The pattern of the flame that the burner head puts out also has a good bit to do with how well a stove will simmer. Small burners like those present on the Primus Kinjia concentrate the heat in one area, and you’ll need to continue stirring to keep food from burning, or use cookware that dissipates heat, such as cast iron. This was one of the reasons we loved the Camp Chef Everest 2X so much, which has broad burner heads that distribute heat evenly and make for fuss-free simmering. Performance in Wind Camping Coffee Makers: When you’re up with the sun, caffeine isn’t optional. If your portable oven has stove burners or gets hot enough to boil water, you can start the day with a strong cup of coffee made from an easily portable camping coffee maker.

EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS: Not only is our portable cooking set great for outdoor recreation, it's also an essential addition to your emergency preparedness supply. If times get tough, this camping cook set is ready to simplify your outdoor cooking. On the other hand, if you’re more worried about user-friendliness, convenience and just generally enjoying the cooking experience even when you’re camping, there’s no doubt in my mind that the Camp Chef oven is the better option. We’ll cover everything from top heat to how many things you can cook simultaneously, so by the end of this comparison you should have a good idea of which portable oven is the better option for you. So, read on to figure out which camping oven you should buy! Weight And Portability One-burner stoves serve a lot of cool purposes. They’re great for those short on space, ideal for solo campers, and work great for building out vans or off-road vehicles. And as the name implies, they also work for home cooking.The windscreens, while of ample height, unfortunately leave a bit of a gap between the base of the stove and the grill supports, meaning that wind had a pesky tendency to skirt around these walls and interfere with the flame pattern. Careful setup can help alleviate this, and it’s something to be mindful of when arranging your camp kitchen. The author camping and cooking along the Arkansas River; (photo/Eric Phillips) Buyer’s Guide: How to Choose a Camping Stove The unique part about the VersaTop is its versatile design. With separate attachments, you can cook on a flat top, grill, or even bake bread inside. You just pull off the cooking surface, place it on another, and start cooking. The closer the hand could comfortably get (measured in inches), the lower we found a burner could go. Why does this matter? You don’t just want a stove to have hot and very hot settings; sometimes you need less flame to cook on a low simmer.

If you’re looking for a lightweight option to carry on the trails, you’ll want to take into account the weight of both the oven and the fuel source. If you’re planning to use the oven frequently during a hiking trip, it will require more fuel. In this case, a solar oven — which requires no external fuel — might be a good option if you’re planning to heat up pre-cooked foods while on the trails. It is important to note that the SPRK+ is a butane stove, which while not quite as popular as propane, is still available in outdoor stores or online. It’s also lighter weight than propane. The canister slots into an integrated space on one side of the square stove body, with no screwing in required. We found in practice that a single canister will net about an hour of run time.Editor’s Note: We updated this guide on October 20, 2023, to include additional information on our testing practices, the different types of camping stoves, as well as to ensure that our selections are still current. The Best Camping Stoves of 2023 Sophisticated meals sometimes need sides like pasta or rice. Higher-end portable camp ovens often come with range-style burners to provide more cooking options or let you cook multiple dishes at once. Keep in mind, if you’re using heat in more than one area, your unit will consume more fuel than ovens using only one heat source. Portability

To test how well a stove could simmer, we tested the knobs and saw how low the flame could go while still remaining active. We also placed a hand above the flame and lowered it to see how close we could get before it got uncomfortable. In my opinion, the Coleman oven is better suited for more experienced bakers. If you’re confident about your temperatures and cooking times, then you might just be able to use this without messing up anything. But if you need to sneak a peek every now and then, the fact that there’s nothing see-through about this oven will be a major issue. The utility of a single burner is that it can be used as either a cooking solution for a couple of campers, or added into a camp kitchen as an additional burner for more dishes. During our testing we did this often, and to great applause — nothing is better than having all your food come out hot at the same time. This is one of the only butane-fueled stoves on our list (the other being the Eureka SPRK+), which highlights the relative supremacy that propane has on the camping stove scene. While it’s not difficult to get, it may not be as universal as going with a propane stove. Compared to other single burners like the Jetboil Genesis Basecamp, the Snow Peak exhibits origami-like collapsibility that makes it easily the most compact on our list.Winnerwell has made camping a little less complicated. With this oven, you can now cook for your family, friends and guests with ease. The 304 stainless steel construction is durable, easy to clean, and will never rust or corrode. The oven is also compatible with any Winnerwell wood burning stove and will function on any stable heat source; simply set the oven over a heat source and begin baking. Read Review Falling under one of my 3 pillars of successful overland travel, “good food”, the Coleman Camp Oven may be the next item we add to our Overland loadout. Most camp stoves today hover around the 10,000 BTU mark, which for almost all cooking purposes is a perfectly functional amount of heat. It balances the fuel efficiency well, and will still boil a pot of water in a reasonable amount of time. Stoves like the Coleman Cascade Classic, Kovea Slim Twin, Primus Kinjia, and Eureka Ingite all put out around this amount, and all worked admirably in our testing. The stove itself is only 15 by 12cm in size and weighs 1000g, but can run on full power for over 8 hours. With a boil time of just under 5 minutes, this is slower than some stoves by a minute or so but the smaller size and weight and flexibility of fuel source make this is a generous pay off.