Originally Posted by
Rowan
chefisaac, what do you use mainly for your chef duties?
I use Trangias. I have done for years. I also tried a propane pocket rocket at one stage. I didn't like its instability and the inability to determine how much fuel I had left.
It's personal choice. I like the Trangias for their stability, performance in the wind, and their slow cooking (like indyfabz, I like cooking rather than just reheating or boiling water). The slow cook might be an advantage for chefisaac... thin pots and pans can be very difficult to use with high-intensity flames, in my experience.
An off-the-shelf system also is probably advisable for a newcomer, rather than trying to get catburners and others to work.
I would suggest that whatever system you choose, experiment with it at home to get to know its idiosyncracies. The aforementioned heat control is one, but also the amount of fuel that you might burn or any particular task. You can also experiment with things like pot-cozies to see how they work with stuff like rice and conserving fuel.
I should also mention that it is not unknown in the bicycle touring world for people to take small cast iron pots and pans with them... but that does tend to be overkill, in my opinion.
I have to disagree. I don't find canister stoves to be particularly unstable nor do I find determining how much fuel I have left to be difficult. I can determine the amount of fuel left by three methods. The canister cools significantly during use...it's called the Joule/Thompson effect. The liquid fuel is slightly warmer than the gas over the liquid. I can also tell by weight. The contents of the canister also slosh when the canister is shaken.
I also question the ability to tell how much fuel you have left in the alcohol 'cat can' stoves or stoves like the Trangia. Since they are mass burn stoves, you really have no idea how much fuel you have left. And what happens if you run out of fuel during cooking? I can change canisters on the fly if I run out but how do you add more fuel to a hot stove when you have to pour it in? I work with flammable materials all the time so I have a overdeveloped safety nanny sense but I'm not about to try to pour fuel into a stove that is even warm and try to reignite it.
There is also the issue of handling the fuel. At least with butane stoves and pressurized liquid stoves, the fuel is contained in a vessel and metered through a valve. If something goes wrong, I can close the valve and stop the process. With mass burn stoves, there is no valve. Someone here in Colorado started a forest fire with a mass burn stove when it got away from him.
I also "cook" on my stoves. I don't just reheat water. The control valve on every butane stove I've used is fine enough to have a hard boil or a slow simmer and every thing in between. If anything the control is almost better than my kitchen stove.