Outdoor and Off-Grid Cooking with Turbo Pot

Turbo Pot in Outdoor Cooking Applications

When you’re cooking outdoors under the tight restrictions of limited daylight and limited fuel, time-and-energy-saving Turbo Pot demonstrates major performance advantages.

 

Turbo Pot is great for:

• Camping/Glamping
• Yurts
• Primitive Stoves
• Rocket stoves
• RV’s
• Camper Vans
• Tiny Homes
• Cabins & Lodges
• Seafood Boils and Hunting Trips
• Wood & Charcoal Fire Pits and Barbecues

Turbo Pot improves heating efficiency from open flames by 30%-50% compared to standard flat-bottomed pots. You can actually extend the life of your propane and butane tanks and get more cooking time out of each tank, saving yourself a trip to the store. In this way, you are also reducing waste from empty fuel tanks and canisters.  

Rocket Stoves, Charcoal & Campfires

But maybe you aren’t using a portable propane or butane stove. We’ve been getting many questions about using the Turbo Pot in outdoor cooking applications, such as survivalist stoves (rocket stoves), wood campfires, charcoal campfires and grills. Turbo Pot is great for these applications! As always, use standard precautions when using Turbo Pot with these cooking methods as you would when using any stainless steel or aluminum cookware.

For reference, the heat exchanger base of the Turbo Pot is constructed of commercial grade 3003 aluminum, and the body is constructed of 304 grade stainless steel. The glass lid is rated to 350 °F. Turbo Pot fry pans are constructed of full-body 3003 aluminum with 304 stainless steel grade handles.

Smart Campfire & Survivalist Stove Operation

Never place cookware directly into open flames or on top of charcoals. Cookware should be at least 6” above charcoal and wood fire flame. This is easy to achieve on a campfire but harder on a rocket stove. 

You may want to consider using some sort of trivet to create space between the pot and your rocket stove depending on what sort of cooking task you need to accomplish, you may also take care to not stoke the biomass material too high or quickly in the stove chamber.

Boiling, Simmering & Sautéing

Cooking with Turbo Pot on a rocket stove will heat very quickly (especially when compared with cast iron cookware), making short work of boiling tasks. 

If you are trying to use your rocket stove to simmer, you may find it necessary to use a trivet to limit the heat into the pot, or limit the rate and quantity of biomass fuel added to the stove.

Make sure to keep liquid or food product in the pot while cooking. Do not let the liquid boil off or keep an empty pot/pan over the fire, or there is a risk of cookware overheating and warping. Nonstick pans should never be used with rocket stoves or campfires and are more appropriately suited to cooking with butane or propane stoves, where btu input settings can be well-regulated.

When using Turbo Pot with small portable butane and propane stoves, we recommend starting off with a lower than normal burner setting until you become accustomed to the improved heat transfer rate. If simmering or sautéing, you will be able to keep the burner setting lower than normal, and will want to stir more frequently to avoid burning, due to the improved heat transfer.

Cleaning & Carbon Deposition/Soot

When cooking with fuel sources like wood, you may notice that the bottom of your cookware gets a little bit of soot or darkening in color after extended periods of use. This is due to the higher carbon deposition that occurs with these fuel sources when compared to natural gas, ethanol, butane, etc. You may even notice this effect with propane stoves with lower-efficiency burners. The more yellow the flames, the less efficient the combustion of the fuel is, and the faster you will experience the build up of soot on the bottom of the pot.

While you can attempt to minimize this effect, the reality is that soot deposition is just part of the joy of working with wood-fueled stoves and campfires (And lower efficiency propane burners!). The soot will not impact the performance of the Turbo Pot or its ability to heat quickly and evenly.

If you want to remove the accumulated soot from the bottom of your pot, we recommend a soak in “Carbon Off”. When scrubbing, you can use a kitchen brush with 1”-2” bristles to clean between the fins of the heat exchanger on the bottom of the Turbo Pot, or a thinner scotch brite scouring pad which fits between the channels of the fins.

Enjoy Your Culinary Adventures Outside!

Now that you know how to best use your new Turbo Pot in these applications, get out there and enjoy the outdoors! As always, tag #turbopot to get featured on our official Instagram. We’d love to see your outdoor cooking set up and culinary adventures. Having dinner done quicker after a long day of outdoor sports makes everyone a happy camper!