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Reviews for Personal Cooking System Average Rating = 4.00/5 Average Rating : 4.00 out of 5

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Review 5 out of 5 stars

Review by: climbingnole, 2004-06-21


I love this stove. As long as you know what you're getting into it is without a doubt the best stove you can buy. You wont be able to fry up a quesadilla or anything like that but for boiling anything, rice, noodles, etc...this is perfect. I had quite literally prepared my my food and had finished eating when my friend with a simmerlite was still cooking his meal. If you're going to eat out of the pot, you might want a longer than average spoon.

Review 5 out of 5 stars

Review by: tim, 2004-06-15


Best stove ever. My wife and my climbing partners all underestimate the time it takes to boil water (really, it is about 90 seconds) but they are as impressed as I am with the convenience, size, and versatility of this thing. I exchanged an MSR Dragonfly (a wedding present) for this device and my wife was initially dubious. After heating up a full container of tortilla soup in 2 minutes, from start to finish (including screwing the canister on), she was converted.

It appears to me that no modification is necessary even to use as a hanging stove. This really is a remarkable stove, and provided that you're going somewhere that you can find canisters of fuel, you should seriously consider buying one, even if you'll be melting snow for your hydration needs. (For very cold climes/climbs you will undoubtedly need a heat exchanger to combat adiabatic cooling of the canister, but if you are doing this, you do not need me to tell you it can be risky. The obvious rig in my opinion is a set of two or three pieces of pounded-flat copper pipe, with a delrin or rubber insulating gasket to manipulate the distance from the canister, fastened so that the copper 'fingers' plug into vanes of the heat exchanger. Again, if you need to do this, you'll know.)

Complaints about weight strike me as frivolous. Weigh your pot, stove, canister, and lighter, then do the same with the Jetboil. This is a utilitarian device -- it heats liquids and melts snow. It's not appropriate for making flapjacks or omelettes.

It is the simplest system I have ever seen for getting hot drinks and liquid foods into your body, and it works better than any other I have ever used. The difference between this setup and a stove like the Dragonfly really is night and day -- its simplicity and efficiency completely obliterates the usual "oh, I don't want to set up the goddamn stove just for a ________" objections, and its piezo-electric lighter and one-step setup makes it trivial for anyone in your party to set up. (But, you should still pack a lighter underneath the fuel canister. The piezo is fiddly and, as another person noted, a bit fragile. Mine works OK, but piezos have an uncanny ability to fail when you need them most.)

I cannot recommend this stove highly enough. It's brilliant.

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