Cooking With a Recycled Aluminium Spirit Stove By Richard Grant

The Holy Grail of hiking stoves would have no weight, take up no space, burn fuel
that is universally available and cost nothing. By far the closest contender among all
the commercial stoves I have come across is my little recycled aluminium spirit stove,
also called a “White Box Stove”. I saw it reviewed in go! magazine over a year ago
and I have used nothing else on all my trips since then.

All my heating, cooking and eating equipment weighs just 600 grams excluding
the fuel. It goes in a small pot that goes in a beanie.

Unpacked, it looks like this. (A knife and dessert spoon go elsewhere)

The stove itself weighs 31 grams, fits inside my tin mug, burns methylated spirits
(meths) and costs around R155. They are obtainable in South Africa from Pro Venture
Products at www.proventure.co.za. I use it to do anything from boiling water for a
quick cuppa to cooking rice. Of course this compact, weight saving simplicity has
tradeoffs relative to other types of stove and getting the best from it requires
experience and practice. Here’s how I use mine. (Weights and volumes are
approximate. I weigh the food into packets before I leave and can estimate volumes
pretty well knowing the volume of my mug.)

Getting the fuel right
I use methylated spirits, but the stove will also work with ethanol and methanol. To
obtain pure ethanol at a reasonable price you need friends in very high places. I avoid
methanol because of its extreme toxicity and the possibility of mistaking it for ethanol
and drinking some. (Blind drunk would take on its literal meaning!)

You pour fuel into the stove, light it and wait for the stove to “prime” after which you
put the pot on the flame and start cooking. Once done, it is difficult to put the stove
out and even if you do the remaining fuel is not reclaimable because of the stove’s
shape. It is therefore important to put just the right amount of fuel into the stove to
start with. I carry my fuel in a disposable soft drink bottle. A local manufacturer sells
soft drinks in 330 ml bottles which are ideal. I use the grape flavour for meths because
it has a purple cap! The bottles are light, strong and don’t leak. Most important of all,
the cap makes an ideal measurer for fuel. Three capsfull are just enough to boil a mug
of water for example.

Make sure the stove is stable and level
The base of the stove is not very wide and on soft ground it easily topples over. A
square of thin aluminium is provided with the stove but I have found an aluminium
foil ashtray works better because it is slightly concave and fits well into a shallow
depression in the ground.

Use a pot of the right size
If the pot is too wide, it is unstable. If it is too narrow, the flames come up the side. I
use an inexpensive aluminium pot with a diameter of 157 mm that holds 1 litre. I
removed its plastic handles and fitted a wire hoop. I also have a pot holder for added
stability when I am stirring the pot’s contents.

Use the windshield
A windshield is also provided. Although it has holes for ventilation I find that on a
flat surface the stove works better if the shield is slightly elevated by placing three
small twigs under it.

Boiling water
After setting up the base and windshield I put one mug of water in the pot and three
capsfull of meths in the stove. I light the meths and wait for the stove to prime, then
put the pot on. It boils 380 ml of water in 4 minutes. Sometimes if the bottom of the
pot is dripping wet, this will put the stove out, so check after half a minute or so that it
is still burning. With practice you can estimate the fuel so the flame only burns for a
few seconds after the water has boiled.

Time to put the tea bags in

Cooking oats
These little spirit burning stoves are not adjustable so you can’t turn them down to
simmer food like oats, pasta or rice, but the haybox technique provides a way round
this problem. I keep all my cooking equipment in a beanie. I have threaded a shoelace
through the hem and this works as a drawstring. The beanie can also be used as a
haybox to keep food hot enough to continue cooking until it is done.

My best days start with a bowl of oats. I put 76 grams of oats and 310 ml of water in
the pot and use 3 capsfull of meths. This is enough to keep the water boiling for a
little while and I stir the oats while holding the pot firmly until the flame goes out. I
then place the pot in the beanie, put the lid on and pull the string tight. Three minutes
later the porridge is cooked to perfection.

Cooking pasta
Same method as for oats. I use 100 grams of pasta, 450 ml of water and 4 capsfull of
meths. Heat with the lid on until the water is boiling then boil with the lid off until the
flame goes out. Leave it in the beanie/haybox for about ten minutes, depending on
how soft you want the pasta.

Perfect pasta

Cooking rice
Standard white rice needs to simmer for 20 to 25 minutes. This is fuel intensive with a
conventional stove and means rice is not the first choice for carbo when hiking.
Nevertheless I managed to cook rice with a white box stove, even though this
stretches the haybox technique a bit. So if you really want rice, here’s how.
Put 53 grams of rice and 300 ml of water in the pot. Boil using 3 capsfull of meths
with the lid on until the flame goes out and place in the beanie/haybox for 10 minutes.
Bring back to the boil using 2 capsfull of meths and leave in the beanie/haybox for a
further 10 minutes, after which time the rice is done.

Conclusion
If you don’t like lugging extra kilograms up the mountain and you enjoy mastering a
really neat invention that requires some skill but is glorious in its simplicity, get
yourself a White Box Stove.