Cooker choices

What do peeps cook with / on when travelling. We're looking at options at the moment and boy, are there lots. Any fuels to avoid or specifically consider? And what are the 'best' stoves to look at?

The wife's looking at the Coleman duel fuel stoves but I've no idea

I pretty much stick with the Coleman two-burner stove. I run mine on unleaded petrol and it works fine. We used to be issued them in the Canadian military and used them in the high arctic, jungles, mountains etc. They took a beating but with some basic maintenance never let us down. I would steer clear of the discount versions but the Coleman's suit me fine.

We nipped over to Go Outdoor today to check the coleman out - very nice. Gonna get it off the net though as GO are massively over priced! Probably gonna go for a Kelly Kettle too

I hated the Coleman Duel fuel stove. I had a 2 burner Maxco Tudor stainless steel stove (gas) and my hubby was adamant that the Coleman was the way to go. Would have been great if he was doing the cooking but I hated it, so we went back to the gas stove. Thank goodness we kept it

I much prefer petrol to gas, they are much cheaper to run, much hotter, and much lighter and compact as you don't have to carry larger gas bottles or millions of disposable canisters.

I have two Olympus two burner petrol stoves which are over 60 and 40 years old, and have been ever reliable and I can't fault them when you only change the seals every 30 years or so, and you only clean the jets mid season and at the end of the season. You do pay top dollar for them as they are the Rolls Royce of petrol cookers, but with such a long life span you buy them once, unlike gas cookers which you tend to buy several of during your lifetime.

I also have two single burners and these are fairly new as both are less than 20 years old, and are very useful.

Petrol is beneficial if you are at altitude as they require less oxygen and many people notice a drop off in performance from gas when they are at altitude, but nothing with petrol, hence they are the only cookers used by serious mountaineers. Because they are much hotter than gas they use much less fuel, hence they are cheaper to run, and if you are silly enough to run out of fuel' obtaining petrol is much easier than gas due to differing bottle types around the world.

My preferred choice is petrol and I will never change from this unless something significant replaces it.

Well after spending a couple of weeks in Morocco in the wilds away from big towns and cities I decided for my next trip I would switch from gas to petrol for cooking the availability of fuel being the main consideration and secondly pack size and weight.

My new Coleman 2 burner unleaded fuel stove arrived last week and as its not stopped raining since returning from overseas I decided to give it a test run in the man cave today.

First impressions, well made if not just a little tinny and very simple which is a bonus not much to go wrong.
After reading the instructions, no really I did read them (wife wouldn't believe me) I found it easy to fill and light and I boiled a kettle in no time at all.
I'm now looking forward to giving it a real trial asap think I may have to take to the wilds of Scotland soon and give it a thrashing.

I am still going to keep my small coleman backpacking stove in the car for the odd impromptu brew up but I'm a serious convert to cooking with petrol   

You call heating up a tin of beans "cooking"?   

Tom Mc wrote:

You call heating up a tin of beans "cooking"?   

Cheeky git, I can remember you drooling over a very nice bit of steak and some humongous prawn along with a special fried rice cooking on my Cadac on the Landy Rally.
Anyway I can always eat beans cold   

Hook, line and sinker   

Tom, its called the circle of energy, use petrol to cook beans, eat beans, produce natural gas for gas cooker and hey presto energy turned from one form to another.

Trangia. Use as supplied or with a gas conversion..

For proper cooking Bush Pig

Hot water for coffee or tea. Kelly kettle

I use a two burner stove in the camper trailer but also love using our "Dreampot."

http://www.dreampot.com.au/

We can cook a meal while out 4x4'ing or fishing and it's ready when we want it. No fuss, no effort.

Never heard of the DreamPot before, amazing considering they've been on the market since 1990. You'd think somebody would have been selling then over here by now. Clearly a versatile piece of kit.

Rather dear though, not for us.