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I'm looking to purchase my first pot set but I'm not sure what material to choose. My sister is my main tripping companion but my cousin may join us occasionally. I try to cook over an open fire as much as possible but we have a canister stove (Snowpeak Giga Power) for boiling water and making soups. I've read that non-stick material won't hold up over a cooking fire and I'm worried that the non-stick finish would get scratched out in the bush but love the fact that it's easy to clean! We've used stainless steel pots that we rented from outfitters before and hated having to soap the bottoms to prevent blackening of the pots and it was a pain trying to clean, especially after having eggs! Does anybody have any advice to help guide me? And titanium is not in our budget.
Thanks!
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The non-stick material doesn't hold up with very high temperatures. Given that campfire temperatures cannot be controlled like a kitchen stove can, the non-stick material won't survive. In addition, there is some concern over their health-factor when they breakdown from high temperatures.
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Yeah, no stick will get scratched up and doesn't do well over a fire as the coating can burn.
We use a combination. A small Trangia, stored in a large SS pot. The not stick of the trangia is great, but when we cook something bigger or over a fire the SS gets used. With that said, the inside of the Trangia pots are showing their age with small scratches and I am about to replace them with their aluminum versions, but if they had SS I would buy that. IMO SS is better for canoeing, where weight is less of an issue, meals get more complex and you cook on a fire. Plus you don't have to worry about somebody else unknowingly stirring with a metal spoon. Hiking, in areas where you cannot have fires is different, like ADK.
As for soaping the bottom of SS pots, I would not worry about it too much, the pots will get black on the bottom no matter what you do. We just wash the bottom with soap and water after trips, get the soot off, but leave the black coating. Once the soot is off the black coating doesn't dirty other stuff. Some say the black helps absorb heat too.
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We have been using the same set of non-stick pots & pans for the last 15 years. They are holding up just fine. A little dented but no problem with the coatings. Cooking on a fire takes a little more effort but is quite manageable. One big part of doing a good job cooking on the fire is taking time to set up the fireplace properly. Here's a video I put together a couple years ago talking about building the cooking fire pit.
Another big part is to use decent wood which usually means packing a hatchet along with the saw. The hatchet lets you split reasonable sized pieces of wood and then you have much better control over the fire.
I have seen pans with the coating burned off, but that was because the folks using them were not only letting the bacon grease catch on fire but also not reacting fast enough to put it out.
Last edited by RobW (6/16/2016 8:18 am)
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Stainless steel pots are extremely durable. Most of mine are over 30 years old and still in new like condition. Aluminum pots would have long since become warped and dented. I do use the teflon coated frying pan that came with my Outback Oven but generally only use it on my MSR Dragonfly stove where I do have good control over the heat.
MEC used to sell titanium pots which I believe would have been as durable as stainless steel but lighter.
Last edited by yellowcanoe (6/16/2016 9:57 am)
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Im with the long time campers: stainless steel. Mine too are 30 plus years old and still in fine shape.
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We use non-stick pots and cook over the fire most of the time. We've had the same pots for nearly 10 years and had no problems (except some dents as a result of dropping them on rocks but I'd call that user-error). The outside of the pots are nearly completely black from soot but that's never bothered us too much.
We are careful with not using metal utensils in them and we don't scour them with anything abrasive - which we never need to do cause they are non-stick.
We have the MSR Quick 2 System Cookset and it's been great for us.
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Teflon is a no go for me for the reasons stated already.
Titanium is light and strong but expensive. Also, it does not disperse heat evenly. Good choice for the boil water crowd, though.
Stainless steel works great. I have a nesting set which I like but, truthfully, I rarely use it outside of car camping because it is heavy. More often than not my main pot is a 1.5 L aluminum saucepan (decades old - don't know where I got it) with a bail handle. Lighter and does the job. I also take along a couple of those aluminum bowl/plates from those old Boy Scout mess kits which nest perfectly into the saucepan. They make great small frying pans as well. My motto is KISS.
As far as cleaning, I find a handful of pine needles or sand does the job just fine. I try to minimize the amount of soap I use.
Here is an interesting link on the subject.
Last edited by Algonquintripper (6/19/2016 9:41 am)
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Awesome! Thanks for all the great responses guys!
Algonquin Tripper - thanks for the link! Really useful!
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