this will tend to burn your food if you don't stir it constantly."

There are different ways of dealing with this. The cheapest and easiest is to use a flame spreader that is appropriately sized for your pot. That means a steel soup can lid. You smooth the edges off and punch or drill some holes in it around the outside. Effectively, that blocks direct flame to the center of the pot, and it allows flame through to the outside of the pot. If the flame spreader is the wrong size, you will either block all of the flame or else make it terribly inefficient. That still uses a certain amount of fuel for the flame.

This won't sound very high-tech, but a cheap aluminum pot works pretty good for this purpose. The standard boy scout cook kit of five or so pieces is sold everywhere for about $13. All you need is the cook pot, and it is short and wide. My brother's scout cook pot is over fifty years old now, and it still works.

–B.G.–

I have MANY, many, many stoves (another story) and a few pots. One is 1.5 L., one is 1 L. and my fav is 3 cups.

ALL my pots are aluminum because I don't think Ti pots make sense in any way, weight-wise, non-stick-wise, heat diffusion-wise or price-wise.

I've found that the 3 cup pot is perfect for solo cooking while the 1.5 L. is great for melting snow.

OK, OK, OK! So the true moral of this story is that a POT, regardless of size, is better than a MUG or a CAN in terms of heat/fuel efficiency.

A true pot is (almost always) wider than it is tall. This makes for more efficient heating than tall, narrow mugs or (choke!) beer cans.

"BTW disclaimer": Of course all of these rather strongly held (could you tell?) opinions are the result of this curmudgeon's personal experience. Beer cans and ti mugs! Bah! Humbug!

Hilarious! Most entertaining response yet Danepacker. Got any suggestions for non Ti pots that are "true"?

Thanks for all the thoughts so far.

As for alcohol stoves:
My bottlestove would overheat very easily, which has driven me away from alcohol for now. I already started a thread to troubleshoot…not looking to do that here. I mention this because it's why I'm leaning toward canister stoves. I figure 1-2 overnight trips each year don't warrant a high fiddle factor cooking system.

However, if I can be talked into an alcohol stove system, I'll consider it. I admit I am throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Also, I want to avoid cheap aluminum pots. I used one a year ago and it made my meal taste like metal. I heard it was the non-anodized aluminum reacting with the salt in the food…or something in the food. Regardless, it was not appetizing. I'll check out some anodized pots.

Any other thoughts you guys could send my way to help me out? Suggestions of pots and stoves would be cool.

Tyler,

If you like alky stoves I highly reccomend any of the Caldera Cone aluminum stoves/pots/10-12 alky burners. Without question these cone stoves have proven to be the most efficient alky setups. With Caldera Cones pots sit inside the cone, suspended by their rims. This configuration heats the sides as well as the bottom of the pot.

In fact it ain't just alky they are efficient with. My CC Ti Sidewinder uses fully 1/3 less ESBIT than my previous best Vargo stove and MSR windscreen setup. And
believe me, I've fiddled with ESBIT stove experiments for years.

There are threads here on BPL on using simmering alky stoves with the cone setup. Controlling alky stove flame output may be your key to cooking but, since I only use ESBIT or wood I just lift my pot off for a while when it gets too hot.
>

And if you want a 3 fuel stove the Tri Ti or Sidewinder Ti stoves can also burn wood in the highly efficient "gassifier" method using the optional Inferno insert. Here the pot still sits somewhat inside the stove but higher, on two croswise Ti stakes stuck thru small holes in the cone. A higher pot for burning wood is necessary to give more room for the wood and gassifier inner cone to burn unburned gasses initially given off.

***Trail Designs, maker of CC stoves, makes them to fit a huge variety of pots, mugs and (aaarrggghh!) cans. And they sell them in aluminum or Ti. Non-stick aluminum is my fav.

I DO place my large, 1.5 L. Jet Boil pot on TOP of my Sidewinder for melting snow with wood, but hey, wood is plentiful where I camp and ya don't have to carry it so max efficiency is not a problem. Even so, the cone design is far more efficient in this pot-on-top setup than an open fire. That means it melts snow faster. Plus wood sparks are much more contained with a (Ti) Caldera Cone so flying ember danger to nylon and poly clothes and tents is kept to a bare minimum.

So I have a hunch that the answer to this will be "yes".

Would you recommend the Open Country 3 cup Hard Anodized Pot + Caldera Cone + Simmer Ring? Seems like a very price conscious, light, efficient setup.

Dang…and I came on here wanting advice on a canister stove.

Well, I ended up getting the Snow Peak Litemax because of the great deal at STP. I'll save up to buy a Caldera system for warmer months.

I have currently 4 canister stoves – the aforementioned Coleman F-1; Snow Peak Gigapower; Snow Peak Litemax and a Primus Paclite remote canister. I'm not crazy about the primus heads for anything other than boiling water. I've tried to simmer things in a nonstick Primus ETA powerpot over the Paclite burner and the narrow flame is a blowtorch really. Boils water well however.

If I could only keep one it would probably be the Litemax – a bit lighter than the F-1 and a reasonably dispersed flame pattern. But I use them all at different times oddly (and will eventually pass one on to my scout son when he's ready to use a stove).

I have a couple different pots – all of them slightly taller than wide other than the 1.2L powerpot. I do have a ti mug for when I'm really weight conscious but like Dane I'm not entirely sold on it – the couple aluminum (all anodized) pots I have work better and aren't appreciably heavier.

Anyway – I think you'll be very happy with the Litemax – it is a terrific canister stove with reasonable heat control.

Thanks Phillip. Great to hear that about the Litemax. I figured for the amount of backpacking I actually do, it couldn't be a bad choice.

What are some good anodized pots that you guys prefer? I see the 3 cup Open Country pot at Trail Designs. Any others? Everything else I see is usually a pot/cup/spork/kitchen sink set at REI…which isn't what I need.

I made a windscreen for my Brunton Crux canister stove and I'll take photos of it tomorrow and post in a separate thread. It has worked well for me for 2 summers of backpacking and I believe it has saved me fuel as well.

It takes too many words to describe fully but suffice to say it is a windscreen sitting on a flat "pie pan" piece of aluminum held in place between the stove and the canister. The hole in the "pie pan" is just large enough to accomodate the stove's threaded section.

Looking forward to seeing pictures. I am able to envision what you are saying already. I've done lots of reading on MYOG windscreens on here and I am thinking of making one once my Litemax arrives. What materials did you use?

I have a Primus Alutech 1L pot with lid that I like pretty well – use it sometimes and other times I use a Primus ETA 1L powerpot that is heavier but has a heat exchanger.

http://store.primuscamping.com/cookware/aluminum/alutech-trade-1.0l/

For the money – the Coleman Max anodized cookset at Wally World (shows out of stock online but I still see them in stores) is a great value at $24 or so for two pots with lids. The lids are somewhat useless being of the frying pan variety – but they work fine.

I peronally really like the Mors pots, http://fourdog.com/1-1-liter-bush-pot-hard-anodized/

There is a 1.1L and a 1.8L version, four dog and a few other folks sell them. The 1.1L doesnt come with the bail standard but is an option you can get added. The 1.8L comes with it standard. I own the 1.8L pot and I have been using it for a few years now and really like it.

I've tried several stoves and have not been able to find one that i can comfortably simmer with.
Gas cannister stoves offered the finest control, a Kovea spider remote stove the best of all as i was able to set up a very close and effective windscreen (difficult to achieve with a on the top type burner as the canister over heats)

After all that messing about i ended up giving up on simmering, i now just use a pot cosy system.

Tried buying in the cosy material, but now i just buy cheap sun reflectors that you put up to the inside of your windscreen in summer.
The "specialist" do keep the contents a little warmer, but only after around 40mins.

For most of my meals they need simmering for 10mins, with my home made cosy the water is still hot enough to burn your lips after 15mins, so good enough for me.

You can find the material (windscreen reflectors) for just a few $, add in some duct tape and 5mins with a pen and a pair of scissors and your sorted

Cheers
Mark