I get a lot of satisfaction from carrying my home and food on my back and staking out a place to spend the night. Besides the hike, camping out means two things to me, sleeping and eating. Today I’ll talk about camping/backpacking stoves. This article should help you decide what kind of camping stove to get.

Every stove is a toss-up of weight, expense, size, stability, and flame heat (speed of cooking) considerations. Different foods require different flame temperatures. I’ve reviewed five stoves, and offer directions for a free alcohol stove.

1. Primus stove

This is a great toy. Mine is similar to the Classic Trail they sell now, and the nylon case it comes in says P-151 on it, but a quick search shows that the P-151 is a very old model. Perhaps Primus reused the old model number on this stove back 5 years ago when I bought it. It folds up small and stores in its own nylon case. Keep the dirt out of it or it’ll no doubt get clogged. Note: I am not saying Primus stoves clog. I'm saying a little dirt may clog the jet. You can use any number of fuel canisters with it including Coleman and MSR isobutane-propane. They give you a hot flame that cooks fast. Squat, sits low to the ground. Coleman makes a very similar model that you can pick up locally, but the Primus name has a certain cachet. These specialty stoves have an odd sized fixture that does not screw onto the bigger green propane canisters. One fuel canister might only last you a day or two, and you have to carry your trash out of the woods anyway, so the little canisters might not wind up saving you much weight. Still, they’re pretty neat, and it's one of my favorite possessions. Primus makes some other models that run on multiple types of fuel so you can get fuel for them if you are out in the boondocks of Nepal or something. Mine just runs on the little isobutane-propane-butane cans.

2. Single burner propane stove

Inexpensive, about $15 or so for a single burner model. Bigger than a fold-up Primus stove, and heavier. You can get them at any department store. The green propane canisters are much taller than the squat canisters for the Primus-type backpack stoves, and they hold twice as much gas, so of course they are heavier for backpacking. The canisters cost about $3 each, compared to over $5 for the canisters for the Primus, so the fuel is much cheaper. Hot enough to fry an egg in a jiffy. These stoves can be somewhat tippy, but they come with a base that you stick on the bottom of the canisters. I rather like these because you can get the fuel canisters at the hardware or department store, and even the grocery store in season. I have two of them and use them out in the workshop and for car camping. The newer one seems to burn hotter than the older one. Again, keep dirt out of the intake.

3. Double burner propane stove

For car camping. Mine sits unused in the closet. It sits low, and looks like a little kitchen stove. The problem is, you connect the propane to it with a pipe that has an o-ring seal, and it leaks fuel like crazy. As I recall, if you’re not using both burners at the same time, the valve for the unused burner will leak fuel, too. You’ll never be able to get the thing to not leak and waste your fuel, unless you can find connectors for it somewhere and make your own setup. Someday I’ll take the whole thing to a good hardware store and see if I can find a better way to hook up the canister. What I'm looking for would be flexible pipe, and use teflon tape on the connectors. My wife likes it because it’s not tippy, but it leaks so badly we can’t use it.

4. Sterno stove

I had a single burner model as a kid, and now have the double burner. I bought it because of the fond memories I have of my old one. They are stable and you could probably refill the fuel cans with vermiculite (to spread the flame) and denatured alcohol. Not very hot, and if you fry eggs (a job that can take a while as they are not very hot-burning), the food will taste like Sterno. I had forgotten that the fuel vapors get into what you’re cooking. Probably best for heating water, canned beef stew, or simmering rice or anything in a pot where you can leave the lid on, so it’s a good choice for simmering or keeping food piping hot in cool weather. Perfectionist trekkers would probably point out that this sheet metal stove is somewhat heavy for backpacking in comparison with other stoves. You could forgo the stove and just use the fuel cans by making a lighter tripod for holding your pot off the flame with a coat hanger, but it this arrangement will be tippier, and you could conceivably spill your dinner. Sterno stove’s low cost and availability of the fuel make them an appropriate choice for camping. Sterno fuel is a solid alcohol. If you were to ask me, I'd say get one, they're inexpensive enough.

5. Esbit stove

Here’s a neat little light-weight backpacking unit. It’s about the size of a pack of cigarettes and you can fit four fuel tablets inside it, great for an overnight or one day sleep-out. Each tablet will boil one pint of water in 8 minutes and leave a little fuel left over. Also good as a back-up in case your propane-butane-isobutane stove gets clogged or the fuel canister mysteriously self-empties, which happened to me once. I’ve only used mine once a long time ago, and I don't really remember, but it’s probably like a Sterno stove in that it doesn’t heat hot enough to sear steak, and eggs would likely pick up odor from the fuel, but it would be great for covered-pot meals or for heating MRE’s. They are used by all the NATO forces. Personally, I think the fuel tablets are rather expensive for regular use, but these stoves have that military-survivalist cachet about them. You'd be crazy not to carry one as a backup. They don’t take up any space really, and the fuel tablets don’t ever go bad.

For cooking and eating, I have a vintage military mess kit, stamped 1965. This is a big improvement over the kit I had as a kid, where the frying pan handle was heavy enough to tip the pan over. You can still get these cheap kits. You pick up the pot by the handle, and it spins around and dumps whatever is in it. I believe my military one is made of aluminum, but some that can be had online are claimed to be stainless. This has a frying-pan and a plate with two sections. I also have an aluminum quart pot, a plastic plate, another frying pan, a handle like a pair of pliers for the pan and pot, and a plastic cup, knife, and fork. It's all ya need.

To make an alcohol stove for free, you could sift some vermiculite with a window screen, keep the big pieces, fill a tuna can with the big pieces, and clamp the screen over it with a hose clamp. You can cut aluminum screen with regular scissors; it won’t hurt the scissors. Fill the can with alcohol from a plastic bottle and voila, a backpacking stove. The vermiculite spreads the flame out. Suspend your cooking pot over the stove with a stick, or make a tripod out of a coat hanger. Make a windscreen out of aluminum flashing and size it to fit inside the cooking pot for carrying. Carry a few MRE’s and some water. You have to be careful with alcohol because the flame can be invisible in daylight, and you could have an accident refilling your stove. I’ve read that you can burn Everclear drinking alcohol in them. Sterno fuel has the advantage of being a solid alcohol that would not spill.

I haven’t tried it yet, but an alcohol flame is probably perfect for melting a cooking chocolate square and warming nonfat dried milk and water for an excellent camp cocoa.

Happy hiking!