daystrom

Cooking

Cooking Method

When we bought our stove, one of the criteria was that we could use it to actually cook, as opposed to just heating water. However, as time has gone on, we are tending more and more toward cooking methods that only require boiling water.

After spending a while experimenting with various options, we have decided to use the so-called Freezer Bag cooking method for all of our meals. We have been using trailcooking.com as one of our primary references, although we have also developed some of our own recipes (see the Meal Planning and Food page).

The idea with the freezer bag cooking method is that you assemble individual dehydrated meals for one person in pint- or quart-sized freezer bags ahead of time at home. In camp, when cooking, you pour boiling water into your bag, and then put the bag into its own insulating cozy to simmer for 15-20 minutes.

What we like about this method is that each person can have a different meal if they want to. We also find that it's much simpler to heat water for one meal at a time rather than having to cook food for 2-3 people in the same pot. The whole thing just seems to work out well for the kind of trips we are taking (3-4 days). We might need to come up with a different strategy if we wanted to take longer-term trips, where assembling every meal ahead of time and throwing away so many bags doesn't necessarily seem like the right solution.

Potential Problems

In general, this method has worked out well for us. However, you should be aware that freezer bags have limited durability. We've never had any problems with meals in relatively new bags. However, while in the Channel Islands in October 2015, we used meals originally built for our trip to Olympic National Park in September 2012. The food itself tasted fine, but two of the bags sprung minor leaks in the bottom corners (exactly the place you'd expect to have some stress or wear), which was a bit of a mess.

All of the meals we took to the Channel Islands were stored frozen in our chest freezer at -20 degrees F since 2012. However, some of them traveled with us to Olympic National Park, and were uneaten because we cut the trip short. We think the repeated freeze/thaw cycles and general stress of several weeks of travel eventually wore an invisible hole in these two bags.

If we ever use meals this old again, we will repack them in new freezer bags before leaving on our trip, just to be safe.

Freezer Bag and Pot Cozies

Full Freezer Cozy We cook our freezer bag meals in a freezer bag cozy. A freezer bag cozy is a sleeve of insulation large enough to hold a quart-sized freezer bag. To "cook" a freezer-bag meal, you pour near-boiling water into the freezer bag, stir the food, and then pop the freezer bag into the cozy for 15-20 minutes. The result is basically equivalent to simmering the food on the stove, except that it doesn't require any additional fuel.

Pot Cozy A pot cozy is similar to a freezer bag cozy, except that it's made to hold an entire pot rather than just a quart-sized freezer bag. It can be used to keep cooked food warm, or can be used like the freezer bag cozies to simmer food without wasting fuel.

Here are some pages that discuss pot cozies:

You can find our plans below. If you're not up to making a cozy for yourself, a few low-volume manufacturers sell them. For instance, trailcooking.com makes theirs out of quilting fabric.

Freezer Bag Cozy - Plans

Discussion

Several different materials are appropriate for cozies. All you need is something that insulates fairly well and can stand up to the heat of boiling water. We used an insulation product called Reflectix, purchased in a large roll at Home Depot for around $10.

Reflectix is basically aluminum-covered bubble wrap. This product is cheap and light — our freezer bag cozies weigh between 33-35 grams — but the disadvantage is that the resulting cozy is a bit brittle. As mentioned above, trailcooking.com makes theirs out of quilting fabric. These fabric cozies don't insulate quite as well, but can be scrunched into a pack more easily. Everything is a compromise!

We did some testing, and our cozy does a pretty good job at retaining heat. We heated water to around 205 degrees (just shy of boiling), poured 2 cups each into three quart-sized freezer bags, and then placed each of the three bags into its own cozy. We checked the temperature of the first bag after 5 minutes, the second after 10 minutes, and the third after 20 minutes.

Ambient temperature was 77 degrees. The cozies were warm to the touch, but were not too hot to hold. At the 5- and 10-minute marks, the water temperature was 185 degrees. At the 20-minute mark, the water temperature was 177 degrees. These are "ideal" conditions, and there will definitely be more heat loss in cool or windy conditions. However, this design does seem to work pretty well in practice.

Required Materials and Tools

The following tools and materials are required:

I bought 2" tape and cut it lengthwise to a width of 1".

Preparation

Prepare the following before assembling your cozy:

Assembly

You are assembling a cozy that has a 8.75" envelope and a 3.5" flap at the top. The flap will be held closed by a bit of velcro.

Since Reflectix is basically aluminum-covered bubble wrap, you need to tape every exposed edge. A 1" width of tape should be plenty for this purpose: just make sure that you center the tape evenly over the edge.

  1. Tape the narrow top and bottom of the Reflectix section using the 8" strips of tape
  2. Tape the edges of the flap using the 3.5" strips of tape
  3. Fold the Reflectix so the bottom edge lines up with the flap that you taped previously
  4. Tape together the two edges of the folded section, using the 8.75" strips of tape
  5. Apply the stick-on velcro tabs to the flap and the body of the cozy

There should be room for a mostly-full quart-sized freezer bag inside the completed cozy.