Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Woodstove Cooking Question

Just wondering how many of you that use backpacking woodstoves in your tipis/tents do much cooking. Do you fry fish, bake biscuts etc or just boil water for freeze dried or boil bag meals?

That reminds me...

I need to order a stove jack for that SL4.



I still need to come help you drink all your beer in your fridge one of these days.

Purely speculation at this point, but my initial plan is boil water for the majority of meals. However, I do plan to bring enough alumnium foil to wrap around the top of the small stove I got from you so that I can fry up some liver/heart/straps should I get so lucky.

Works great for rib-eye, sauteed mushrooms and instant mashed potatoes...

If im not carrying the food on my back (drop camp, pulk)I will eat real food.

Bacon, eggs and pancakes with coffee is good. I dont even eat that stuff at home but it just seems like a shame not to eat it with the "hot camp".

The thought to do quesadilla and grilled cheese on the top of the small stove also crossed my mind...

for those who cook in the tent, how do you deal with the smell and your clothes? Also, do you have any issues with condensation build up on the inside of the tent/tipi due to steam?

In a full size tepee with a Knico stove, I do all sorts of good cooking (read fried food).
My experience burrowed into a Paratarp with all my gear and a Tigoat roll up stove, has been limited to boiling or preheating water/snow melt.
If I was a stove designer....
I would think about how to make a small ul stove optimized for melting snow and boiling water.

I'm not that good a cook and packing in food is sometimes too much bulk, so other then the basics or something obtained in the field, I tend to MRE's.

I cook a bit if car camping, however backpacking I mainly boil water.

I can go a few days on Jerky, Dried fruit and nuts. Hot water for tea.

Four of us spend ten days moose hunting from a 12 Tipi with small titanium stove.....half our cooking is done on the woodstove and half on a one burner propane. The propane speeds up the coffee in the morning.

I truck camp only--heart condition, arthritis, etc--so I use my tent homemade woodstove for keeping me and the coffee warm. About the only thing I cook on it is Jimmy Dean sausage 'n' biscuits wrapped in foil. I make coffee on a 1-burner propane, and I do most all my cooking in and on the campfire.

My woodstove is two 3-gallon freon bottles welded together. Bent rod legs, flapper front door, heavy iron flue pipe out the back wall of the tent. Wall insulator is two coffee cans connected with a 6" flue connector. The iron pipe--an 18-wheeler drive shaft--goes through the center of the coffee cans, becomes 3" hot water heater flue outside the tent wall, stays horizontal about 4 feet past the tent wall, the goes up about 4 feet.

It sounds like a fire hazard, but it's 100% safe. The coffee can/wall junction gets barely warm. Before I tried the contraption in a tent, I tried it in my front yard, and I built a roaring plastic-bottle fire in the heater. My original thin wall flue became red hot about 18" from the heater wall and actually melted--back to the drawing board. Thus the steel drive shaft.

I hope to use the woodstove next month.

sawtooth steve
a wood stove will cure condensation in a minute or two. as to smell, if you could get downwind of yourself after a few days i am sure the food smell would be the last thing to worry about. same with campfire smoke, which i believe is stronger and lasts longer.

i like to make pilot bread in the evening and a bacon and cheese wrap with coffee in the morning.

All right Ed, what kind of plan are you "cooking" up in your head. Spill it already! I feel like we are being used here for market research.

Im still hunting the flea markets for a portable cook-stove like this:


More practically, I think a hybrid flat top with a roll up half cylinder bottom could halve the weight of a collapsible box stove while maintaining the flat cook top and allow pot holes to speed cooking.

Mostly one pot meals, but also some toasting and grilling. The toasting is accomplished by laying a small grate on top of the stove so things don't just flat out burn. Grilling, put tinfoil under the grate. In winter, I take a large aluminum pot for snow melting duties.

I use those Dollar Store cake racks on the Knico. They fit inside with the rest of the stove stuff.

Just boiling water, Ed--on the stove you sold me. And very happy with it.

Thanks Rayporter.