dvdwmth

I don’t know why but when I start to contemplate cookware I feel a sense of despair and my brain goes foggy.

I love rice to refeul but typical thin bottom pots will burn the rice, especially with my blazing stove. I want to try being real rice instead of instant.

I have two questions:

1.
I need a suggestion for a pot that I can cook rice in without burning the bottom, has a tight fitting lid, and with enough volume to refuel a 250lb guy. Weight is secondary to utility.

2. The rice I like takes about 15min. How many times can I do this with the standard gas canister and a Primus stove. Not sure if I’ll find anywhere to buy more gas

dvdwmth

Sometimes I find writing questions down clarifying and immediately find my own answer.

So for the benefit of others wondering the same thing, Primus’ website says an 8oz canister has an average burn time of 3hrs using varying heat settings.

Update: certainly not in my stove. Maybe 40 minutes.

gauvins

Turn down the flame up to reaching the boiling point. perhaps simmer a few minutes (often unnecessary) and let sit for 30 mins in a pot cozy (e.g. a sheet of Rova -- aerogel, available thru Amazon) . With an HX pot such at the Widesea HX, you'll probably be able to get decent rice with about 6g of butane. Perhaps run tests at home with a small scale to measure consumption. You may also experiment with instant rice, or do your own (i.e. cook at home a and dehydrate. In the field you'd cold soak and warm. probably less than 4g of butane.

abdon 

I'm one hell of a rice snob and if I was looking at cooking rice on the go I would give this a try:

https://seatosummit.com/products/x-pot

I would also get an aluminum disk the size of the base. At least 1/4" thick, to help dissipate the heat.

Steve B.

Ditto ^

Sea to Summit makes mice stuff

tcs

Hawkins Ceramic Nonstick 1.5L.



7~8 minutes tops in the Hawkin.

Paul_P

You can use a pot with a thicker aluminum bottom and a "simmer ring" to move the pot further away from the flame.

Yan 

If you are burning rice, it means you are keeping the fire on for too long. Turn the fire off while there is still some water left. Keep the lid on. The residual heat will let the rice absorb the remaining water.

That's assuming you're making white rice. Fried rice is a different dish altogether.

dvdwmth

Saw that sea to summit pot today but the only had the giant one.

I love the tiny pressure cooker. Currently cook rice at home in the instant pot in rice mode and it’s a huge improvement over the standard pot and lid. The bulk isn’t ideal but it’s a nice idea for reducing fuel.

I bought an msr stainless pot to try on the trip I’m starting next week as it has a little more heft then the ultralight ones. I’ll see how it goes.

I don’t typically burn my rice but the Primus stove I’m using doesn’t have the most subtle control over the flame and the thin pot I used before would go from cold to incinerate almost instantly. I only burned sausages last time but I was so tired and hungry it didn’t matter.

dvdwmth

I like this disk idea.

so as a rice snob, what do you like to take on trips? I just bought a bag of new crop Thai jasmine that is pretty great and that’s what’s coming with me. The instant rice I brought along in the past just makes me sad.

abdon 

Currently nothing particularly special. Of what is available to me Tamanishiki short grain is pretty good. In a pinch Nishiki medium grain will do.

If you have a gas stove top at home and want to make the ultimate rice you need to get a Kamado-san donabe pot. Forget about just being able to cook rice; you'll be able to cook perfect aldente rice time after time, good enough for sushi. If you want to crank the snobbery to 11 get one from the Iga region of Japan, the clay from there is regarded as the best for this purpose. They are not cheap but they are worth every penny.

indyfabz

I have their collapsible bowl and cup and ob
of their mattresses. Live them.

IIRC, the issue I have with that pot is that you have to keep the flame from lapping up the sides. Could be trouble with an MSR Dragonfly on high.

staehpj1

It also helps to put it in some kind of pot cosy to keep residual heat when it comes off the burner.

tcs

Hmm.

Maybe you're not after a pot that won't burn rice, but a stove.

Perhaps a different burner with a broad flame head and fine simmer control is the ticket. The Soto Windmaster and MSR PocketRocket Deluxe get good marks in the reviews.

plumberroy

I agree with the above poster, a lot of canister stoves have small high intensity burner heads made mainly for boiling water fast. I have a Primus classic trail stove I take when plan on more than just boiling water for tea. (Actually I have around 20 stoves)

dvdwmth

I read about these pots not too long ago but we are switching to induction. Some time in the future we are going to construct a wood fire cooking setup so maybe I could make one work in that scenario.

I thought nishiki was pretty good so I’m curious about this other rice yiu mention. I just love short grain rice with a runny egg on top.

JoeyBike

Learn to like Minute Rice.

Also instant mashed potatoes and angel hair pasta. It takes more time to get the water boiling than to "cook" these foods. "Rehydrate" the food actually. All can be found in even the most backwoods grocry store.

Calsun

The rice burns when all the water has boiled away so it is a problem with the cook and not the pot. The time to cook rice is relatively consistent for a given type of rice and so all that is needed is a timer to alert you when the rice is done. Brown short grain rice for example takes 90 minutes whether I am cooking 1 cup or 3 cups in the pot.

hopperja

I've read good things about the Keith Titanium rice cooker. Never used one myself though.

KeithTitanium

dvdwmth

there is a stage during the cooking where the moisture level is too high to be palatable but too low to effectively dissipate heat from the bottom and as the metal heats the rice in contact burns. Not a problem when you have fine tempersture control or a heavy bottom that spreads heat. It is a problem when a thin pot can’t dissipate the heat and the stove can’t maintain a low even temperature. Anyway, I will live with the results I get. Should be better than what I had before.

rumrunn6

burning? it's supposed to be done, when there's no water left. when it's done, take it off the stove. fluff it up & put it in a bowl, then wash the pot before the residue dries. timing is everything. I also always ad a tab of lube like margarine, butter or a dash of whatever oil is around

also, I remind myself not to walk away from the pot. a little stir now & then doesn't hurt

masi61

If weight is really not an issue you could always utillize a small enameled cast iron stock pot to take on the road with you. It doesn't have to be a Staub or LeCrueset - you could obtain something that would work from a garage sale or one of the many off brands like "Martha Stewart" from Target. You could come up with a way to pack the stock pot with the matching lid so that road rattles don't crack the cast iron. The nice thing about the cast iron is once it reaches optimum temp you can turn the flame off and use a timer to turn it back on as needed for diminishingly less and less time until your rice is done to your liking.

Calsun

For years I used an aluminum cook pot to make rice when touring. I would pick up a can of tuna at the last town of the day and then add water to rice and get it to boil and then turn the heat down to simmer. Once the water gets to the boiling point it is a waste of fuel to keep the flame up and the rice is not going to be as tender if cooked too fast for it to absorb the water. Even my electric rice cookers use an aluminum metal pot for the rice and no problem with burning of the rice on the bottom. A pet peeve of mine is seeing people cooking rice or pasta and leaving the heat on high and boiling off the water and wasting energy.

The Lantern

Cooking rice in the field I think is more art when using a gas stove (Coleman gas).
I had a MSR whisperlite backpacking stove, which could be throttled back to a low flame, sort of! It really ran best wide open. So I found a cooking plate that was made to go over a small burner on a house stove. Heavy but helped, but you still had to watch that flame from going out.
Also I used MSR stainless steel cook set. Heavy for todays standard. You can still get them on eBay.
What I ended up years later was using the jetboil stoves/pot system. Their setup you can cook rice on. I also ended up switching to Quinoa grain and adding a packet of tastebite to it. The Quinoa will be much more forgiving when used on a stove that uses Coleman fuel.

niliraga 

I'd be curious to research pot-cozy idea - once the rice + water at a rolling boil, can a lightweight insulating jacket (over the top as well) keep things warm enough that an extended time (20 mins? 25?) gets you to the same point as a normal 15-min ultralow simmer would.

If so, it could save on fuel, attention time, and even clean-up labor (less stuck-on starch to fight)