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Best Tips for Cooking on the Road

Old 12-10-20, 08:43 PM
  #76  
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Originally Posted by Bassmanbob
I have no experience cooking on the road, but with that in mind, I purchased the book, "Bike, Camp, Cook" from bicycletouringpro.com. It's a pretty good read, and I wish I had read it before purchasing my Ti cookware. I don't just want to boil water and add it to dehydrated food.

I also noticed that there aren't many green vegetables cooked in a lot of bicycle tourists, bikepacking, backpacking recipes. It's mostly quick carbs and some protein.
There are a great variety of FD veggies available for backpacking/bikepacking. Preppers buy this stuff, so it's available. We use honeyville.com. For regular touring, just buy veggies and cook them. But that's why we wrote our own cookbook.
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Old 12-11-20, 07:02 AM
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Originally Posted by tcs
I switched to Phil's years ago. A bit pricey, but for touring, worth it.
I rarely laugh for more than a couple seconds after reading something on this forum. Your post was an exception, laughed maybe five or six seconds.


Originally Posted by Carbonfiberboy
Good points/questions. The best stove solution I've found is the Optimus Nova. It does everything well, and it has a metal pump, which I like. It's easily field-serviced. It comes with a flexible SS windscreen that will go around most any pot. The pump has a nice feature where you turn the bottle over to clear the line and stove of gas before turning the stove off. If you'll use it again in the morning, you don't do that, just turn the valve. It boils water OK, nothing spectacular. It simmers fine, though like all these small stoves it only heats a small circle on simmer, so one has to be careful and stir. We usually wash our cook gear in the morning. The stove'll be cool long before we need to pack it into the pans we just washed. No soot or dirt, etc., either on the stove or pans. We burn Coleman fuel in it. For 10 days, we take a liter bottle 3/4 full plus a full pint bottle. We cook most of our breakfasts and all of our dinners and tend to be a bit elaborate. Others might use less fuel. I can't imagine anyone would use more.

To light it, one turns the fuel on until one sees a bit of fuel appear in the bottom of the stove, then immediately turn the fuel off and light the stove. As it heats, gradually introduce fuel again until you get the nice blue flame. It's a bit of a trick to use the minimal amount of priming fuel, a trick that's quickly perfected.

AFAIK, the stove does not have an altitude limit. It's supposed to be a multi-fuel expedition stove, though I've never tried it with anything but Coleman fuel. It's not banned from high risk burn areas. Some airlines say that they ban all gas stoves which are not new and boxed. However, we have flown with ours several times, both nationally and internationally. The surest thing is to run the stove through a dishwasher if possible. Fill the fuel bottle with a vinegar solution and tape a VINEGAR label on it. Before we had the Optimus, we had our Svea confiscated once. It has a wick in it though, so we couldn't get rid of the smell even though we filled the stove with water.
I never thought of the vinegar idea, that makes some sense. Coming home from Canada, a Canadian inspector wanted to see my butane stove, she saw it on the X ray, said if she could smell anything, she had to confiscate it. Smelled nothing (it is a butane stove, so has no odor), I kept it.

I flew with my Nova once. I decided it was not worth the hassle of cleaning it and the fuel bottles that much, decided not to fly with it again. But sounds like you do not mind the extra effort. I plan to just use butane for future trips that involve flying.

Optimus claims that the Nova works with kerosene. I tried that, did not work so good, but it did work reasonably well with a one third Coleman fuel two thirds kerosene mix. That said, I did a two week kayaking trip, the Nova was my only stove and most campsites had a National Park prohibition on fires. My Nova started acting up and I had to disassemble it to clean out some of the accumulated soot accumulation in the needle valve. Since that trip, I have decided that I will only use Coleman fuel in the Nova.

For those of you that are reading this and are unfamiliar with the issues of flying with a stove, this provides some very good info.
https://www.msrgear.com/blog/flying-...camping-stove/

I have an older Primus Omnifuel that I also like, similar design to the Nova. The Omnifuel requires a jet change for different fuel types, the Nova does not.

My Nova cooking up a pasta meal in Iceland in the photo, from my one and only trip where I flew with a liquid fuel stove. Every couple minutes I would switch pots to try to do a two pot meal on one stove.

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Old 12-11-20, 07:46 AM
  #78  
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Originally Posted by tcs
I switched to Phil's years ago. A bit pricey, but for touring, worth it.
This is what I was thinking about but could not remember what it was. I guess I combined the mythical dehydrated water with this one in my mine. Thanks for the memories.
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Old 12-11-20, 01:06 PM
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Originally Posted by Tourist in MSN
<snip> I plan to just use butane for future trips that involve flying.

<snip>
I've never used butane for backpacking. Butane is close to gasoline for BTUs per pound, so I guess I could weigh the fuel we usually take and thus estimate the number of stove cartridges which would be equivalent. Might do that if we flew again. I was concerned about finding appropriate cartridges in Czechia, or anywhere remote for that matter.
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Old 12-11-20, 04:53 PM
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Originally Posted by Carbonfiberboy
I've never used butane for backpacking. Butane is close to gasoline for BTUs per pound, so I guess I could weigh the fuel we usually take and thus estimate the number of stove cartridges which would be equivalent. Might do that if we flew again. I was concerned about finding appropriate cartridges in Czechia, or anywhere remote for that matter.
I think my travels are more likely to be in areas where common camping stuff is easily bought. Thus, that has not been a concern for me.

In unusual places, availability of canisters could be an issue if they do not have a lot of people camping and buying stove fuel. I think it is an issue of whether or not there is demand for a product.

I have never been to France, but I have heard that in some areas near France that the non-threaded cannisters are more common. The cannister on the left is unthreaded. But it is my understanding that these are pretty rare once you get farther away from that area. Most stoves that you buy in USA will not work on the unthreaded ones. I took this photo in Iceland, there were a lot of half full unthreaded canisters left behind that had accumulated because nobody had stoves that worked on them.



Someone on this forum in the past has said that you can buy the threaded canisters in France in Decathalon stores.

Even the threaded ones are probably less common than Coleman fuel. My Canadian trip in 2019, I bought a couple canisters in a Mec store in Halifax and another at a Canadian Tire store later on my trip. They were not that easy to find, but I had heard that Canadian Tire had them, so when I got near one of their stores, I bought another canister.
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Old 12-11-20, 08:00 PM
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Best cooking thread I've seen so far here. Kudos to all.
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Old 12-11-20, 11:50 PM
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Originally Posted by Tourist in MSN
I think my travels are more likely to be in areas where common camping stuff is easily bought. Thus, that has not been a concern for me.

In unusual places, availability of canisters could be an issue if they do not have a lot of people camping and buying stove fuel. I think it is an issue of whether or not there is demand for a product.

I have never been to France, but I have heard that in some areas near France that the non-threaded cannisters are more common. The cannister on the left is unthreaded. But it is my understanding that these are pretty rare once you get farther away from that area. Most stoves that you buy in USA will not work on the unthreaded ones. I took this photo in Iceland, there were a lot of half full unthreaded canisters left behind that had accumulated because nobody had stoves that worked on them.



Someone on this forum in the past has said that you can buy the threaded canisters in France in Decathalon stores.

Even the threaded ones are probably less common than Coleman fuel. My Canadian trip in 2019, I bought a couple canisters in a Mec store in Halifax and another at a Canadian Tire store later on my trip. They were not that easy to find, but I had heard that Canadian Tire had them, so when I got near one of their stores, I bought another canister.

Stoves that fit the fuel canisters above. I purchased the Primus because I heard that threaded fuel canisters were hard to find in Europe. The first outdoor store we went into had threaded canisters.

The Primus Duo Stove will take both types of canisters. https://www.primus.eu/primus-mimer-duo-stove-p224344/




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Old 12-12-20, 05:50 AM
  #83  
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Originally Posted by Tourist in MSN
I have never been to France, but I have heard that in some areas near France that the non-threaded cannisters are more common
The original non-threaded "Camping Gaz/Bluet" cannister looked like this ...



It did not have the collar but just a dimple on top The stove threaded through a metal cap and penetrated with a sharp pin. You could not remove the cannister until it was empty. The one above is at least 35 years old and at one time could be found at any small hardware/general store in France. Not sure when they went to the collared design but good riddance to the old style! I once expected to be arrested when I removed a half used, hissing cannister at an airport and tried to discard it!
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Old 12-12-20, 08:10 AM
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Originally Posted by Doug64
Stoves that fit the fuel canisters above. I purchased the Primus because I heard that threaded fuel canisters were hard to find in Europe. The first outdoor store we went into had threaded canisters.

The Primus Duo Stove will take both types of canisters. https://www.primus.eu/primus-mimer-duo-stove-p224344/



I think that besides your Primus, only the MSR superfly works on both types of canisters, threaded and unthreaded.

I bought a Superfly when I was thinking about maybe taking a trip to France. A few years ago, at a local swap meet someone had a couple unthreaded cannisters that he was giving away if anyone could use them. I used one in 2019 on a backpacking trip.



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Old 12-12-20, 08:29 AM
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Originally Posted by BobG
The original non-threaded "Camping Gaz/Bluet" cannister looked like this ...



It did not have the collar but just a dimple on top The stove threaded through a metal cap and penetrated with a sharp pin. You could not remove the cannister until it was empty. The one above is at least 35 years old and at one time could be found at any small hardware/general store in France. Not sure when they went to the collared design but good riddance to the old style! I once expected to be arrested when I removed a half used, hissing cannister at an airport and tried to discard it!
Many many years ago a local camping store was going out of business. They had a closeout sale and by the time I heard about it, almost everything was gone but the remaining stuff was pennies on the dollar. I bought an adapter that uses the puncture type canisters on a threaded type stove. At that time I had quite a few puncture type canisters in storage. I had misplaced my Bluet stove, so I had no way to use the canisters.

A few years ago I decided to get rid of some of those canisters. Used that stove adapter and a modern stove on a trip. I recall hearing at some time that if you put a piece of tape over the puncture on an empty canister, it does not stink up your pack as badly. Thus, the tape on the canister on the right. And I taped the canisters together to reduce the number of things to pack every day.

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Old 12-12-20, 08:51 AM
  #86  
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Originally Posted by BobG
The original non-threaded "Camping Gaz/Bluet" cannister looked like this ...



It did not have the collar but just a dimple on top The stove threaded through a metal cap and penetrated with a sharp pin. You could not remove the cannister until it was empty. The one above is at least 35 years old and at one time could be found at any small hardware/general store in France. Not sure when they went to the collared design but good riddance to the old style! I once expected to be arrested when I removed a half used, hissing cannister at an airport and tried to discard it!
I remember those in Andalucia 20 years ago. My burner was threaded. Down there, the thread variety was difficult to find at the time. Fortunately, I ended up eating out more often than I had planned. It was so cheap at the time.
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Old 12-12-20, 10:00 AM
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Just recently I threw away the threaded cap to my old Bluet stove. I had drained what I thought was my last cannister during a recent power outage and started using a newer MSR with its threaded cannister. Then I found two more Gaz/Bluet cannisters in the basement!

It looks like they still sell puncture style cannisters in Europe but not the stoves, "our most economical and widely available cartridges".

Last edited by BobG; 12-12-20 at 11:46 AM.
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Old 12-12-20, 03:50 PM
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I still have my buet burner but no canisters. The last time I remember using it was in 2014. I brought it on a supported tour to make good coffee for the then GF and I.
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