What sort of cooking do you do?

I have a pretty broad variety of stoves - I have a remote canister, a Snowpeak Giga, and probably ten different alcohol stoves, several of which simmer, two of which will boil and simmer with minor adjustments. There are reasons and seasons for different kinds of stoves. I'm afraid stoves are one of my geek toys... I can't seem to resist trying out the next one. Why so many? I dunno, cause I can? Alcohol stoves are cheap.

You could very cheaply get started with two Fancy Feast cans - make a Supercat and a Simmercat. Carrying both is still far lighter than any manufactured stove. There are plans for do it yourself stoves at zenstoves.net, which also does a comparison of all fuels, all stoves and why you would or would not want to use them.

Pre-made alcohol stoves can be had from Mini Bull Designs, Zelph, Past Primitive and a few other vendors - I have three Mini Bull stoves, a White Box stove, a Featherfire and a Past Primitive. Tinny at Mini Bull has gone geeky making more complicated, strange contraptions, but he still sells his Atomic and Mini Atomic stoves - those are bombproof and work great. The Mini Atomic is one of my most used stoves. I also have one of his Blackfly stoves, which was discontinued a long time ago but a very neat concept - it will simmer or boil based on how you set the wick and has a water bath to keep the fuel from boiling, so it's a fuel conserver. I'm currently reviewing the Past Primitive Deluxe Cook set at Backpackgeartest.org (which is a great resource for reviews on all manner of gear).

If I want to steam bake, I'll pack the Featherfire - it has a knob to adjust from a boil to a low simmer. It needs more care with packing due to the legs. I usually wrap my bandanna around it before nesting it in the pot. I managed almost 45 minutes of burn with less than 2 oz of fuel with that one, boiled water then baked some biscuits with it, and had fuel left over.

The remote canister is a Primus - I'll carry that for group cooking, or when I'm doing a lot of actual cooking, ala car camping.

The Snowpeak Giga is often my loaner stove, and sometimes I forget to pick up another bottle of HEET or denatured alcohol - so some overnights, as I pick up the pack at 4 am and head out the door, I grab the Giga and one of the partial canisters and go.
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