Forget those freeze, dried foods. These cooking tools will make your next outdoor meals more enjoyable!
February 1, 2020
Who says camping outdoors and backpacking activities mean having to quit from delicious meals? Instead of starving for good home-cooked meals, these capable gears will bring your joy back! Forget those thin junk pots. Our top picks offer only good gears for every trip.
Best All-Around
This is a complete cooking set for both camping and backpacking activities. The Pinnacle Camper built quality, has impressive performance and is nested neatly into small space. With two roomy anodized-aluminum pots and a 9” nonstick skillet, it cooks fast, impressively and is easy to clean. We also like the user-friendly, detachable handles that make gripping more securely.
It provides full set to serves for 2-4 campers, includes plates, mugs and bowls. Plus, each unit is 4 color code make easy for campers notice theirs.
Material: Hard-Anodized Aluminum
Capacity: 4 plates, 4 mugs, 4 bowls, 2L pot, 3L pot, a 9” fry pan, storage sack
Weight: 3.63 lbs
Best Value
Winterial Camping Cookware and Pot Set
The Winterial Camper standouts as a value set out there. For the under $50*, it provides reasonable features—boils water very fast, comes with a kettle for handily preparing coffee or tea and has stable, un-melted handles. While the nonstick coat makes breezy to cook and clean up.
The set is lightweight, only 1.5 pounds, and can be nested into a small sack. This makes it perfect for backpacking, hiking or car camping. Though the accessories are a quite small, the set is wise-choice for starters and budget-constricted persons.
Material: Aluminum oxide
Capacity: 2-qt pot, 1-qt frying pan, 1-qt tea kettle, a serving ladle, 2 bowls, a serving spoon/spatula, a cleaning sponge.
Weight: 1.5 lbs
*price at date of reviewing
Best for Backpacking
MSR Quick 2 System is an all-encompassing camping cooking set for backpacking. It fully provides easy cook and eat system for 2 (or a bit more) hungers in backcountry. We love every piece which will be surely used for outdoor meals—the set covers everything from the morning to dinnertime with no need anything else except a camp stove.
The compact nested design is neat. It can put insulated mugs inside help save valuable pack room, as well as be lightweight enough for bringing with hiking trips.
Material: Hard-Anodized Aluminum
Capacity: 1.5L nonstick pot, 2.5L pot, 2 polypropylene plates, 2 mugs, a pot handle
Weight: 1 lbs 12 oz
Best Ultralight Pot
This is a great addition to any backpacking kit and perfect for 1 person for prepare dried meals. With useful size 750 ml. (24 ounces), this sturdy, well-crafted titanium pot has good heat conduction—it’s capable for boiling water for prepare your coffee in 3 minutes**.
It’s feather light, only 25.4 ounces, and big enough to hold a gas canister, stove, lighter or washcloth inside to save your packing spaces. If you’re looking for a useful, ultralight hiking tool, don’t miss!
Material: Titanium (Grade 1 or 2, no coating)
Capacity: 750ml pot
Weight: 25.4 oz
**rough estimation when using a Snow Peak stove
Best for RV, Boat & Car
Magma Nesting Cookware Induction A10-360L-IND
Finding an ideal cook set for RV or full cooking set for your boat trips? With 3-ply 18/10 stainless-steel with marine grade, it’s rust-resistant, heavy-duty, cooking great as good cookware at home, and oven- and dishwasher-safe. Plus, it works well with most stovetops, includes induction cooktop.
Say, this is a quality stainless-steel set that comes in nestable—needs less than 1/2 cubic foot of cabinet space—guaranteed by “Gear of the Year & Editor’s Choice” of Practical Sailor Magazine.
Material: 18/10 stainless-steel, 3-clad bottoms
Capacity: 1.5 qt saucepan, 2 qt saucepan, 3 qt, a 5 qt stockpot, 9.5” pan, 2 removable handles, storage cord
Weight: ∼ 13.5 lbs
Best Space-Saving
If your space is too precious to spare a bulky and heavy camping cook set, this X Set 32 has outstanding packability feature for space-saving—the collapsible silicon sidewall with an anodized aluminum base can be collapse into 5-cm high disc shape and weight only 26.6 ounces.
The lid design is effective. The strainer lid securely locks with the pot help pouring water securely and easily. With lightweight, highly packable feature that includes a kettle, it’s highly recommended to save a little space in the backcountry.
Material: anodized aluminum base with BPA free, food grade, heat resistant silicone
Capacity: 2.8L pot, 1.3L Kettle, 8” Pan
Weight: 26.6 oz
Best for Base Camp
Stanley Adventure Full Kitchen Base Camp Cook Set
If appetite meals in the backcountry is your desire, the Stanley Full Kitchen is recommended. Unlike most camping kit, this 19-piece set offers sturdy, nearly full-sized, complete set of a pot, a pan and serving pieces of 4 campers without additional pieces.
An extra-large stainless-steel pot and a 3-ply pan work as nice as regular cookware—deliver evenly heating, good searing and stewing. Overall, with 5.6 pounds, this camping set has a good mixture of cooking performance, capability and packability for camping with vehicles.
Material: 18/8 stainless-steel
Capacity: 3.7 qt stainless steel pot, vented lid, 3-ply 32-oz frying pan, cutting board, spatula with, serving spoon, 4 plates, 4 bowls, 4 sporks, dish rack, trivet, locking bungee 2
Weight: 5.6 lbs
Best Convenient
Convenient, effective and straightforward, the Jetboil Flash is a nifty cooking cup for every trekker in all weather conditions. The clever design combining a cooking cup and a burner together makes it compact and feather weight. Like the name, the Flash heats super-fast—it requires only 100 minutes to boil a 1/2-liter cup. A 100-grams burner fuel can boil 10 liters (100 cups) of water.
Plus, the thermo color-change indicator makes effortless to notice if the water is ready. This gear won Editors’ Choice Award from Backcountry Magazine 2010.
Material: FluxRing cooking vessel; Isobutane propane canister fuel
Capacity: 1 L
Weight: 13.9 oz
Best for Campfire
For food-enthusiastic campers who can’t miss savvy meals, having a potluck that needs less energy but full of performance is just-right. This oven is perfect for searing, sautéing, baking, roasting, braising or even frying. It’s truly designed for outdoor cooking. The lid can flip to use as a griddle. The 3 legs help sit on fire, while the bail lets hanging over a tripod for slow cooking firmly.
Also, the Lodge Camp Dutch oven won Backpacker’s Editor Choice Gold 2012.
Material: Cast-iron
Capacity: 2, 5, 6, 8, 10 qt
Weight: 13.25 lbs for 6 qt
Best Mess Kit
Pathfinder Stainless Steel Bottle Cooking Kit
This is an outstanding survival kit if you need a dependable, minimal but effective cooking system—It’s built-quality, sturdy, high performance, and literally fire-proof. The bottle heats up super-fast for quickly preparing coffee or soup quickly. The nesting cup has a stainless-steel lid that fits tightly and has draining holes for easy pouring.
This Pathfinder is best fit for day hikes and solo camping without a bulky pack while roomy enough to pack a few pieces, like knives, fire starters and food for 1-2 campers.
Material: stainless-steel
Capacity: 32 oz bottle & cup set, 25 oz bottle stove, hanger, spork, bag
Weight: 2.5 lbs
GSI Outdoors Bugaboo Base Camper Cookset ($95*) offers more budget-friendly version of the GSI Pinnacle—practical shape, lightweight, good lids and gripers, and nice nestable mechanism. As affordable price, the Bugaboo offers inferior nonstick finish, slower heating, poorer scratch resistant and smaller skillet. Still, it’s good to go for an affordable alternative.
GSI Outdoors Glacier Stainless-Steel Base Camper Cookset - Medium ($80*) is a good kit for 2-4 campers who need to cook with stainless-steel cookware. It boils water pretty fast, is durable than plastic stuffs (but has a bit flimsy potholders), stacks compactly and is lightweight at 2.8 pounds. This set offers only cooking tools—2 covered pots and a skillet, no serving dishes or spatulas added.
Texsport Trailblazer 5-piece Cook Set ($55*) dose nicely as a mid-range product. It’s crafted sturdily since is made of hard-anodized aluminum. Also, it cooks evenly, cleans easily and nests nicely with a bit flimsy nest bag. A big drawback is folding handles, which feel too weak and tricky to handle.
If you don’t plan to cook on induction stovetops, you might consider Magma A10-360L 10-Piece Gourmet Nesting Stainless Steel Cookware ($170) instead of the A10-360L-IND, our pick product, to lower your camping budget. This non-induction set can work well on gas, electric and ceramic stoves. the quality 18/10 marine-grade stainless-steel with 3-ply base makes perfect fit for boat, as well as road trips.
Texsport Kangaroo 7-piece Teflon Cook Set ($45) is a nice affordable set for those who love cooking with nonstick. It heats evenly, is lightweight, works flawlessly nonstick, and is easy to cleanup. It’s not a die-hard camp set but can last through several years’ worth for car/RV trips.
STANSPORT Heavy Duty 7-Piece Stainless-Steel Clad Cookware Set ($55*) is an alternative cheaper of Magma sets. With 18/10 stainless steel and 3-ply 2.0mm bottom for superior, it offers good conductivity and even heating. But the set is lack of mess of trap for nesting.
GSI Outdoor Soloist ($45*) offers an affordable, small, convenient, and lightweight—not the lightest ones at 10.8 ounces but is compatible—cooking kit for single serve. Both a pot and a mug are sturdy and easy to clean with tough nonstick coats. However, the plastic spork feels a bit ineffective to use.
GSI Outdoors Halulite Microdualist II ($100*) is designed for 2 campers. The alloy set is compact, lightweight and space-saving. It’s ultralight even with a fuel canister inside. The utensils are quite small and impractical, though.
MSR Alpine 2 ($50*) offers built-to-last craft, big-enough size, lightweight (1 lbs and 10 oz), compact nesting and a solid-griped handle. It has no utensil and serving dish but is a sensible kit for those who like stainless-steel tools.
Primus PrimeTech Pot Set ($60* for 2.3L) is a real solid performer as offering energy-efficient, sturdy and solid performance cook set—perfect for hiker and lighter backpacking. With hard-anodized aluminum and tough nonstick finish, it heats up very quickly (rather slower than the Jetboil and GSI Pinnacle), does excellent egg jobs and has a self-contained stove. The kit has only a 2.3L pot and a 1.3L pan—no dinning stuff is added.
Sea to Summit Alpha 2.2 Cook Set ($120*) has a good size, weight, nesting design and workable locking lid. It’s a lot similar to the MSR Quick 2 System, which comes with cooking pots and dinning tools for 2 eaters. However, though this kit is lighter in weight, it has inferior quality and cooking ability than the MSR.
Snow Peak Multi Compack Set ($75*) is by far unparalleled as a lightest camp kit in the market. It cooks great and durable with titanium construction. However, it has ineffective design and too small, which makes suitable only for simple recipes or pack many stuffs inside.
GSI Halulite Boiler ($32* for 1.1 liter) is parallel to the Jetboil as having a self-stove. This hard-anodized pot has solid body, boils quickly and clean easily. Though the weight is acceptably light (8.6 ounces), this GSI is obviously heavier than titanium pots and silicone pots. However, it’s outstanding stuff if you prefer something robust.
Lixada Ultralight Titanium Pot ($26) is a cheaper alternative for titanium camping pots. The quality and cooking ability are reasonably good—quite far from Snow Peak Ti-series but still falls in acceptable range. Something to remind: the real capacity seems smaller than advertised. The 650 ml. pot can contain around 500 milligrams (since the last volume mark inside the pot lists only 500 milligrams) or else it would make overflow.
Snow Peak Trek Ti-700 ($45*) has a good quality that is a good standard of titanium cookware. Comparing to Toaks 750, Snow Peak is definitely better in quality—thicker and denser—but Toaks offers less expensive and roomier capacity. If you want to get highest quality, Snow Peak won’t make disappointed.
Stanley Adventure Camp Cook Set ($15*) offers simple 1-liter 18/8 stainless-steel pot with a ventilated strainer lid and 2 plastic cups that can be packed inside. Though not a quickest and lightest pot out there, Stanley can’t be overlooked for great value, small footprint and practicality for single camper, day trips or morning coffee.