Best/Right Cook Pot Size
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I hear “what size pot” and I think of aspect ratio and lid style. Â Wider is better for fuel efficiency – less fuel carried and your meal is ready sooner.
A smaller lid reduces losses while heating and typically gives you a more secure lid.
A solid handle handle prevents you form burning your hand and dumping your hot water on the ground or your feet.
Put all that together, and you end up with something like the Optimus Terra Kettle, a bit heavy at 5.4 ounces and a bit small at 700 ml, but you need no additional lid or pot-holder. Â And at $16 (Moosejaw, $17-$19 form others), it pretty affordable to experiment with.
Until 10 minutes ago, kettles always struck me as a bit silly since they are much harder to cook in, but if you are only boiling water for FBC and hot drinks. . . . I think I’ll survey the kettle options out there. Â Unless someone already knows that answer?
I’ve been thru at least a dozen backpacking pots over the years, from copper-clad stainless steel with the heavy handles cut off with a hacksaw, to miserable MSR Flex fry pans (3 in fact) whereby every single one delaminated PTFE which is great if you like Polytetrafluoroethylene as a steady component to your diet—To silicone-based fry pans which are more healthy than teflon but dang heavy and the handles hard to remove due to the rivets (and then you end up with two holes on the side of the pan).
Let’s look thru some of my pots as a history lesson which you might find captivating on this late November day—
An old stainless pot with the folding handles.A butt-cheap walmart Texsport teflon pan which delaminated flakes of PTFE so bad I had to use it only to boil water and place my meals inside a Tasty Bite pouch and sit in the boiling water.Here’s the technique I had to use to avoid the steady consumption of teflon. Run screaming from Texsport cookware.Here’s a healthier but heavier silicone-based stickless pan but the rivets were hell to remove and compromised the pot with two visible holes, negating the ability to boil up large amounts of water.For solo backpacking I recommend the MSR titanium .85 liter kettle (next to my homemade cozy).For two people or for long winter trips where snow needs to be melted I like the MSR titanium “seagull” two liter pot (sitting next to a tasty bites pouch). This pot doesn’t even need a pot handle because the top lip never gets hot.Oh and I can’t forget the MSR Flex pan which is a good concept but terrible engineering. Notice this new pot starting to delaminate teflon on the top lip by the spoon handle. Not good.
An old stainless pot with the folding handles.
A butt-cheap walmart Texsport teflon pan which delaminated flakes of PTFE so bad I had to use it only to boil water and place my meals inside a Tasty Bite pouch and sit in the boiling water.
Here’s the technique I had to use to avoid the steady consumption of teflon. Run screaming from Texsport cookware.
Here’s a healthier but heavier silicone-based stickless pan but the rivets were hell to remove and compromised the pot with two visible holes, negating the ability to boil up large amounts of water.
For solo backpacking I recommend the MSR titanium .85 liter kettle (next to my homemade cozy).
For two people or for long winter trips where snow needs to be melted I like the MSR titanium “seagull” two liter pot (sitting next to a tasty bites pouch). This pot doesn’t even need a pot handle because the top lip never gets hot.
Oh and I can’t forget the MSR Flex pan which is a good concept but terrible engineering. Notice this new pot starting to delaminate teflon on the top lip by the spoon handle. Not good.- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
