This is my camp cooking set, and it is a great 2 person cook kit, taking up very little space and weight for the price.
Prices at time of purchase
All in one?
When buying your cooking kit for camping, there are two main options. You can either buy an all in one cook-set, or buy each individual part separately. In an all in one set, the stove comes with everything excluding fuel. See the Trangia 25 or Jetboil styles of stove. These often offer performance advantages (The Trangia excels in bad weather, and the Jetboils boil ridiculously fast), but are often pricey.
Buying everything separately tends to be a lot cheaper, and allows you to only bring what you need. This often saves space or weight. For these reasons, I went with buying everything separately.
Stove – Vango Compact Canister Stove – £10
When deciding on your cook-set, your choice of stove becomes the central piece of kit when deciding the rest of the set. There are a number of different options, depending on fuel type (camping gas, petrol, alcohol etc.), as well as the format (e.g. remote canister, canister stove).
I knew I wanted to use camping gas for the convenience, and having the stove screw directly into the gas canister made the stove a lot lighter and more compact than the remote versions.
After a bit of looking, I ultimately went with the Vango Compact Stove. This stove offered a great trade-off of performance, weight, size and price.
Fuel – 250g Camping Gas – £5
Having decided on the stove, I now needed to decide how I would take the fuel with me. With camping gas the only thing you can change is the fuel canister size. I decided to go with the 250g canisters (the medium size).
Canister Stand?
With the kind of stove I’d gone for, it made a lot of sense to take a canister stand. This is a small plastic ‘tripod’ which clips on to the bottom of the stove and helps to stop the stove canister combination from falling over.
I went with the Vango Folding Canister Stand (£3), as it was the cheapest option at the time without overseas delivery.
This has worked fine, but just get the cheapest one you can find, as price doesn’t make much difference.
Pots and Pans – Ebay Aluminium Pots and Pans – £15
Now that I’d decided on the bulkiest items, I could finally decide on what to put them in; the pots and pans.
At this point you also want to decide how many people you want to cook for. In my case I went for a set of 2 pots and 2 bowls (this is one of the many eBay sellers selling them). These nest together, with the largest pot having a capacity of 1.1 l, which is enough for 2 people, maybe 3 at a stretch. The inner pot fits my gas canister, and canister stand with extra room, and the outer pot is big enough to cook for more than just myself.
Having two pots also gives me flexibility while cooking. It also allows me to save weight and space if I know I’ll only be cooking for myself as I can take just the inner pot and bowl. These pots and pans are made from thin aluminium, so you wont be doing much frying with them, but they’re perfect for cooking pasta and the like.
Bits and Bobs
Now that we’ve dealt with the key bits of my camp cooking set, we need to get the bits and bobs out of the way. These are the small things that might not seem like much but are very useful, if not essential for your cook-set.
Lighter
This is obviously a key part of your cooking kit, as without away of lighting it, your stove is useless. I try and bring two of these, one of which stays elsewhere in my bag. That way, if one of them runs out or stops working, you’ve always got the other one.
Cutlery
For cutlery I use one of these folding cutlery sets, as I’ve always had it, but I would recommend getting something a little less bulky. I would suggest a long handled spork like this, as it is all you need, and is easy to fit in your backpack without taking up any space.
Scrap Fabric
This might seem like a random addition to the cook-set, but a small piece of scrap fabric can be a great addition. I use mine to stop stuff rattling around, and it is also very useful for drying stuff up after cleaning it.
Sponge / Scrubber
Likewise, I always bring a small scrubber/sponge thing. It squishes down to nothing, helps with washing up, and further reduces the rattling.
Thermos
To round out my cook kit, I have my thermos. I bring this instead of a mug, as a warm drink is a great pick-me-up through out the day. There’s nothing better than a cuppa on top of a mountain!
General Comments
All in all, this has been a budget cook-set. It’s a great balance of cost, weight and size, and you can start using it for not much more than £30. By all means you can get a lighter cook kit, but my camp cooking set has been perfect for all the trips I’ve taken it on. I certainly wont be changing it any time soon.