Cooking A Meal In A Tin Can

(Thank you, Two Bears!)

Cooking a meal in a tin can (well almost) ;-)

The cans that people call tin cans are not in fact tin.

The very light cans are aluminum. You can use these quite easily with nothing more than using a can opener to remove the lid and wash them out thoroughly. Of these the best cans are soda and pop cans because they have a liner to prevent the liquid from eroding the aluminum. Many ultralight backpackers made pots out of the 24 OZ Heineken can that was shaped like a beer keg. Heineken discontinued the keg beer can so they have switched to 25 OZ Foster beer can, and the 24 OZ wide mouth Coors can.

By the way If memory serves; Coors invented the liner because their beer had to travel much longer distances.

The best thing about the liner it will act to keep foods from sticking to the can; as long as you use wood or plastic utensils, the liner will be good indefinitely. Then your pot will weigh an ounce or less.

The types of beer cans with the wide mouth; you can pack your stove, fuel bottle, and windscreen inside the pot. I would recommend you put the stove, and windscreen inside a bandana to protect the liner. I do NOT store my fuel inside the pot because I do not want to have alcohol inside the pot I will be cooking food in.

My cook set weighs a total of 6.6 ounces With Heineken pot(The pot is wrapped with about 30 feet of fiberglass wicking so i can handle the pot when hot, A Batch Stovez 1.0 that is specifically designed to cook food in these small diameter pots. I super glued a fiberglass wick outside the stove to speed up bloom times, a 24 by 4 inch windscreen, a one ounce plastic container to measure fuel, and a short pipette so I can wet the wick with alcohol, a cozy to keep food hot. One can literally use two stoves and cook rice for about 30 minutes; then slip the pot inside the cozy, and the rice will continue to cook another 15-25 minutes, lastly I have everything in an Equinox stuff sack that keeps everything together. The bandana inside the pot had one unexpected benefit. The items in my pot are QUIET!

You do not have to buy a $89 Titanium pot, a $10 cozy, or a $4-6 aluminum windscreen.

If you cannot find a suitable beer can pot; make a pot out of a steel can. Two of the best choices are a 24 OZ Dinty Moore can, or a 19 OZ Progresso Soup can, this is the perfect size if you are hiking alone. GSI Minimalist pot holds 20 OZs and costs More than $30. the Minimalist comes with a pot lifter, a spork, and a Neoprene cozy. Your steel can will not be non stick but you can season the can with olive oil and heat the can thouroughly. This is the way good cooks pre treated their cast iron cook ware to prevent food from sticking to the pots before the invention of non stick coatings such as Teflon, Silver Stone and others.

I put a Super cat Stove, and a windscreen I made from alimum foil that is folded four times, inside the Progresso steel soup can, and the cook set for one weighed 2.4 ounces.

My next article will tell you how you can make a cozy for you homemade cook pot.

Nui aloha.

Two Bears