:O Your bike + gear outweigh ME by significantly more than the weight of a cast iron pan!

I have one comment on a somewhat different tangent... I have an Outback oven, and while it's awesome in and of itself, one of the most useful pieces is the Scorch buster/riser bar. You can buy it by itself, and it helps make a thin and light pot behave more like a thick and heavy pot.

This is a pic of my French steel fry pan. I made a rather lucky find when coming across it, the commercial restaurant industry has plenty of cheaper imitations (they can be detected by their warped bottom which will either bow upwards, like an inverted wok, or downwards like bowl after they are used. It is totally non-stick:

The darkened color is a result of heat and seasoning, otherwise the original color would be a somewhat monochromatic silver. Although this pan is not a DeBuyer and is a little thinner than the DeBuyer pans, I can easily recommend DeBuyer fry pans in general. I have an extensive collection of Civil War-1930s American cast iron pans and I use them all the time, but the modern fry pan shape with the large handle and sloped sides comes in very handy for flipping the food without requiring a spoon to stir the food with, and most cast iron pans can't offer that because they are skillet shaped. Lodge made a limited run of their cast iron "chef's pan" which had the sloped walls but the handles kept breaking and the weight of all that cast iron was a major complaint of the chefs, a tourer wouldn't want that weight anyway.



Get over yourself dude. You obviously don't have any experience with high-end steel cookware or know how thick it is. Modern cast iron is only thicker and heavier because the quality of the iron today is much lower than times past, taking far more iron (and weight) to achieve the same result as a pre-WWII (higher quality) cast iron pan, and cast iron isn't refined like the production process involved with modern steel pans. I'm an engineer who did well enough in your high school basics to achieve a 4.0 cumulative GPA in college, a 3.95 cumulative GPA in grad school, and graduate from both of them completely debt-free.

Your analogy is also flawed, because ultimately, the "stove" has to heat both the food and the pan. In your anology, the stove heats the pan sufficiently enough to cook the food after the stove is turned off, but that doesn't mean you saved energy, in fact it is quite the opposite. Thermal mass is like a sponge, you have to soak it with heat before it achieves that cook-after-the-stove-is-turned-off-effect. The greater the thermal mass, the more energy required to get the object up to cooking temperature, that is a basic function of thermal mass itself.

That would be the second dumbest use of cast iron ever. The first was when I met a guy that came to a remote lake I'd reached after hiking for a week. Wayyy up in the mountains, off any trails...and he pulls out a HUGE cast iron skillet that he liked to use to cook the fish he was going to catch. I laughed so hard. I had cut my toothbrush in half to save weight. More power too you if you take cast iron but.....

funny story!!

Well hello there, everyone! Just to let you all know, I saw a few posts that fall under the forum guidelines as harassment. I don't think you all meant it to be so rather than it be misconstrued, I went ahead and deleted them.

Remember to respect other people's choices and opinions even if you dont' agree with them, for I'm sure you would want them to do the same for you. If you see something that someone is doing that is dangerous, perhaps educate them rather than tell them that they are not the wisest. Don't forget that on the other end of the keyboard there are people who have feelings.

Thanks! And ride safe! :)

Siu

What is the lead content on 45 year old pots?

While not cast iron I picked up a Jacob Bromwell 6" pan. I have seasoned it and used it in the house but have yet to take it on a trip. It only weighs 6 oz has a tin handle so you can grab it without burning yourself. It cooks eggs nicely I was even able to do a pan flip with no spatula. This pan will be a nice addition to my GSI stainless pot...bacon in the morning is going to be nice. http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8378/8...04e2a151d1.jpg
P1030960 by DennisLitto, on Flickr

When I went on my one and only (one night) tour, I pulled my son, then around five years old, in a trailer, and carried all our gear on my bicycle. After getting very lost and wandering around in the dark for awhile, I finally found the state park where we had planned to camp--but we were on the opposite side of the lake from the only campground. There was a path around the lake, but I gave up after I realized that it included stairs and wasn't always clearly indicated. The most direct road route involved a highway, and it was around 11:00 pm.

I knocked on a couple of doors, hoping to find a camping spot in someone's yard. I finally found a couple of friendly guys who put my bicycle and the trailer into the back of their pickup truck and drove us to the campsite. I don't know how much the bicycle weighed, but it took two of us to lift it (without the trailer, and with no cooking gear, cast iron or otherwise). As we pulled out of the street onto the main road, we saw a police car heading in the opposite direction. One of the guys suggested that someone whose door I had knocked on had called the police.

Better luck next time Storc

Probably upwards of 210%

It's amazing what people will pack in... I once hiked in to a lake that also had a horse trail access. A couple of cowboys had spent the day fishing and were heading out just as we arrived. They pulled up next to us and asked if we'd like some scotch. We looked at each other, nodded, and took the proffered half bottle of scotch (they must have had a good time fishing!). They then proceeded to give us some naan bread, most of a wedge of brie, and a chunk of pâté! Finest backcountry dining ever.

I have to admit I'm not the toothbrush-cutting type, but I do have to "watch my weight" more than most people. I have a hard time not violating the 25-30% rule, though it is definitely more while bike touring than while hiking.

I weigh about 240 - total weight on my tours (me+bike+gear) is about 375-400 pounds. So for me, a cast-iron pan is roughly 1% of total weight. It works great for me, but I travel heavy, somewhat deliberately. If one is the iconic 150 lb cyclist, with a 20 lb bike and 40 lbs of gear, then the cast iron is about 2.5% of total weight. It all depends on one's preferences.

I lost 33 pounds on the extended tour, about 8% of my total tour weight and 12% of my body weight. I don't consider that to be a bad thing. Wish I hadn't gained it back - guess I need to plan another extended tour!

I tend to look at it a different way... I think of it as the cast iron pan being about twice as heavy as some of the likely options and four or more times others. Thinking of it as only being 1% of the total load can lead to making the same type of decisions on many items. If you did that for everything it could lead to carrying a lot more, even multple times as much. Of course if it is the only item where you think that way the impact will be more minimal.

I know that by watching each item closely I cut my base weight from 45 pounds on my first tour to a little over 13 pounds on my most recent tour. Almost every individual decision was a tiny percentage of the total weight, but they really add up and the weight of my base gear weight was cut drastically. BTW, I still remained comfortable and the gear filled all of the same functions and I found the setup much more pleasant to use.

This is the classical trap many tourists fall into and leads to the ridiculous weights most people carry around. A pound is a pound, if it's a small percentage of your total gear weight, then you are carrying too much. Finding reasons to leave stuff behind, rather than finding ones to justify bringing it, has made my touring far more pleasurable. I weigh 200lbs and my bike and gear weigh 38lbs, I can enjoy the climbing and the experience of riding rather than suffering dragging a big load around all day. I've reduced my touring load from 30lbs to around 19lbs and my bike from 25lbs to 19lbs, now I'm working onmy weight with the goal of dropping around 30lbs from myself. When it comes to travel on trains, buses or planes, having only 2 bags that I can easily carry myself is great. Camping is far simpler too as I don't create the "gear explosion" I see so many times. It's simple to setup camp and quick to pack up in the morning. If I want to go off road that's easy too as is carrying my bike and gear up stairs or over fences. I'm an average cyclist, but I regularly pass other tourists on climbs and marvel at why they are carrying so much unnecessary weight up a long climb.....I imagine they might have a few cast iron pans in their panniers.

On my last tour my 180 gram Titanium pot and long handle Titanium spoon (guessing spoon weighs 20 grams but have not weighed it) weighed about 0.16 percent of my total weight and that was my total cooking gear not counting stove and fuel.

I agree with Staehpj1 and Nun, percent of total is a poor measurement.

If 1 percent of your total is cast iron and X percent is sleeping bag and Y percent is tent and Z percent are panniers, buying a heavier tent and a heavier sleeping bag and heavier panniers would suggest you are overdue to buy heavier cast iron.

But, if you really like cast iron that much, bring it. Most of us carry some stuff that we do not need but like to have. On my last tour I carried several pounds of tools that I did not use, but I will carry the same on the next tour too.

Cooking options for two, three or four cyclists touring as a group are different than for one cyclist travelling solo. Weight and efficiency wise it makes little sense to carry four individual tents or four individual cooking sets or to plan on stopping at four different times for lunch. I certainly agree that a pound is a pound, and three pounds of alloy and titanium still weights more than two lbs of cast iron. Personally I find travelling with at least one other person the easiest eay to both lighten a load and have fun.

Back to earlier mention .. Q: how much fuel do you want to burn just heating up the pan itself,
before you can begin to cook the food?

I'd expect this not to make much difference in most cases. The specific heat of cast iron is .11 cal/g-C compared to 1 for the water that makes up much of most sauces and other food you'd be heating. So if you have a 2 lb cast iron pan that you're using to heat a cup (0.5 lb) of sauce then the sauce will take over twice as much energy as the pan just to initially get it up to simmering temperature. And after that point the additional energy is going into making some of the sauce vaporize (which takes 540 cal/g) and some heat losses (radiation and convection) that are nearly independent of the pan material. So even in the case where the food weight is only one fourth of the pan weight there isn't a very big effect overall.

Nevertheless, I don't want to carry the extra 2 lbs. around all day just to have a little more even heat distribution while cooking when I can get the same effect just by paying attention to the cooking food and stirring/turning/moving/etc. as needed.

I'm going to disagree with your metric here; the fact that the energy spent heating the food is higher than the energy spent heating the pan doesn't matter. The pans should be compared to one another, rather than the food.

By my quick math, your standard titanium mug weighs something like 3 ounces, my nine inch enameled cast iron skillet weighs 60 ounces. The heat capacity of cast iron and titanium are pretty similar (per gram), so the cast iron skillet would take 20 times the fuel to heat up.

That is a massive amount of fuel that is more or less wasted.

Sure, but if over 90% of the fuel is still being used to heat the food rather than the pan then it really doesn't matter much since you'll still have to carry about the same amount of fuel regardless of the pan you use. Or, in other words, 20 times an insignificant amount does not equate to "a massive amount of fuel."

I still think that your approach isn't as accurate as it could be. While the amount of fuel spent heating the pan is smaller than the amount of fuel spent heating the food, you are still using fuel to heat the pan that you could use to heat the food. While it's not a major contributor to fuel waste, all else being equal, I see no reason to waste fuel heating the pan. Incremental waste does add up surprisingly quickly.

While you probably will carry the same amount of fuel either way, a more efficient stove might get you a few more days between resupply stops.

I picked up a sheet of copper cut in a disc, and sit it on the burner , then the light pot on it ,
so the heat spreader is minimal extra weight.. ..

burning unleaded petrol means a stop for a few p of gasoline occasionally.

Some of the math here might be correct but the concept is a little off. The food requires calories of heat to cook it and the metal container is just a transfer medium. Like a larger battery, a thicker pot can hold more calories and makes a more stable power source. The reason restaurants use thick cast iron grills for searing food is that they can hold enough heat to maintain a high temperature so that a large addition of steaks, hamburgers and other food doesn't cause an immediate drop in grill surface temperature.

Thats the same reason most good quality pots and pans have aluminum or copper cores and heavier bases. It makes them both more effecient and more effective. But none of that is a substitute for knowing how to cook, and all of it is probably incidental if the only objective is boiling water.

You are mostly correct but you aren't taking into account the thermal conductivity of the metal as mentioned by Carbonfiberboy in post #22. The heat capacity of aluminum is actually higher than that of cast iron or titanium. That means that it takes more energy to heat up an equivalent amount of aluminum than cast iron or titanium. However, the thermal conductivity, i.e. the heat that can get through the metal, is much higher for aluminum and somewhat higher for cast iron. But the thermal conductivity of titanium is appallingly low. Essentially, like cast iron (only worse), the heat poured into pan doesn't get through the pan to do the work and you waste even more fuel.

Yeah - I guess anyone can make numbers say anything they want them to say just by selectively ignoring other information. Here's someone else's opinion:
Source: heavy-metal-the-science-of-cast-iron-cooking at http://www.cookingissues.com