Picking the best cook pot for backpacking

hey everybody dustin here from backcountry cuisine and today we're talking about cook pots that's right cook pots we are gonna look at all the different types of cooked pots that are out there how to choose what to take material safe all that stuff so let's get into it so okay i think the first place to start is to think about material um i like that because it kind of narrows down your choices right so at the cheapest level you have aluminum aluminum's great uh and it works just fine there have been concerns about alzheimer's and all that kind of stuff but i haven't really heard any legitimate stuff that's been out there but you know it's a concern then you can think about that um but aluminum has been used for a long time for cook pots and it's very lightweight very cheap and uh works great so aluminum is a great option in general to go with the other classic one is stainless steel stainless steel significantly heavier much more durable didn't mention it one of the disadvantages aluminum bends really easily you drop it you're going to get a ding in it it actually damages very quickly stainless steel i think i've had this particular cook pod for probably 15 20 years and the thing is a little discolored but it's still really in good shape so uh stainless steel amazing you can you can squeeze on and push on it and it really holds up pretty well but way way heavier still pretty much on the cheap end of spectrum aluminum is the cheapest stainless steel is a little bit more expensive you can also get anodized this is like an anodized aluminum and they've got all kinds of new coatings that they're putting inside of these where they the anodized is a little bit tougher it's a little bit better for especially for the non-stick kind of thing they've got these new coatings in here the ceramic coatings are pretty good makes them heavier so they're a little lighter still than stainless steel but if you're going to go aluminum i really like the anodized thing because it does make them a little more it just seems to be more robust not so cheapy not so chintzy but a little bit heavier but still really good and then of course the are the titanium pots and the reason why titanium is so much um better if you want to call it that is because it is lightweight for the weight sorry lightweight for the strength that's what i meant to say so you can get similar strengths of a stainless steel just by using a thinner material because titanium is such a strong metal and so you can get lighter pots i mean some of these pots are significantly light so titanium is great super expensive super expensive you can pay twice as much for a aluminum or sorry a titanium pot that's stainless steel and aluminum is usually about the cheapest aluminum is about half or even less than a stainless steel so you know it goes up pretty quickly some of these pots like this cook pot cost me about say 70 bucks something like that so not cheap not cheap at all otherwise you can get stainless steel for 50 bucks 40 bucks aluminum you can sometimes find it for 10 bucks so you can get really really cheap stuff there okay so that's material type then you've got size you know what kind of size do you want to get um individual size something that goes up to a liters you know i i've gotten away with 800 mils it's totally doable for a single person 800 ml leaves but i wouldn't go any less than that i kind of think of as 800 milliliters well 750 you can get by with that's i've done that too that's this one here this is my 750 cookbot and that works fine too so let's say let's say 750 per person um so if you've got two people then you want something that's at least 1500 milliliters or 1.5 liters this one here is a is a 1.4 i think of it avenue and it works it's a little bit small for my wife and i but it does work if you're a big eater though you're going to want a larger pot so this toast is a one point i want to say 1.8 something like that 1.7 and so much much easier to get all the food and you need for two people in something like this all right so that's size again about 750 to 800 milliliters per person if you're a big eater and you want a lot of food volume wise then you probably want to go closer to 900 to a thousand milliliters or one liter per person all right so that's that next let's talk about some of the kind of design ideas you'll see if you've got some pots like this stanley i think this was like 10 bucks at off of amazon nice stainless steel it's going to be durable super tall right the problem with super tall pots is twofold one when the heat hits the bottom of the pan it spreads out really fast and you lose a lot of heat out the side of your pot so it makes your stove less efficient the other thing that's not as good about it is that you have you have fewer there are some cook stoves out there where you're not going to get much stability out of this right because the the cook surface the stove top arms won't necessarily be big enough like sometimes they have a big hole in the middle and this may be a little unstable inside it might slip inside and you're smelling food and of course just being taller means that you have more chances of tipping so it's not as stable a pot i prefer these aren't bad you can totally get by with them but i do prefer something that's a little bit wider this one's about six inches wide so that would that's kind of for me personally the minimum that i would go with is to six inch wide but it is more beneficial from an energy standpoint to have a wider bottom you will lose less heat because as the flame travels along the bottom of the pan it's going to be taking some of that heat and converting it and transferring it into not converting transferring it into your pan so the wider the base the more heat transfer you're gonna get and also it's easier to eat out of it's easier to stir if you've got a spoon you're trying to stir in here you need a long one and you're having a hard time getting inside that was one of my biggest complaints with the system stoves if i was to eat out of the pot then it just it was a little awkward to kind of be digging down in there to get to my food it's fine it works but i'm not i'm not a huge fan um so that's kind of design i much prefer shorter wider pots much prefer they're much more stable on your stove and they're going to have a better heat transfer that's what i like but have i used narrow pots like this yeah i have and they work fine they do they will still cook well i think the last thing for me to talk with you about are the these system stoves are really common so the jetboil or the um oh what's the other one the msr one i can't think what it is one wind burner or something like that these stoves are pretty cool right you attach into a canister and then this attaches to the bottom of your your cook pot and so it's all this kind of integrated system and it works really well they are really good and they are very efficient at heating up your water quickly they're heavy er than a lot of other systems you can get and they have these little grills at the bottom and these are called uh heat sinks or heat exchangers or something like that basically what happens is as the flame hits the bottom of the pot it goes through these little fins here i'll show you a better one come closer get you in a little tighter there's these little ridges inside of the pot so right inside of here these little fins they're attached to the bottom of the cook pot and the flame hits the bottom of the pot and spreads out and goes through these and as it goes through these little ridges those ridges also absorb some of that heat and then as they absorb heat they transfer it into the bottom of your pot it does make your stove more efficient no question about it it also makes your stove or your sorry your um your cook pot more efficient it also makes your cook pot a lot heavier so will you save fuel absolutely will you save enough fuel to justify the extra weight on this that depends on a lot of things the length of your trip and how much you're going to use your stove so when do i bring one of these cook pots when i'm snow camping i'm going to be running this stove for a couple hours every night probably while i'm melting snow and i'm going to be just cooking a lot and so that will save me fuel enough fuel to um justify it also speeds up the process which i really like in snow capping that's worth it for me snow camping i want faster melting of my snow that's really important so even if i'm going for a one night trip where it's probably not going to save the same amount of fuel it's going to be pretty close and it's worth it for the the speed so i like heat exchangers in the bottom of my pots if i'm snow camping it's summertime doesn't bother me at all i don't need it i'm not that time intensive so lots of options out here for cook pots again you can go with the system i don't like their height oh one thing also to be thinking about are the handles right so some come with handles built in that's awesome i really like that they fold up nice and compact some of them like the stainless steel one you need to have an extra pot gripper they're very stable and they give a nice grip to it but they're extra weight and they're also something you can lose you something you can forget and leave behind and it is hard to pick up a full pot that's really hot so i do like having integrated handles that's something that i prefer um a lot of them have integrated handles now so that's not a big deal i'm surprised at how well they they do at not melting first of all like these handle little coatings on a little rubberized coating they don't melt very easily sometimes they'll melt a little bit at the edges but not too much and then um i'm also impressed with how they don't transfer too much heat out to the handles they'll get a little hot but not too bad so that's all about cooks cook pots and uh trying to choose one is a very personal choice you want to know if you're doing singles doubles and all that i will tell you that in general if you're interested in a two-person titanium pot the tocs t-o-a-k-s tokes pots are really good they have held up really well for me they've been durable they are way cheaper than the ever news i got this avenue because it's a lit a couple ounces lighter and i'm like one of those ounce weenies but um i'll tell you it's way more expensive way more expensive for these avenues than the tokes and i've been really happy with the toke stuff so i would not shy away from that if you want the cheapest of the cheap these are called imusa mugs i am usa i musa and uh they've got one of these handles the metal handles so you this thing gets freaking hot you do need to have some sort of pot gripper i use the chamois cloth i bring one of those and i use that to grab with it but super cheap you can pick these up sometimes for five bucks and they're a leader so plenty for one person it's a great cheap option stainless steel will last you forever but they're heavy and then the new ceramic stuff that msr has put out i've got one of their pans another video pans i've got one of their pans and i love it the thing is incredible for non-stick incredible so that's picking cook pots and i hope that helps out if you have any questions come check us out at backcountrycuisine.net leave a comment down subscribe all that good stuff and take care and eat well

Channel: Backcountry Cuisine

Views: 567

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: backpacking, camp stoves, ultralight, camping

Id: G5LwJp1_b_o

Length: 12min 20sec (740 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 26 2020