HEY so i had the idea of using coals to cook instead of propane or bringing fuel while i backpack, now i had the idea of like a stainless steel or iron box whatever is safe to put coals in but then just cover it with a lid and cook on top? is that how that works? and would it be easier just to go the propane and small cooking attachment on top; ive never been backpack camping before so if anyone has any tips/tricks or suggestions of whats more/less important to bring i am all ears, thanks!
also peep the pack
by Mysterious-Cash4946
9 Comments
Do you know the brand on that pack?
To your question, I can promise you that you do not want to take an iron box backpacking. I wouldn’t even think taking Kohl’s would be awesome just because they’re going to be heavy. So maybe one night taking a few. That would have to be going somewhere where fires are allowed. At a time when you don’t have a burn ban. And then you’ll have to check and see if they have established fire rings and if you required to use them.
Even with all that in place, you would not want to take enough charcoal to cook for more than like a meal. And really even one meal’s worth you wouldn’t want to do serious mileage with it. It just adds too much weight to the pack.
It’s so much lighter to use a canister stove and some isopro fuel. Or look for campsites that do have established fire rings and do allow picking up dead fall to burn.
Gas stove and dehydrated meals are kind of the standard for backpacking. Its light and they taste pretty good these days but most importantly its easy. Tbh after a long day of hiking I really dont wanna be gathering up and prepping wood for a fire. Then you gotta wait for it to burn down some to finally be able to cook. I do it car camping sometimes but its whole process to cook over a fire. Plus you wind up needing to carry all your cooking tools (more weight) and need to do the dishes after.
Unless you’re bringing binchotan charcoal to do some yakitori, there’s a bit of redundancy if you’re backpacking when downed branches and trees that can be used for charcoal. Most folks would use a portable wood burning stove that fits into a pocket as they fold flat if they were cooking with it, using sticks as fuel. Are you backpacking solo or with other people? It would be very concerning if you solo’ed your first backpacking trip without gaining knowledge from others.
Are you talking about bituminous coal? Sheesh. Keep it simple and use something else.
[Burning Coal in a Hobo Stove](https://youtu.be/7MAkFenxJ-w?si=9jzPbnjXkuchyq99)
If you’re new to backpacking don’t try to reinvent the wheel: get a basic IsoPro stove (like the BRS or similar) and fuel can.
On your trip make note of what works and what doesn’t. Adapt your kit accordingly for the next trip.
If you want to cook with coals you should bring a camping grill, or stove (folding, not gas) start a with a fire and wait until you have some good hot coals. If you have a cast iron it can go right on the coals, although putting it on something (grill, trivet, rocks) is preferable. There are Dutch ovens made for camp cooking with coal (iron box), but the coals go on the outside. Cast iron is a bit heavy for backpacking though, especially a Dutch oven. More for car camping IMO, I think you should just use a folding stove/grill and deadfall wood, as long as that’s ok wherever you’re camping. Make the coals on site. That way you don’t need to carry in charcoal in with you.
https://mgrills.com/products/c4-portable-grill-polished-stainless
Bring that
coal has several disadvantages compared to gas. Less energy per kg of fuel. butane has about 49MJ/kg propan has also about 50 MJ/Kg, coal only has about 19Mj/Kg. So you carry more weight of fuel. Second, you cannot really throttle a coal fire. So you can only regulate the temperature by hanging your pot higher, which wastes even more of your heavy fuel. You will need to do a test of how much coal you need to cook a given food, as you cannot stop the coal fire.