My Camp Kitchen: A Coleman 2-Burner, Lodge Cast Iron, and Cheap Utensils
My camp kitchen is three things: a Coleman 2-burner propane stove, Lodge cast iron, and a set of cheap metal utensils from Walmart. About a year in, I’ve cooked walking tacos, pancakes, burgers, and steak on it, and I haven’t found the meal it can’t handle. None of it is fancy. It doesn’t need to be.
The blizzard burgers
The story that sold me on keeping a stove in the truck: I was snowboarding with my buddies, and by the end of the day we were starving. Nobody wanted to pay lodge food prices. So we hit a grocery store, dropped the tailgate in the parking lot, and cooked burgers on the Coleman in the middle of a blizzard. The stove lit right up in the snow, and we ate for a fraction of what the lodge wanted.
A propane 2-burner is a kitchen you can put anywhere. Tailgate, campsite, ski parking lot. If there’s a flat surface, you’re cooking.
Why cast iron at camp
The stove is just the heat. The Lodge skillet and griddle are what make the food good. Cast iron takes the abuse of camp cooking. It gets ripping hot for a steak sear and it doesn’t mind living in a truck bin. Skillet for burgers and steak, griddle for pancakes and toasting buns, and between the two burners you can run both at once, buns on one side while the patties finish on the other.
Best meal I’ve made on it: banana walnut pancakes. If you’ve only had pancakes at home, make them outside on cast iron once. Different food.
And the utensils? Cheap metal ones from Walmart. They flip a burger exactly as well as anything from a gear shop. Spend the money on the cast iron, not the spatula.
The one thing that sucks
Cleanup after greasy food. Burgers and bacon leave the skillet a mess, and scrubbing cast iron at a campsite is a pain. Some of that is probably me being lazy, but the greasier the meal, the worse the cleanup.
Packing it up
The stove folds into its own little carry case, the lid latches, and the whole kitchen lives in the truck ready to go. That’s half the reason the blizzard burgers happened at all, it’s always back there.
Would I buy it again?
Yes. It’s cheap for what it does and it does a lot. If you cook off a vehicle, car camping, tailgating, road trips, the Coleman 2-burner with cast iron is hard to beat for the price. Backpackers, this is not your setup, this kitchen weighs more than your whole pack. For that I carry a BRS-3000T pocket stove instead.