cooking on a fire
 

Cooking on a fire is the lightest way to carry a kitchen. For thousands of years people cooked on fires. Not quite as easy as it sounds. Perhaps there are a few people out there that still remember how.

I build a very small fire. As small as possible. I cook on the coals. First thing in the morning I build a little fire with sticks no bigger around than my smallest finger. It quickly burns down to coals. As I heat my water / food I have a second tiny fire going. I swithch the pot from one set of coals to the other. If I eat rice in the evening I find a small flat rock to set in the fire. This acts as simmer for the rice.

I have noticed that cooking on an open flame can cause a titanium pan to bend out of shape a little. Coals do not seem to cause warping of my ti pan.

Anybody have a good recipe for beans on an open fire?

I am am a newb, have not even done my first overnight yet, but the camp stove I ordered was wood, pine, leaves fueled. I have zero camping experience unless you count the drunken trips when I was in High school

As an alaskan that has lived in the "bush" and camped for months at a time in addition to bike touring where I camped, using both gas and camp fire, I've used just about every type of fire. A very small fire for cooking over a small pot is one excellent suggestion but I would add that you want a small diameter fire, but to get a nice bed of coals you need to use more wood than most folks might imagine. If room and safety allows you can built a good size fire and scoop coals into a small pile but the idea of starting one good fire and getting coals, then beginning a second fire to take over the duty is one i've often used. Baked potatos are an excellent camp food but they do require a good sized fire that allows you to basically bury the potato in coals. Crumple up tin foil and wrap the potato loosely in the tin foil. With it crumpled up the potato doesn't directly touch the fire. Then wrap that with another layer and put the potato on hot coals. It will still take about an hour to cook but what a treat! It's not a great bike touring food but for outdoor camping where wood is no problem it's great.

Is also strictly prohibited in some areas.

I have an Evernew stove that can be fueled with twigs, alcohol or fuel tablets (Esbit). I find the latter the most convenient and safe. (yet wouldn't cook beans on tour because they require hours of low heat, but this is indeed an excellent travel food)

The Purcell Titanium Packer Grill is a good grill for holding a pot or frypan between two rocks.

Purcell Trench grills

I'm not sure how much more I'll be using one though. Certainly for wild roadside bike camping, I do no-trace camping, thus no camp fire. And the forest Service is very much anti-fire for summer backpacking.

Are those little bushbuddy or other fire boxes regulated differently than an open fire? They make single or double wall fire boxes. What about regulations compared to an open fire. Lets face it, a match weighs about a gram. No other stove is lighter than an open fire.

Fires are banned in many places we travel.

With a box stove or woodgas stove you have containment. And in places where making fires is prohibited (most places) I'd use a ground containment of some sort too, like aluminum foil or an expendable wooden plank (as a woodgas stove will burn drill through wood)

Making fires with abandon is where the ultralight way of tour goes far over the limit of irresponsibleness, selfishness and general idiocy. If you don't want to carry a stove, don't cook. You'll endanger a massive amount of people and property popping fires all over. Fire bans are set for a reason you know.

Now of course it is possible you know how to make fires safely but I'll just assume otherwise until you specify which places and situations you deem safe for fire making. The way you stated your habit made it seem like you'd do it anywhere. And considering that a tour can span several climate and vegetation zones it's actually quite difficult, if not impossible to cope without a stove if you plan to cook every day as like I mentioned, fire making in most places is strictly prohibited for a reason

I've thought about getting a solo stove for a while; you can pack it with a small alcohol stove as a back up.

The #1 Wood Burning Backpacking Stove by Solo Stove

If you include the water it takes to put out the fire, the time to start a fire, rainy days of no fire. Sometimes it just does not work.

This?:

https://www.rei.com/product/897771/b...with-flexlight

I've done several canoe trips with my emberlit twig stove. Works great. For times when wood is too wet I carry along a Trangia alcohol stove, which fits nicely inside the emberlit. For things like dehydrated foods (I make my own with an Excalibur dehydrator), during lunch I put the evening's dinner in a Nalgene bottle or fair share mug and fill with water. By dinner all is hydrated so you don't need to waste fuel and time to do that work, just heat it up. You can do the same with beans by beginning to soak in the morning or previous evening.

I wish. I saw that at the store, but went with a much lower priced one from Amazon. The one at REI gave me the idea to look though.

Wow. That's a lot of parts to break.

I handled one in the store. It's very bulky. I have also heard people opine that the charge it puts out is weak. But ultimately, what if everything is wet? I will stick with my Optimus Nova or MSR Dragonfly and fuel bottle. They do what I want done the way I want it done. And you can use the fuel to help start campfires.

I like beans on tour as well but buy them in a can. If you are adding water to them to hydrate and biking that all day it's the same weight and you do not need to heat canned beans so no stove, fire or cookwear required. Eat out of the can and no plates either. The kitchen can be as small as a can opener and a spoon.

In Western Canada we often have a fire ban by summer. You could try a wood stove but the smell might alert other campers and parks staff with negative results.

An easy recipe for campfire biscuits is 1C flour, 1/2tsp salt, 2tsp baking powder. Mix a supply up before the trip and keep it in a baggy.

I've used a a titanium folding stove, which is very small and very light. It works well for boiling water for soup, coffee, and freeze dried meals. It takes about five to seven minutes to heat 16 ounces of water to boiling. On the downside, it's not real stable, so you have to be careful when moving your cooking pot. You also have to keeping adding twigs to maintain the flame (which means removing the pot). Finally, your cooking pot gets covered in soot and residue which will stain anything it comes in contact with, so you need to keep it in a separate bag when in a pannier. I decided to switch to a Jet Boil, which is efficient, clean, and has a self-starting device.

Fires are pretty much banned everywhere I'm likely to go, and I'm sure that's true for many, making this a moot point. There might be an occasional fire pit in state or national park campsite, but of course you can't gather wood to burn. So they only make sense if you car camp and bring a bundle of firewood.

I use a rubbing alcohol stove all the time at home. Don't use ele or propane or nat gas, just rubbing alcohol. Planning on actually taking it with me this summer and using it. The stove and pot stand fits right inside the 12 cm Imusa pot that I use. I don't have to search for wood or anything else and waste all that time when its raining trying to get the fire started thanks to wet wood. I can get my fuel source practically anywhere I go and it quite cheap fuel as well. Probably looked at a bit better by fire officials than wood fires.

I debated on Emberlit or other ultra-light twig burners for longer trips where the weight of carrying fuel is significant. For short trips my alcohol stove makes more sense.

I got the Whitebox alcohol stove for cheap and its made of recycled cans and no parts to fail and little to go wrong. A light kettle for boiling water is all I need for freezer bag cooking.

http://i903.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps2393d1d1.jpg

http://i903.photobucket.com/albums/a...IMG_0546-1.jpg http://i903.photobucket.com/albums/a...IMG_0545-1.jpg

Runs on denatured alcohol, or yellow Heet often sold at gas stations and auto stores/department stores.
I use SLX denatured alcohol, clean burning, no fumes, no soot on the bottom of your pot. I could go a little lighter than the kettle, but for just a couple ounces the kettle is very convenient for boiling water, and the wide base actually saves fuel weight since it's more efficient heat transfer (less fuel). I only additionally carry ultralight backpacking mug for coffee, and spork. Potstand not needed. Included in weight pic is windscreen and underneath heat shield if needed.

Boy Scouts in the 50's we brought along No. 10 institutional sized cans to cook in
and made a cover over them so the soot from the Fire didnt get all over the rest of the pack.


But yea Open fires are pretty much banned .. developed parks have permanent fire pits .

and as the climate is changing May thru November Fire seasons will become Normal.

the smoking lamp is extinguished . :rolleyes:

No dead and downed wood collection allowed? You can do that in PA, NJ and DE state parks.

When available, I buy wood at the office and tote it to my site. Cape Henlopen State Park in DE this past Easter:

http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=520700

+1. Additionally, cooking on wood is a sooty mess. A group campfire has an aesthetic charm but not a reality for daily cooking while touring. When wild camping, wood fires leave a blight and should never be considered.

I made one of these, but apparently I didn't follow the directions quite closely enough; it works, but I'm not happy with it.
http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=520707

I have bought one of these:
http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=520704

SEALED New Camping Backpacking Stove Stainless Steel Potable Wood Burning BBQ | eBay

It is a very nicely made item, but haven't had a chance to try it out yet.

On my last tour, I took one of these:
Zen Alcohol Stoves - Cyclone Alcohol Stove
I made a few of them, using tinned steel cans from beans, varying the design a bit until I had one that worked well. In fact they all worked about equally well, so it really didn't matter which I took. On tour, I was extremely pleased with it. You want to figure out exactly how much alcohol it takes to make your cup of tea, noodles, or whatever, so when the fire goes out the noodles are ready to eat.

We just use a Trangia. It's heavyish, but it as 2 pots for two different uses (if we want a hot beverage and porridge with breakfast for example, or if we just boil water for dish washing in the other one), a pan for frying stuff, it's extremely solid and sturdy so won't fall down even in the strongest of winds or even if someone accidentally kicks it, nor will it be all that petrubed by winds as the windshield is the best I've ever seen.

It is an alcohol stove so it is somewhat risky especially in possible forest fire zones. An ethanol fire is sneaky in the way that one may not notice the colourless flames before the situation is very near of getting out of hand. For this reason we use a bottom plate in high risk areas so if any ethanol does spill in the filling phase or at any other time it'll fall and burn on the bottom plate and not light anything on fire. With pop can stoves this is an especially big risk as those are inherently very unstable and risk spilling spirits if not handled extremely carefully.
We got a preburner set for it, which is a bottom attatchment for the burner which is lit up with ethanol and it boils up the ethanol in the burner in the end lighting the evaporating gases and giving a massive amount of more power and speed to the whole thing. It's originally designed for use in very cold temps, but I find it works really well in normal weather conditions as well.

I do also have a woodgas stove, but that's more for northern tours/hikes where fuel is not readily available and carrying excess would become tiresome real quick. Wood stoves or stick burners require a great deal of care in terms of placing and site management as it will burn everything under it. But it also has unlimited fuel and can burn up to one and a half hours if lit up correctly.