Cous-cous is my go to for dinner's carbohydrates because it cooks so quickly, thus conserving fuel. But I have cooked other pastas quickly by pre-soaking them for a few hours, it worked fine.
If you can't find real bacon bits, you can make them. Cut a bunch of small slices off the end of a package of bacon, then dice the slices. Fry that up, and drain it. It will keep for months in a plastic bag in the freezer, and for a few days at room temp, or pannier temp.
There are some dried fruit bars called "That's It" that are palatable. The one I'm looking at is 1.2 oz. (35 gm) and contains one apple and ten cherries. They make a good snack.
Chocolate, nice as it is, tends to melt in even moderate temps, if the sun hits the bag it is in.

My best single tip is get a Sigg Tourist cook kit, with or without the Svea 123. You can put the pots on any stove you like. I bought my kit new in 1966 at Sporthaus Schuster in Munich. It's still what we use for both backpacking and bike touring. It's a little bulky but if you enjoy real meals outdoors, it's the Only Thing. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro...&_sacat=159043

For decades we used it with the Svea, though it now sits on an Optimus Nova. The polished Svea is now a decoration. The Nova is a little more versatile and very little heavier. Either stove fits inside the cook kit.

The complete set is a Svea 123, a 1.5 liter pot, a 2 liter pot, a lid which fits both pots and is also a pan, a base for the Svea, a windscreen between base and pot, pot lifters and a strap to hold it all together. The whole thing can stack to become a double boiler plus a water heating pan. Also works with a Primus No.71.

We wrote a camping cookbook for outdoor travel based on this cook kit.

I went to that Ebay link and I clicked on completed listings to see what they sold for in the past. I had no idea that my Sigg Tourist was worth that much.

The Primus 71 had a smaller diameter tank, that does not fit well in the Tourist windscreen, the Svea was held in much better with those two riveted clips but they do not grip the 71.

If you are not using the Svea, I think the MSR Alpine 2 pot kit which is stainless steel and lacks the pot supports that the Sigg has might be a better cookset than the Sigg Tourist. At least I have that preference when cooking for two or three people.

The last time I cooked on a Svea, I actually used the MSR Alpine kit even though I still have my Sigg Tourist.

One thing about camp cooking, do not be afraid to be innovative. This was not a bad mix. A packet of flavored rice and a can of chili for two people.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...51f9b9d1b0.jpg

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...61a8da15ad.jpg

Since I used the flash on the camera, it must have been late in the day, so probably was starving when I ate.

Well, that's probably how much they've always been worth. I don't remember what I paid in Deutchmark, though that was back in the 4 marks/dollar days when everything in Europe was cheap for Amis. I had a look at manufacturing costs, but off the scale for such a limited production item.

Agree about the Primus. Works, but not as good. I don't care for SS cookware because the heat distribution is not as good as with aluminum. Except of course for home cookware where SS has a heavy aluminum bottom. Same issue with Ti, plus Ti stuff is so thin.

Pasta, canned chili and canned mushrooms back in September. Slim pickings at the tiny dollar store, but it wasn’t that bad. Coldish, damp conditions made hot food tastier.


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What is the difference between the Sigg and a Trangia? They seem fairly similar so why not just buy a Trangia if they are less expensive?

Do whatever you want. I admit to mostly buying high-end gear and keeping it for decades. I like the secure stacking system of the Tourist kit. It's one of those things you use for decades and can't think of an improvement. My wife and I would like a lighter, slightly smaller system and we've looked and looked but never saw anything even vaguely as good.

OK, but what is the difference. Like you, I like quality but I want to understand what makes it quality. Is it only the stacking system or what.?

I think part of the problem was that the Svea had a very small sized pot support, not much different than some of the smaller butane stoves today. And it had virtually no wind protection. So, the Sigg Tourist pot supports replaced the Svea pot support and provided extremely stable support with reasonable wind protection. And the pots could not slide off of the Sigg pot supports. Big improvement.

And at that time, there were very few good stoves on the market for backpacking. It pretty much was the Svea, Optimus 8R, or the more rare Phoebus (I think the number was 725?). There were a few other derivations on the Primus/Optimus list, the Primus 71, the Optimus 99, etc. If you wanted Butane, there was the Gaz Bluet with the puncture containers, but that was not very popular where I lived, not good in cold and terrible in wind.

The Sigg Tourist was the only cooking kit that was specifically designed for one of those common stoves. And it was extremely well thought out and very light.

I am not familiar with the Trangia system. But in the 1970s, the Sigg Tourist was the clear winner for a small cook kit. I still have a Sigg Tourist but have not used it for at least a decade. My Svea, the last trip I used that on was in 2014 when I backpacked Grand Canyon.

I am not saying the Sigg Tourist had a cult following, but a lot of people were really happy after they bought it.

Yeah, it's too bad you can't compare them in a store. You could buy one of the used kits and resell it if you thought the Trangia superior after being able to compare them. I like the whole concept of stacking, one tight fitting lid fits both pots, the thickness of the pots.

Today almost no one actually cooks in the back country. Most folks use a Jetboil: heat water, add whatever, spoon it out. It's all about speed, not so much about quality time there and when back packing, light food is the thing. We still use light food when backpacking with our kit, but we make fancy, yummy meals, similar to what we eat at home. Light food doesn't have to be freeze dried. So for us, that's what the kit is all about, fun time in camp and delicious food.

Bike touring, we don't carry much food, just spices, a bit of flour, oil, and the like. We eat grocery story stuff, which also works well with the kit. So say you make a sauce from scratch, put it on top while you boil the pasta, tea water up on level 3, then put the pasta in the sauce pot and the tea water into the pasta pot with some extra water and steep. After tea, use the leftover tea to quick-clean the pots.

Bikepacking (not the kind where you go cycletouring using backpacking bags, but the kind where you're riding tracks through wilderness areas, away from civilization for some days) food prep is probably more like backpacking food prep. As you say, it's different from bike touring where one is daily riding through one to a half dozen cities, towns, villages, hamlets and/or crossroads-with-convenience-stores.

Hey, if there are any of those cats reading this who have youtube channels where they put a stopwatch on blast-boiling 500ml of water, well, your info is cool and all, but that's just one stove/fuel parameter mostly of primary interest to one style of camp cooking. To what extent is the stove throttleable? Can it perform a sear, then a low simmer, and then a rapid boil? Can you shut it off or do you have to wait for the fuel load to burn out? What lighting techniques work, and what lighting techniques work best? Does the burner/flame cause a hot spot or does it spread evenly? How sensitive is the stove to wind? How long after using does it take before it's cool and safe to pack? Does the stove get itself nasty or sooty or dirty in extended use? A cycletourist might ride across multiple biomes and from sea level to mountain pass elevation - is the stove under test amenable to that? Any fiddly, underdesigned parts? Is it banned from flying or from high-risk burn areas or any sensitive environmental regions? What happens if you tip the stove over while it's lit (I mean, don't do that, right, but still)?

So, yeah, I've been thinking about this because the Coleman 400A I've used for decades* has gotten very fussy and temperamental, and is long overdue for overhaul. It's with some trepidation I broach this near-religious subject, but does anyone have a modern-era cycletouring stove they'd recommend (and why does it merit recommendation)?


*And it's been half a lifetime since canisters were available in the US for my back-up Camping Gaz Bleuet 206! :lol:

I switched to Phil's years ago. A bit pricey, but for touring, worth it.
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I have no experience cooking on the road, but with that in mind, I purchased the book, "Bike, Camp, Cook" from bicycletouringpro.com. It's a pretty good read, and I wish I had read it before purchasing my Ti cookware. I don't just want to boil water and add it to dehydrated food.

I also noticed that there aren't many green vegetables cooked in a lot of bicycle tourists, bikepacking, backpacking recipes. It's mostly quick carbs and some protein.

Good points/questions. The best stove solution I've found is the Optimus Nova. It does everything well, and it has a metal pump, which I like. It's easily field-serviced. It comes with a flexible SS windscreen that will go around most any pot. The pump has a nice feature where you turn the bottle over to clear the line and stove of gas before turning the stove off. If you'll use it again in the morning, you don't do that, just turn the valve. It boils water OK, nothing spectacular. It simmers fine, though like all these small stoves it only heats a small circle on simmer, so one has to be careful and stir. We usually wash our cook gear in the morning. The stove'll be cool long before we need to pack it into the pans we just washed. No soot or dirt, etc., either on the stove or pans. We burn Coleman fuel in it. For 10 days, we take a liter bottle 3/4 full plus a full pint bottle. We cook most of our breakfasts and all of our dinners and tend to be a bit elaborate. Others might use less fuel. I can't imagine anyone would use more.

To light it, one turns the fuel on until one sees a bit of fuel appear in the bottom of the stove, then immediately turn the fuel off and light the stove. As it heats, gradually introduce fuel again until you get the nice blue flame. It's a bit of a trick to use the minimal amount of priming fuel, a trick that's quickly perfected.

AFAIK, the stove does not have an altitude limit. It's supposed to be a multi-fuel expedition stove, though I've never tried it with anything but Coleman fuel. It's not banned from high risk burn areas. Some airlines say that they ban all gas stoves which are not new and boxed. However, we have flown with ours several times, both nationally and internationally. The surest thing is to run the stove through a dishwasher if possible. Fill the fuel bottle with a vinegar solution and tape a VINEGAR label on it. Before we had the Optimus, we had our Svea confiscated once. It has a wick in it though, so we couldn't get rid of the smell even though we filled the stove with water.

There are a great variety of FD veggies available for backpacking/bikepacking. Preppers buy this stuff, so it's available. We use honeyville.com. For regular touring, just buy veggies and cook them. But that's why we wrote our own cookbook.

I rarely laugh for more than a couple seconds after reading something on this forum. Your post was an exception, laughed maybe five or six seconds.


I never thought of the vinegar idea, that makes some sense. Coming home from Canada, a Canadian inspector wanted to see my butane stove, she saw it on the X ray, said if she could smell anything, she had to confiscate it. Smelled nothing (it is a butane stove, so has no odor), I kept it.

I flew with my Nova once. I decided it was not worth the hassle of cleaning it and the fuel bottles that much, decided not to fly with it again. But sounds like you do not mind the extra effort. I plan to just use butane for future trips that involve flying.

Optimus claims that the Nova works with kerosene. I tried that, did not work so good, but it did work reasonably well with a one third Coleman fuel two thirds kerosene mix. That said, I did a two week kayaking trip, the Nova was my only stove and most campsites had a National Park prohibition on fires. My Nova started acting up and I had to disassemble it to clean out some of the accumulated soot accumulation in the needle valve. Since that trip, I have decided that I will only use Coleman fuel in the Nova.

For those of you that are reading this and are unfamiliar with the issues of flying with a stove, this provides some very good info.
https://www.msrgear.com/blog/flying-...camping-stove/

I have an older Primus Omnifuel that I also like, similar design to the Nova. The Omnifuel requires a jet change for different fuel types, the Nova does not.

My Nova cooking up a pasta meal in Iceland in the photo, from my one and only trip where I flew with a liquid fuel stove. Every couple minutes I would switch pots to try to do a two pot meal on one stove.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...90ab407db5.jpg

This is what I was thinking about but could not remember what it was. I guess I combined the mythical dehydrated water with this one in my mine. Thanks for the memories.

I've never used butane for backpacking. Butane is close to gasoline for BTUs per pound, so I guess I could weigh the fuel we usually take and thus estimate the number of stove cartridges which would be equivalent. Might do that if we flew again. I was concerned about finding appropriate cartridges in Czechia, or anywhere remote for that matter.

I think my travels are more likely to be in areas where common camping stuff is easily bought. Thus, that has not been a concern for me.

In unusual places, availability of canisters could be an issue if they do not have a lot of people camping and buying stove fuel. I think it is an issue of whether or not there is demand for a product.

I have never been to France, but I have heard that in some areas near France that the non-threaded cannisters are more common. The cannister on the left is unthreaded. But it is my understanding that these are pretty rare once you get farther away from that area. Most stoves that you buy in USA will not work on the unthreaded ones. I took this photo in Iceland, there were a lot of half full unthreaded canisters left behind that had accumulated because nobody had stoves that worked on them.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...aece474fd3.jpg

Someone on this forum in the past has said that you can buy the threaded canisters in France in Decathalon stores.

Even the threaded ones are probably less common than Coleman fuel. My Canadian trip in 2019, I bought a couple canisters in a Mec store in Halifax and another at a Canadian Tire store later on my trip. They were not that easy to find, but I had heard that Canadian Tire had them, so when I got near one of their stores, I bought another canister.

Best cooking thread I've seen so far here. Kudos to all.

Stoves that fit the fuel canisters above. I purchased the Primus because I heard that threaded fuel canisters were hard to find in Europe. The first outdoor store we went into had threaded canisters.

The Primus Duo Stove will take both types of canisters. https://www.primus.eu/primus-mimer-duo-stove-p224344/

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The original non-threaded "Camping Gaz/Bluet" cannister looked like this ...

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...0b9174e2e5.jpg

It did not have the collar but just a dimple on top The stove threaded through a metal cap and penetrated with a sharp pin. You could not remove the cannister until it was empty. The one above is at least 35 years old and at one time could be found at any small hardware/general store in France. Not sure when they went to the collared design but good riddance to the old style! I once expected to be arrested when I removed a half used, hissing cannister at an airport and tried to discard it!

I think that besides your Primus, only the MSR superfly works on both types of canisters, threaded and unthreaded.

I bought a Superfly when I was thinking about maybe taking a trip to France. A few years ago, at a local swap meet someone had a couple unthreaded cannisters that he was giving away if anyone could use them. I used one in 2019 on a backpacking trip.

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Many many years ago a local camping store was going out of business. They had a closeout sale and by the time I heard about it, almost everything was gone but the remaining stuff was pennies on the dollar. I bought an adapter that uses the puncture type canisters on a threaded type stove. At that time I had quite a few puncture type canisters in storage. I had misplaced my Bluet stove, so I had no way to use the canisters.

A few years ago I decided to get rid of some of those canisters. Used that stove adapter and a modern stove on a trip. I recall hearing at some time that if you put a piece of tape over the puncture on an empty canister, it does not stink up your pack as badly. Thus, the tape on the canister on the right. And I taped the canisters together to reduce the number of things to pack every day.

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I remember those in Andalucia 20 years ago. My burner was threaded. Down there, the thread variety was difficult to find at the time. Fortunately, I ended up eating out more often than I had planned. It was so cheap at the time.

Just recently I threw away the threaded cap to my old Bluet stove. I had drained what I thought was my last cannister during a recent power outage and started using a newer MSR with its threaded cannister. Then I found two more Gaz/Bluet cannisters in the basement!

It looks like they still sell puncture style cannisters in Europe but not the stoves, "our most economical and widely available cartridges".

I still have my buet burner but no canisters. The last time I remember using it was in 2014. I brought it on a supported tour to make good coffee for the then GF and I.