Camping stove, backpacking stove who cares what’s the difference? There’s a huge difference. Camping with a backpacking stove, slight inconvenience, have to use a tiny pot, only one burner, careful balancing. Backpacking with a camping stove, good luck even getting that in your pack. Camping stoves are much larger than your typical backpacking stove, most have 2 burners some may even have a griddle or other features backpackers could only dream of. Having a good reliable camping stove makes any campsite feel just like home with some good meals. Below are our favorite camping stoves.
Coleman Cascade 3-In-1 Camp Stove
No campers will have to settle for cold pork and beans with the Coleman Cascade 3-in-1 packed in the car for the summer camping trip. The Cascade 3-in-1 has 2 burners than are powerful enough to cook just about anything. The cast iron pot supports can carry the weight of even the heaviest cast iron, most camping stoves lack solid pot support. Both burners can be converted to griddles with the cast iron griddle plates. The flat top is perfect for eggs and bacon. Even with the Cascades power burn time on one propane cylinder is still and hour. Enough time to cook 2-3 meals easily or more if you’re carful.
Jetboil Genesis Basecamp System Camp Stove
Need a slightly more packable camping stove to save a little room in the car? The Jetboil Genesis Basecamp is the best. Smaller and more packable than the Cascade while still having 2 burners. At 10,000 BTU the burners are more than powerful enough to easily cook any meal in a pot or pan. Jetboil included separate starters for each burner providing some redundancy and a very delicate gas control knob for excellent simmer control. As with all gear smaller needs a trade off. For the Genesis Basecamp that trade off is wind resistance. Suitcase style camping stoves use the top and sides to shield the burners from high wind there is no such shield for the Genesis Basecamp.
Coleman Classic 1-Burner Butane Camp Stove
No need for 2 burners, no reason to drag and extra burner out to the campsite if you only cook in a single pot. The Coleman Classic 1-Burner is the perfect stove if you only cook one pot meals in the great outdoors. The Classic comes with a carrying case for easy packing and transport. Best advantage to the Coleman classic is that it is butane rather than propane. This allows for no set up and the canister to be contained within the body of the stove rather than the metal valve and tilted canister that needs to be packed away.
Zempire 2-Burner DLX Stove
The Zempire 2 Burner DLX is another great option for a 2 burner camping stove. With its briefcase design it has excellent wind resistance. At 12,000 BTU’s the burners can easily cook any meal or boil water quickly. The Pot supports are on the smaller side when compared to camping stoves higher on our list but they are still sufficient as long as pots are set down easily.