Outdoor kitchen, storm kitchen, pans and stuff like that. You usually want hot food.
An outdoor kitchen that works outside in nature is needed, in any case if you intend to be out a little longer than a day trip.
In and of itself, you can go a long way with a thermos, thermos and sandwiches 😉 Although most people probably think it's quite practical to be able to cook something hot between the sandwiches, the thermos drink and the energy cookies.
As with most things, there are plenty of options when it comes to kitchens and burners. Some questions you can ask yourself are:
- Floor-standing/Free-standing or top-mounted kitchen?
- Super light or super heavy?
- Fuel? Gas, t-red, petrol, gas, wood?
Here is a brief overview of some of the different variants available.
Top mounted burners
The super light small top-mounted gas burners often weigh under 100 grams. They easily become a little unstable, especially on a large gas tube, but if you have a flat surface and/or extra gas bottle legs, it works well. Primarily suitable for smaller pots, usually a bit difficult to get reasonable wind protection. Perfect as a spare burner or extra "plate". Some examples of burners in this category are Primus Firestick, Optimus Crux & MSR Pocket Rocket.
Top-mounted kettle kitchens
The kettle kitchen consists of a compact gas burner, usually a small pot under a liter (but sometimes up to 1,5 liters) with a heat exchanger. As a rule, they have a built-in ignition, a lid is included and there is room for a small gas container, spork and the burner in the kitchen. It's a bit rude to call them kettle kitchens because they can actually be used to cook food too, even if the pans are usually quite narrow. Here Jetboil was first and has several models, but now Primus also has ETA-lite, MSR has Windburner & Reactor. Smooth all-in-one solution, but perhaps mainly suitable for drinks and takeaway food.
Detached ground kitchen
Sometimes called a spider kitchen, is thus a burner with 3-4 legs that fold in/out. Some gas burners have built-in lighters, others do not. Some have wide burners others narrow. A wide burner is preferable as it heats a larger surface of the pans. The independent kitchens include gas, liquid fuel, multi-fuel kitchens and pure gasoline kitchens. The floor-standing kitchens are actually the ones that feel the most flexible. Here it is easy to pick the burner you want and combine it with different pans.
storm kitchen
The vast majority of people have probably come into contact with a classic Swedish storm kitchen from Trangia. With Trangia you have everything in one, burner, wind protection, pans, take/tamoj/handle. If you drive in the original design with t-spirit burner, it is probably also one of the most reliable options. You may think Trangia is a bit clumsy and then there are plenty of other options. Trangia is also available with a gas burner for a more flexible solution. And also different material options and sizes. In addition, countless copies of mixed quality.
Wood-burning kitchen and kettle
Wood-burning kitchens are often just a few pieces of sheet metal as wind protection/pan support and so you fire in the middle. Quite un-tech and a bit of fun. But in the long run it's quite boring to look for or fix a lot of firewood. We had a KellyKettle for a while, it's a wood fired kettle you could say. Quite fun actually and worked really well, I'm a bit keen on one of these again. Even with Kelly, there is a bit of tinkering with the wood and cone collection and then you constantly smell smoke. There are also high-tech wood-burning kitchens with built-in USB charging for phones, etc. Now that bushcraft is somewhat fashionable, small wood-burning kitchens have become a thing.
Tablet kitchen
Small tablets either Meta or nowadays Esbit (Esbit incidentally stands for Erich Schumm's Brennstoff in Tablettenform). Mostly quite simple kitchens. Used more often as an emergency kitchen than as a primary kitchen.
Different fuels
- T-red. The classic storm kitchen & Trangia fuel. Worse effect than e.g. petrol and diesel. Easy to get hold of in Sweden and the Nordics. It tastes bad if you get it in the food, but it is generally unnecessary to pour cooking fuel into the food. Pure t-red soots properly. T-red is also a biofuel and not a fossil, which can be an interesting aspect when more and more people start thinking about climate and the environment.
- Gas – high energy content. No sloshing with liquids, easy to regulate. Works worse when it's cold, but then most of us sit inside the sofa anyway. A bit boring with disposable containers.
- Petrol. High energy content and reasonably easy to get hold of. Skip the car petrol, it's unnecessarily dirty. Pure gasoline is the cleanest and costs the most. Alkylate gasoline (for lawnmowers, chainsaws and the like) works great. And apparently Alkylate petrol should also have a little lubricating effect which can be good for some kitchens.
- Kerosene – Easy to get hold of, smells more when burning than gasoline. Slightly harder to ignite than gasoline.
- Diesel - works in the majority of multi-fuel kitchens but avoid, it's certainly easy to get hold of almost everywhere but really sucks.
- Firewood – sticks, cones, leaves, whatever you can find. Nothing extra to lug around, but it can take a bit of searching before you find it.
Save fuel
If you, like us, are usually only out for shorter trips, the fuel consumption may not be the world, but on longer trips it may make sense to save a little on fuel. Some savings tips are:
- Do not run the burner at full power! Here a lot goes by the wayside and nobody is in such a hurry anyway.
- Use lids! of course, everyone has probably heard that since childhood 🙂
- Soak in advance and leave to reheat.
- Wind protection. Makes a big difference. Both natural wind protection and one that you carry with you.
- Heat exchanger on the pans. Saves soup but takes up more space.
- Food in smaller pieces is cooked faster. Cooking 4 kilos of Christmas ham takes time.
- A thermos is always good, it keeps both food and drink warm so you don't have to reheat.
Pots, frying pans and such
If you buy a Trangia or a kettle kitchen, the pans are usually included, but otherwise you can fix it yourself and can choose what you want most. There are all sorts of variations here, of course. We think a convenient solution is to have a small pan set if you are going out alone and then a slightly larger one when there are several of you. It is also convenient to have a pan with a coated inner surface such as Teflon or similar material, which means that it does not stick so easily when frying.
Now there are quite a few pans with heat exchangers underneath. It is basically folded sheet metal that saves up to 30% fuel. The heat exchanger pans weigh more and take up more space, but therefore require less fuel. A trade-off there, we usually run with normal pans without a heat exchanger, I think it is clearly more flexible.
As a one-person kit or if we are only out for a short time with mostly boiling water, we have two one-liter Trangia pots. One in titanium material and one with Teflon surface. Then you have one for boiling water and one you can fry smoothly in. For two people, the one we use the most, we have two kits, one with the Trangia 1,7 liter in Titan and the Trangia 1,5 liter with Teflon surface. The other is a Primus kit with two pans and lids.
If we know we will be frying a lot, we bring a separate frying pan, there we have a Primus with a retractable handle.
In each pan set, we have, in addition to the handle/handle/tamoj, some spices, lighters or matches so that it is ready to use immediately.
Reserve kitchen
Outdoor kitchens are usually very reliable, but of course they can mess up and even break. Hoses and fittings can start to leak, threads can break, etc. A spare burner/spare kitchen is not a bad thing to have with you. A compact top-mounted gas burner is barely noticeable in the pack but can save a meal and save you having to paddle into the nearest village to look for something new.
Buy outdoor kitchens at Outnorth
