The best fry pan for backpacking

hey everybody dustin here from backcountry cuisine and today we're talking about frypans i didn't all right so frypan is now you know a really fun thing to do when you're out backpacking or car camping is to cook up some pancakes but doing that is not so easy i mean fry pans backpacking fry pans are notorious for scorching the bottom and leaving the middle of it all squishy and mushy first off most important absolutely you got to have a good stove you need to have a stove it simmers really really well it needs to get down to a nice low flame ideally it's got a wider burn head too so i'm using the msr windpro 2 so that's number one good stove that simmers well number two is pan thickness and so you know you might say well i want to be ultra light so i want the smallest lightest pan i could possibly get and that's great and all but thin pans they transfer the heat faster you tend to get more scorching number two pan thickness is one of them number two is the surface of the pan so you have uncoated completely uncoated you've got some kind of lightly coated again and anodized anodized do a little bit better than uncoated and then you've got stuff like the teflon coating or the ceramic coating that msr has a couple other companies have that too uncoated you're going to have a lot of heart you're going to really be working hard to do pancakes you can do other things especially sauces and that kind of stuff but if you're trying to do pancakes or baked goods in these then they really struggle at that so highly recommend getting a non-stick surface i'm going to go from lightest weight to heaviest weight so let's start off with the tocs titanium frypan lid so this is actually a part of a kit it comes with a i think a 1.8 liter titanium cook pot and this is the lid that goes for it this is only weighs in 2.3 ounces so even if you didn't bring the cook pot you could still use this just for your fry pan only 2.3 ounces super awesome it's 50 bucks for the pot and the lid so pretty cheap when you think about titanium and you get a cook pot and you get a fry pan that's pretty good deal now problem super thin material this is what makes titanium so great this can be really thin the problem is heat transfers really fast right through the bottom of the pan so let's make up a pancake and see how it goes okay so i'm gonna do this with no oil or butter because i want you to see the difference between the different ones all right so first things first like i said before make sure you've got a stove that can get a nice low flame going on i wouldn't make it too big either smaller than the pan so because you need to be able to get underneath it with your spatula now uncoated uncoated pans you can use metal utensils and so metal utensils do way better let's get a little wind action here oh sure wind kicks up now nice metal utensils do way better job at scraping underneath so i do like that part of it but a plastic one is going to be necessary for the non-stick surfaces now it's already going and because i had to kick it up for the wind i can smell it oh i can see that it's nice and cooked but it's not it's not coming up and so again what tends to happen is you get this it just cooks really fast on the bottom and it doesn't have a chance to actually cook through on the pancake and so you end up getting burnt on the bottom gooey on the inside even with a thin runny pancake like i made it's still not gonna work out great yeah see i can smell it burning and it's not even uh it's not even cooked on the edges yet metal scraper doing okay you have to be patient so you can see that you know it actually turned out not too bad but there's a lot of charring around the outside but not not too shabby had to be really careful but it's still a little bit still a little bit doughy on the inside it's hard to see but it's a little bit squishy metal utensil though i'm trying to do that with them plastic spork or even one of these forget it make sure you clean it really well between uses otherwise the stuck food is going to stick still and you're just going to put new fresh food on top of that it's going to stick so that's the tocs titanium pretty good not so good a little cheat you can do for these really thin pans is you can take the metal lid off of a can stainless steel can and put that as a kind of spacer between the two and help it to get a little bit more thickness now of course you're just adding weight right so this is the lightest weight lid i could find and it's about 1.2 ounces so you know you're adding another ounce to it so that makes this what 3.4 ounces now 3.4 and put that on as a diffuser plate pancake batter the diffuser plate helps to act as if you've got a thicker pan at the bottom it also helps to lower that temperature of your stove because it it's harder for that heat to get through so it just slows the process down a little bit so it's cooking slower so it's not going to be as burnt but it's almost too slow and obviously you really need to coat this thing otherwise you're just going to have a mess on your hand so we got another pancake so it really slows things down which is nice so it's a pretty viable option if you want to go with a really lightweight pan all right number two number two ever new ever new titanium frypan this one is uh 4.9 ounces so it's a little bit heavier 4.9 ounces 54 bucks all by itself so titanium often expensive ever new notoriously way more expensive than most things are so um let's try this one out definitely a thicker bottom i can feel that it's not not given as much and uh yeah we'll see how this one turns out now because this is a coated pan i don't want to use the metal spatula i've got to switch over to the plastic spatula or else you're going to scratch the surface i mean i scratched the surface in the titanium it just doesn't matter so much better but still sticking so it looks way better um and it's doing pretty good job at not being a sticky but it's still sticking so my pancake looks more golden on the bottom i'm much happier with it a little bit of sticking not horrible not great all right well there's my pancake pretty nice so pretty good it's a little bit gooey on the inside still though better than the last one but still gooey on the inside all right okay next on the list is the fry bake pan this is a classic knolls backpacking fry pan they are durable these things are tough as nails they do have a coating on the outside but whatever they coated it with you can't scratch it with one of these metal ones so these things are awesome also pretty heavy 7.1 ounces 7.1 ounces 64 bucks also pretty expensive it does come with a really nice lid a nice tight fitting lid for baking you can actually put coals or have a little fire on top of this thing so pretty cool little pan but pretty darn heavy as well it's intended for months on the trail all right so let's give this one a shot see how it does thing about the fry baked pans is you do need a pot grabber too so i found these little one ounce pot grabbers that work really well if this is a really heavy pan with a lot of food in it then that's a little bit harder to work with fry bake makes these like bomber aluminum jaw things but they're like four ounces but then these things just are super bomber you can really pick things up well so depending on the pan sometimes they have integrated handles and sometimes they don't another thing i don't like about these is you can either forget them at home done that before or lose them on the trail i haven't lost them on trail but that is totally a possibility when um you got things in arc connect i think it's time to flip see how this does oh much better much better again this is no oil right no oil at all on this it was that's like the little mildest of sticking oh beautiful golden pancake pretty excited about this one it should be good hey let's try this out see how it's doing under there feeling pretty good yeah so again nice and golden on this one beautiful on both sides did not stick very much and cooked all the way through so um much much better than either of those two lighter weight ones but there's a cost to that because this is a heavier pan again this is the fry bake pan and it's quite a bit more expensive right like i said before it is 64 bucks seven ounces so we're really getting up in weight and it's this one again was 4.9 so five ounces versus seven ounces two more ounces much better product so i bow but you gotta at least have one more ounce for the pot grabber too so that is something now i did say my favorite one for lunch and it's actually not the heaviest one this is the msr ceramic coated pan uh 6.6 ounces and it is 40 bucks and it has a ceramic coating on the inside and while you can't use the metal spatula it is so nonstick oh you just watch you just watch uh another cool feature i like about this pan is that it's got an integrated handle in it but you can if i can do this what's on here you can take the handle off pretty easily so then i could put a dome over top of this bake with it all the parts over here are metal then and yeah so that's pretty cool system goes on pretty easily and then it folds on the inside oh oh my like butter like butter i mean like literally it's like butter it's as if there is a um as if there's oil or butter in there it is perfect there was no sticking at all no scratching plastic spatula bam done that has been my experience with this thing the whole time it's just really good all right let's check this out oh again butter so just take a look at that i mean golden on both sides again no oil nothing in there this is just out of the pan and perfectly cooked all the way through so good now i chose pancakes because i believe they are probably the hardest things to cook when you're in the backcountry because they are really finicky about the type of pan and pie you're using so um key features again simmering stove really really low simmer or at least be able to control it really well and then a relatively thick bottom pan and the non-stick surface when you're backpacking is awesome so first choice for me is the msr ceramic second choice would be the fry bake pan very durable if you're looking for a durable pan absolutely hands down this is the one because this thing will take a beating for a long time and then um i wouldn't even use the other two i i bought them because i thought i might use them i would never use them for pancakes i might use them for like a little saute or something or i was rehydrating fruit or something like that but there was water in it so yeah that's it i definitely that msr msr ceramic skillet 8 inches 6.6 ounces awesome alrighty buddy that's it for today we're gonna head out and uh i'm gonna make myself some more pancakes take care everybody and eat well

Channel: Backcountry Cuisine

Views: 6,338

Rating: 4.852941 out of 5

Keywords: backpacking, camp stoves, ultralight, camping

Id: Rn5GMIFCpQM

Length: 13min 41sec (821 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 11 2020