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Everyone
has a war story of the worst meal they ever had camping.
I remember mine very well. I
was camping in a group and the plan was to make beef stew the first
night out. Fresh beef stew.
All the right ingredients were there to make a wonderful meal. When it came time to cook the ridiculously large Dutch oven
was pressed into service over the fire.
The temperature was far to hot.
Another pan was pressed into service for gingerbread.
The end results? A
soupy mess of mashed vegetables and shoe leather.
The gingerbread has completely burned on the outside, ruining the
pan, was fine part of the way in, and raw in the middle.
Most of us ended up satisfying our growling bellies on bagels and
peanut butter.
The
right cookware and some preparation can go a long way to preventing
culinary disasters while out in the backcountry.
Even a lightweight backpacking purist will tell you that man
cannot live on freeze dried foods alone.
It is always highly recommended to eat at least one real meal a
day (meaning not a dehydrated, reconstituted, freeze dried meal).
Not only will this help you keep satisfied it will also help keep
you regular.
There
are a lot of options when looking at cookware.
If an army travels on its stomach so does the backpacker.
Make the wrong choice in cookware and you will have one culinary
disaster after another, or curse the extra weight or small size.
This
guide has been designed as a cookware 101 primarily to help you select
the right set all kinds of camping.
OutdoorPlaces.Com makes a strong attempt at having an agnostic
approach to our gear guides, and we do not endorse or recommend one
particular brand or style.
One
could probably argue that cookware has one of the widest price ranges of
field equipment that you can buy. A
small collapsible mess kit can be found in department stores for as
little as $5 that are made from aluminum.
On the other end of the scale personal cooking kits can be found
for $100 or more. That is a
20X swing in price for two sets that basically do the same thing!
A good price range for a quality cookware is from $35 to $60.
A
flexible cookware set should come with a frying pan (that may double as
a lid), two pots, one small from 1 to 1.5 quarts and another larger,
around 2 quarts, a lid, and a stuff sack. Of course cookware sets
can come with a lot more. So read on to learn everything there is
to know about cookware for camping and backpacking.
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