As a kid growing up in New Hampshire, camping was a summertime rite of passage. I particularly loved our second-grade class trip to Jigger Johnson Campground up on the Kancamagus Highway, and all of the weird scenes that were part of it. Freddy Gallietta falling into the Swift River. The magic glow of the Primus gas lamp. The musty smell of our green canvas tent. My dad and Mr. Magoon sleeping in the back of Dad's VW wagon because the mosquitos were so bad. On the picnic table, there was Dad's Coleman stove, an unfolding wonder with cool and mysterious parts, like the metal flaps that emerged from either side of the lid to shield the burners from the wind. And, of course, that bright-red refillable fuel tank.
Decades later, when it came time to buy a stove for car camping, I didn't have a choice. The two-burner Coleman Classic Propane Stove is nostalgia in a box and a steal at around 45 bucks.
Perhaps that lack of choice was a good thing. There are better-rated, more powerful, and better-designed car camping stoves out there. (And let's be clear that I'm talking about camp stoves that only need to slide into and out of the trunk of your Subaru, not their tinier, colicky cousins that you haul up a mountain in your backpack.)
The Coleman is well suited to making the food you want to cook while camping, those tasty one-pot meals with easy cleanup. It’s the kind of food you'd like some plaid-clad hunk or hunkette (or both!) to serve to you next to a campfire. Bacon and eggs or pancakes on a chilly fall morning. Burgers, chili, or spaghetti at sunset. Flavorful food that's easy to make helps maintain the zen.
I was reminded of this on a recent camping trip with my wife Elisabeth, where I was jarred as ever by the peculiarity of going from the 1-to-10 precision controls of my home stove to the kooky two and a half revolutions of the Coleman’s knobs, whose positions correspond to no particular heat level. Strange as it sounds coming from the guy who prefers home stove burners that you can control to the degree, I like this rudimentary design. It makes you pay more attention to the food you're cooking. Pancakes not bubbling to indicate that it's time to flip them? Turn it up. Chili boiling over? Turn it down. Camping food should not be complex food. Use your senses. Look at the flame for a visual. Listen to the hiss of the gas and the sizzle in the pan. Cook fully analog like this, and you are bound to learn something.
While you're at it, pour a glass of wine and revel in its aromas wrapped in fresh air and pine. It's nice.
On that trip with Elisabeth, we made pancakes and oatmeal, sautéed chicken thighs and combined them with pasta, ate mole with sausages, reveled in mac and cheese with canned green chilis. We got particularly high bang for the buck with red lentils in a jarred curry, served with diced red peppers.
After our trip, I ran a few rudimentary tests at home, learning that it took 16 minutes to bring a gallon of room-temperature water to a boil in an uncovered 10-inch pasta pot on an 80-degree day. I used that hot water to make cool soba noodles in chile sauce, which would make an excellent hot-day camping dinner. I also made lamb burgers that got plenty crusty on the top and bottom before the inside slid past a perfect medium rare. All that to say the Coleman is not a rocket ship, but it'll easily do what you need it to do while you're camping.
The Coleman certainly has its flaws, and I'll get to those, but let's pause here and talk about an industry-wide problem: the lack of easy recycling for the camp fuel canisters. Millions of them just end up at the dump for lack of better options. BernzOmatic has a "CylinderSafe" program that apparently helps you figure out how to dispose of the metal torpedoes, but when I plugged my zip code into the web-based tool, it produced a dead link. Even in environmentally-minded Seattle there's almost nothing to do with them. Seattle's nifty "Where Does It Go" website tells you how to easily dispose of all sorts of things, but suggests the garbage as its first option for camping fuel canisters. It does mention that Coleman canisters can be brought to a hazardous waste facility—five miles away in my case—or I can drive further afield and pay to drop them off at a store that's run by a trash company (and is closed during the pandemic).
It's 2020. Can’t we figure out a way to make this easier? The glaciers are melting and California—a very nice place to go camping—is on fire! Gimme some more earth-friendly options here! Coleman, this would be a great opportunity to lead the way. One easy suggestion that springs to mind would be to have canister recycle stations at the hardware stores where you buy them. Another might be to go back to the refillable tank.
The stove itself also has flaws that are minor but surprising. Just because the stove is so old and well-known that it justifiably has “Classic” in its name doesn’t mean those flaws couldn’t have been edited out by now. Here's my wish list: a bit more space on the cooking surface, especially the width to accommodate two wide pans at once; an auto-igniter button; and I know it’s charming that the dials spin around and around, but it’d be more practical to limit it to 360 degrees (or less). That feels like a good compromise, right? It'd also be nice to have a few more grates on the cooking surface to better stabilize narrower saucepans, and adjustable-height feet would be luxurious when the picnic table you're cooking on is warped.
On a long-haul trip, you might also notice as you drive that the grate and the detachable adapter hose you use to connect the stove to the fuel cylinder rattle inside the box, often while you are on a long stretch of highway and the stove is in a hard-to-reach spot in the back of the car. Then again, I'm not sure there's a better solution than to just stuff a towel in there.
Despite the flaws, I love my Coleman. Camping during the pandemic feels like one of the few relatively safe ways to be out in the world right now. Going full analog with this tried-and-true camping hardware is one less thing to worry about while you’re out there. On our recent trip, it simultaneously connected me to my childhood, my family, and the great outdoors, all while helping me get dinner on the table in time to clean up, kick back, and look at the stars.
Be sure to check out our guides to the best camping gear, portable grills, portable espresso makers, and trail running shoes.
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