Guide To Stoves

A camping stove is likely to be an essential piece of equipment for any prepper. Whether it cooks you a nourishing meal at the end of an arduous day or simply brews the refreshing pick-me-up of a warm drink, your stove could prove a life-saver.

So, you need to choose carefully.

How they work

Camping stoves come into their own when you’re hunkered down in an emergency with the gas and electricity shut down. In the absence of other fuels, your camping stove is most likely going to be run on a canister of gas which is either integrated into the stove itself or simply sits below a burner that screws directly into the top of it.

The gas canister is relatively small and certainly lightweight, making the camping stove extremely portable and it has the added benefits of requiring little maintenance and is simple and easy to use. The fuel contained under pressure in the canister is typically a mixture of butane and isopropane.

An alternative design lets the camping stove run on liquid fuel instead of gas. Because liquid fuel burns more easily at lower temperatures and higher altitudes, this type of stove is typically favoured by mountaineers – though you’ll probably find that they require a little more maintenance and will need priming before you get it to light.

Which one’s for you?

As we’ve said, you might want to choose carefully – because there are pros and cons to the various types and designs:

The burner screws directly into the gas canister

• almost certainly the most common and popular camping stove design sees the burner – a single or, at most double burner – screwed directly into the top of the gas canister;

• not only is this the simplest design, but it is also compact and lightweight – so, highly portable, even if you have some trekking to do;

• nevertheless, they are also surprisingly powerful – especially if you use the built-in windshields to shelter the flame from cross-winds – and some of these stoves connect remotely to the gas canister by way of a flexible hose;

Integrated cooking system

• a slightly fancier design is achieved by making the stove into a tower-like system;

• the in-built windshields on these systems tend to be more effective and help to make up for any reduction in heating power and efficiency – many incorporate a heat exchanger fashioned from corrugated metal;

• although they’re slightly more complicated – less powerful and less straightforward than those where the burner screws directly into the gas canister – these systems remain popular with campers, hikers, and anyone more or less constantly on the move;

Getting it going

• it’s common for both types of camping stove to have in-built piezo electronic lighters to make them easier to fire up – that where a spring-loaded hammer hits a small piece of quartz to make a spark;

• the action of striking the quartz produces enough electrical energy to produce a spark – also helping to ensure that piezo electronic lighters last much longer than those that rely on a flint;

• but, make no doubt about it, piezo lighters are themselves prone to failure – so, when they do fail, make sure you have some matches to hand so that you can still light your camping stove.

Examples

So, let’s take a quick look at just a few examples.

Stash Stove

While any camping stove is designed to be compact, lightweight, and portable, the pots and pans you might need to cook anything on them are less so.

The Stash Stove from Jetboil solves that problem by including an 800ml FluxRing cook pot with the cooker itself. That’s a perfect capacity for hot drinks or pouch meals, so you’ll not need any other pots or pans – and when you’re on the move, the gas canister fits neatly into the empty cook pot.

MSR PocketRocket 2 Stove

You won’t find a camping stove more compact, lightweight, and simple in design than this aptly named PocketRocket from MSR.

A simple, single burner screws directly into the top of your gas canister yet its folding arms are designed to hold surprisingly large dimension pots. The makers reckon it will boil a litre of water in just 3.3 minutes and that a 227g IsoPro gas canister will provide 60 minutes of cooking time.

Trangia 27 Cookset

If your preference is for a liquid fuel stove, this set from Trangia offers 2 1-litre cooking pans, a frying pan, and a kettle, for use on the included spirit burner.

For kit that offers quite such a range of cooking choices, this is a surprisingly compact solution, thanks mainly to the space-saving dimensions of a spirit burner. 

Summary

It’s not just the comfort of a warm drink to look forward to, but the nourishment that could prove a literal life-saver that you’ve been able to cook up on a simple camping stove.

While any camping stove will have been designed to be lightweight, compact, and easy to use, there are differences that you might want to consider carefully when making your choice.