Cooking Equipment

Cooking while backpacking can produce wonderful results with the new light weight burners and freezer dried foods. The freeze-dried foods require only the boiling of water mostly, and utensils. Highland Hiking highly recommends these freeze-dried foods and desserts because of the ease to preparation in the amounts of carbohydrates fats and proteins with these dinners.

For those with more patience and different tastes, cooking a good meal is manageable.

Backpacking stoves have seen the most changes in equipment. A simple screw on mechanism to a bottle of fuel weights less than 3 pounds combined. Highland hiking will review two of these three backpacking stoves. The third stove, solid fuels are less used because of weight and fuel problems:

• Liquid Fuel Stoves such as Coleman burn white gas, also known as kerosene. These stoves burn well but often burn dirty do not burn well above 7000 thousand feet.
• Compressed Gas Stoves burn butane or propane gas. It is clean, Burns well, and the burner and stove weigh significantly less than the Coleman stoves. Containers are disposable but are sometimes hard to tell when they are low. Like liquid fuels it Burns less at higher altitudes. These are ADL for cooking alone or for two people.

When cooking for larger groups, need more equipment to keep the hygiene high and meet the volume requirements. For groups up to 12 people, you would need the following at a minimum:

• Pots with lead, a 2 L and a 4 L.
• Spatula and mixing spoon
• Pot gripper, strainer, and plastic pot brush.
• Biodegradable soap and plastic bags for storing food and utensils separately.

For the lone packer the cooking utensil kits that have a frying pan, pot and lid and bowl makes for a cozy cookout. The lone kit weighs the least but stainless steel will last longer and clean easier. A pot with nonstick coating cleans the best but the coating wears down when you wash the plate in sand in loose dirt.

Lexan-plastic utensils are extremely durable harsh abrasives will scratch them and hold bacteria. Please be careful in matters of hygiene for food and water. Nothing is more uncomfortable and debilitating as an internal bug.

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