Pots, Pans and Kettles. My Cook Kit for Bushcraft, Wild Camping and Canoe Trips.

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] morning folks I get asked a lot in my comments about various pots and pans and things that I use on my videos so I thought would be a good opportunity to go through the pans that I use so I think the best thing to do is to break them up into categories depending on what I'm using them for and that'll just that will just kind of help you know some some pots and pans I'll use for backpacking trips where weight is important you know but I'll use a whole whole different sort of set of pens if I'm going on a canoe trip for example because weight isn't such an issue so I'll do that and what I'll do is I'll put links down below for thanks mags and I'll put links to where you can get hold of them in the description box below now the other thing is some of the pots and pans that I use kind of cross over so pots that I might use over a fire when I'm out kind of bushcrafting if you like they might also be pens that I take with me on a backpacking trip just because they're small and fairly light so what I'm going to do is start with kind of bushcraft pots and and we'll take it from there okay first up is my good old 12-centimeter zebra Billy can I love this Billy can and I use it the most that for my pots and pans it's a good size for one person it's completely distorted in shape that you can just slot down in there really easily but you know it's been well used and it's been over hot fires what happens is the the steel distorts after a while which is why it's that shape I've tried to bend it back but to be honest it doesn't really matter the lids still go on and it still works perfectly well I've got two of these if you've seen my bug-out bag video you'll see I have one in there as well you know they're great they're inexpensive and they're absolutely bomb-proof you can hang them over a fire you can transport stuff in them you can even get these little metal clips so that when you have the original handle on and I'll talk about that in a minute when the handle is in the upright position it locks the lid on which is really handy and it comes with a little steamer dish which just sits inside which is quite useful you can use it as a makeshift frying pan or you can just use it for eating out off or you can use it for its intended purpose which is steaming so if you crack a couple of eggs into there put some water in here to boil for a hot drink you can steam your eggs at the same time it's really good so yeah big fan of this originally it came with a with a rigid bail handle and the other one that I have still has that bail handle on but what I found is because I haven't got those clips it just used to fall down all the time if I just Nestle nestled it in the fire it's fine obviously if you're hanging it up because that holds it in place they really are irritated me that it kept flopping down so I replaced it with a steel cable and I've just got some brass tubing which I crimped to to hold it all together and and cover up the the raw cut edge of the steel cable and that works really well it stays put it stays in place and the other bonus is that you can fold it down like this and it doesn't take up any more space than the pot itself whereas the original bail handle sticks out a bit and it takes up a little bit more room so it you know it's just a little bit harder to pack now while we're talking about zebra I also have a bigger one this is the 14 centimeter and again it has yeah little insert just as the 12 centimeter and this is a this is a good size for sort of group cooking you know if I'm just going out by myself I'll take this if I'm going out with with Tom or I'm going out with other people I'll take this just because you can get a bit more food in it you could also use these for baking in and if you go on the fire box channel the fire box YouTube channel he has all sorts of really good ideas about what you can what you can bake in these things this didn't come with the metal clips I actually made this one here just to hold the lid on a little bit better and more importantly just to keep their handle in the upright position without that on there like I said before it just it just flops down so 14 centimeter 12 centimeter and the other pot that I use for kind of bushcraft is my cup this is a stainless steel Pathfinder cup from Dave Canterbury's pathfinder school and again inexpensive it comes with a nice little lid hid here which has the slots cut out and the reason for that is that you can use a fish spreader fish mouth whether as a as a handle a bail handle to hang it up over your fire and yeah a really good robust pot it's got markings on the inside for for measurement measurements 500 600 700 milliliters and the same announces and there yeah just it's really good handles fold fold down flat yeah good good pot I'm a big fan of stainless steel I've had various titanium pots over the years and and I just find them a bit trickier to cook in they obviously lighter which is a good thing but yeah for cooking over a fire it's I just find stainless works better for me but that's just personal choice I have another cup which I use for bushcrafting and that's the old crusader cup it's made by BCB but it's it's british army and it's designed to take the british army water bottle that just nests in there nicely and and again stainless steel bomb-proof really really good I love to handle on it it's got a nice big handle which just sort of stays in that position because of this little bar one of the handles has like a bar on it and that just just holds the handles nicely together and yes just comfortable that's a lovely mug I used this for years and years before I bought this Pathfinder Cup and and to be honest I think this is still the better Cup next onto frying pans I have this plate which I bought it's made by life venture and it's made from titanium it's it's pretty good but as I said before you know titanium is quite tricky to cook on being so thin and you have to be very careful not to burn stuff in it the nice thing about this is that you can make a handle for it out of a stick and if you go across the mcq bushcraft channel you'll see him using that all the time and it's yeah it's a disposable handle you just cut a slot in there with your saw and it fits over the side of the pan like this and you don't have to carry it with you because you can just make on each time but yeah that's really good to be honest I use that more as a plate which is what its intended purposes but it is as useful as a makeshift frying pan for those times when you just need a bit of extra cooking space and then finally the other pan I use is this one here this is a cast-iron skillet and I get asked quite a lot about this in the in the comments this is a Mexican fajita sizzler and and I got this out of the German supermarket store Aldi although I think littles do them as well from time to time and what you need to do is you need to look out for their Mexican specials week it's really good it's compact it's quite flat so it packs nicely and yeah it's got a bit of weight to it because it's cast-iron but I don't mind carrying that extra weight that's worth it for me just for how much more versatile this is for cooking on I absolutely love it so that goes with me often on bushcraft trips it even goes with me on backpacking trips sometimes I'll just our safe weight in other air in other areas and and take this just because I love it so much so that is my bushcrafting basic pan kit I won't necessarily take everything on every trip you know sometimes I might just take this sometimes I might take this in my cup you know it really depends on what I'm doing what I'm planning on cooking okay but those are the sort of things that I would turn to if I know I'm going on a more of a sort of bushcrafting sort of weekend or camp that's the gear I'll take so next up are much lighter weight pens that I take backpacking where I don't want to carry the extra weight so when weight is an issue I'll usually go with my Pathfinder Cup it's big enough for one it's big enough for me to rehydrate a dehydrated meal or you know do a sort of one-one pot stew or whatever and you know it's light it doesn't weigh very much and it's ideal for that those sort of like solo trips where weight is an issue if I think I'm going to be frying anything I may take my chaining plate as well and you know those two together they just hardly weigh anything that's quite that's quite an ideal kind of setup for me when weight is an issue the other thing I'm more than likely have with me is my stainless steel water bottle this is a single skinned stainless steel bottle and the lid completely comes off and using the old fish spreader again I could fill this up with water hang it up over a fire and I could boil a liter of water fairly quickly in it so that kind of doubles as a cooking pot as well as a water bottle which is handy I like it when items have more than one use especially on backpacking trips where weight and space is an issue now if I think I'm not going to be using wood as a fuel I may end up taking this with me I'm sure you've seen these before this is a transia cook system it's a methylated spirit stove and all the pans and everything are all included sort of packed and packs away in itself it's all it'll nest together so you get you get a handle the lid here is a frying pan you get a kettle and then inside the kettle is the burner and and then you get a couple stainless steel in this case pans they're not always stainless steel they're often aluminium it's just like I happen to have the stainless steel version and yeah it's really good these days I'm more and more likely to be using wood as a fuel just because of where I tend to be and where I tend to go on backpacking trips but you know there are times when it's just not practical or there just isn't wood so you know this might be this might be the sort of thing I think with me then just because it's it's compact and it's reasonably lightweight and everything I need in there together the only other thing I need to take obviously is a fuel bottle with some methylated spirits in so I put that I've included that in backpacking as well because I do occasionally use that and if I'm likely to be cooking for more than just myself this the pans are quite small in this I have this Billy pot here with a bale handle so I can use that over a fire if necessary the just nests nicely inside that and the lid goes on so I can I can beef that up to use in a group situation if need be so next up is good old cast-iron have a big fan of cast-iron I love it for cooking in but obviously the downside is weight I'm only going to take it with me to be honest on on trips where I haven't got to carry stuff far or if I'm in the car or in my canoe there's no disputing it that's heavy there's no way I'm gonna put that in a rucksack and carry it for more than a couple of miles but if I'm car camping or if I'm in the canoe and I'm gonna be peeping over a fire there is nothing better than this thing for cooking a stew in or a roast I've done a roast lamb in here with roast potatoes and it came out absolutely beautifully I've done bread in here I've done a beautiful cornbread in here before cakes oh you name it you can cook it in here it's just a brilliant brilliant thing and if you're not familiar with dutch ovens it works you can either hang it up as your fire some people use it that way but how I like to use it is to get a good bed of coals sit this thing on top of the coals and then pile loads of more coals on the lid on the top here that's what this lip is for here that's to keep all the coals in place so you have heat from underneath and you have heat from on top and you get a much more all-round heat for roasting and that's kind of that's kind of the idea behind them that's the name and oven so yeah I love cooking in this thing and it's yeah it's just brilliant this is a medium-sized Dutch oven it's probably about eight inches across but it's certainly big enough a roast or a stew or something like that for sort of for people originally this had three legs on so you can sit it above the coals on your fire I found them to be a bit of a pain they kept getting snagged in the bag that I store this in and so I decided to cut them off and do you know I've never missed them you know you can keep them on there if you you know they've obviously put them on there for a reason but um yeah it works perfectly well without them and it just means that the bottom is nice and flat so you can um you know you can just put it on your coals direct I've already talked about my skillet and that's perfectly sized for one person you know for a fried breakfast or something like that it's ideal what for one person if I'm going to be cooking for more than one I have a much larger frying pan here please excuse the state of it I got it out from storage this morning and I've noticed as a few spots of rust that are coming through so I'm going to have to address that when I get home do you have to take care of cast iron it needs to be well seasoned you need to you need to season it before you use it basically it puts a coating on it and the more you use it the more frequently you use it the better I haven't used this for a while which is why I've got to get started to get some of these rust spots on there but I can I can deal with that with some wire will Andry season it and that would be fine but yeah that's a decent sized frying pan that will do a group breakfast no problem when I got home from filming there was a package on my doorstep and in that package was this little beauty I entered a competition before Christmas and and I won the main prize and and this is what it was it's a 1 liter petrol Maxx Dutch oven perfect for one person or maybe two people for a small shoe and yeah it's really really nice and considering lighter than the my other Dutch oven so I'm really looking forward to trying this out the competition was run by bushcraft and survival worldwide which is a Facebook group and Mike Walters did the competition and and sent this out to me so we're cheers Mike next up we have kettles they're pretty much overlooked often but you know they're obviously ideal for boiling water I basically got three kettles that I use I've got this one which I showed you a minute ago from the smaller of the Trangia cook sets it's a decent kettle it's shallow which is ideal if you couldn't over a over a fire because you have more surface area or underneath heat in the water and the shape of it just done it helps to bring water to the ball very quickly and obviously having that handle you can suspend it over your over your fire so I have that one I also have another Trangia kettle this is from the larger Trangia cook set which I haven't got but I've got the kettle and then finally for times when there's a few of you I have this kettle here this is a mermaid and it is it's just it's just brilliant I bought this from an army surplus store and I can't remember water it holds but it holds quite a lot of water you can fill this up put it over the fire and just just leave that there and you've got constant sort of hot water just keep topping up so those are the kettles I use and lastly I have a load of pots and pans that I use infrequently to be honest but they do get used and they don't really fit quite into the other categories that I've discussed so let's take a look at some of those now this one here is a british army catering team and I love this thing it doesn't get used very often but now and again it's perfect for what I need the link comes off and the lid has handles which fold out like this and you can use that as a frying pan there's a decent size square frying pan all in stainless steel the main cooking pot itself has a bail handle so you can suspend that over a fire and as you can see by the state of it it's been used a few times that way and that will hold quite a lot of food that's probably comparable in size to my Dutch oven and a fraction of the weight yeah that gets used from time to time next up a good old British Army messed in this I use to be honest more as a plate but you obviously you can't cook in it it's metal and there's usually two of these I have got the other one but I couldn't I couldn't place my fingers on it before I came out this morning so that's around somewhere but the other one nests inside this and yeah they're fairly compact and the handles folded out the iminium quite lightweight and yeah good good for cooking whatever you want heating up water it'll take one of those boil-in-the-bag MRE style meals quite nicely you can just sit that in there cover it with water bring it up to the boil you've got your meal and then you've got some water for a for a hot drink as well so they're designed so that if you cook in the smaller one you can use the larger one as a lid which is handy and yeah they're just you know simple but good and then finally I've got this pan here this is made by a Chinese company whose name I can't pronounce and yeah it's got a folding handle it's made from stainless steel and it's got these locking clips and a lid with a seal so you can put the lid on you can you can you can cook in this you can cook a meal or you can take food with you out ready to cook put the lid on lock it on and the contents are sealed in and you can pack it away yeah it's it's it's quite a useful little container I do use this if I'm going to be taking something to camp that I've already prepared at home and and I just need to reheat it it's really it's just perfect for that really so that pretty much completes the pots and pans that I use currently I'm a bit of a slave to kit so you know I'm frequently buying new bits and pieces and replacing things as I come across new bits of kit that I like so you know the stuff that I've shown you today you know in a year's time that may well be quite different but that's that's what I'm using at the moment now another thing that I'm dead keen on and if you've watched any my previous videos you'll know this already I'd like to have banks to keep all of my pots and pans in sometimes I make them like this one here other times I've bought them like this one this one here out of wax canvas but you know I like to put all of my gear away in bags you know they get used on the fire they're often covered in soot and you know I don't want that's being transferred to everything else in my rucksack so just putting them away in a bag where that suit can be all contained you can pack it away and not have to worry about it well thanks for watching I hope you've enjoyed the video thank you for all your continued support and all of your likes and shares and comments it means a huge amount to me take care and I'll see you soon [Music] [Music]

Channel: Simon, a bloke in the woods

Views: 111,274

Rating: 4.9616032 out of 5

Keywords: cast iron skillet, cast iron dutch oven, petromax dutch oven, old mountain cast iron, zebra billy, pathfinder cup, crusader canteen cup, trangia stove, mess tins, campfire kettle, open fire cooking, camp fire cooking, wilderness skills, bushcraft, backcountry cooking, lifeventure titanium, wild camoing, backpacking gear, canoe camping

Id: NOT0PWTQF2k

Length: 22min 43sec (1363 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 23 2019