Review: the Stanley Cook Kit is a great fit for a go-bag

A dedicated cooking/boiling kit is one of the first things experts recommend adding to your go-bag once you’ve got the basics covered. Because a good go-bag is designed to support one person for a few days as you change locations — you’re not trying to live out of it indefinitely, nor are you trying to support an entire group with it — a complete go-bag cooking kit can and should be pretty minimalist.

After some research, I’ve put together a personal cooking kit that is inexpensive, compact, and versatile and comes in at just a little over a pound.

Considerations for cooking on the run

While bugging out on foot, keep the following considerations in mind when it comes to food:

  • Ready-to-eat food is the core of your go-bag calories. Prepared food is supplemental, for extending your calorie runway.
  • Don’t plan on sumptuous meals that require a well-stocked kitchen.
  • Any cooking will have to be done with minimalist, lightweight gear.
  • Prefer boiling to any other kind of cooking, since it’s easy and has a ton of survival uses beyond cooking (e.g. sanitation, water treatment).
  • You want easy clean-up.
  • Remember that food isn’t your highest-priority survival item. You can likely go a few days without it.

My first go-to for go-bag food is lifeboat food bars like those from Datrex and SOS. Each block lasts a few days and doesn’t require cooking. Ideally, that should be enough to get me where I need to go, and I won’t have to cook at all.

Of course, you can only eat ration blocks for so long (and they’re heavy). My personal choice for extending my time window of survival is freeze-dried meals from Mountain House. They’re lightweight, easy to cook, and easy to clean up. Simply boil water, dump it in the bag, stir it up, close it up, and let it soak. They’re not cheap, but it’s not a huge expense to keep a couple in my go-bag.

Cook kit, fire kit, Mountain House

With all my combination of ration blocks and freeze-dried food, I can realistically expect to last five days on foot — maybe up to a week.

The pot and cup

The core of the kit is the classic Stanley Adventure cook set. It’s a clever stainless steel design featuring a locking pot handle that also holds the lid in place for storage. It has graduated marks indented in the side for measuring water or other ingredients.

The kit is cheap, lightweight, and durably constructed. My only complaint is the plastic tab on the lid, which seems to inevitably melt with enough time and heat exposure, but resourceful YouTubers have found that it can be replaced with a cheap metal keyring.

The Stanley Adventure comes with two plastic cups, but I keep them out of the kit because they’re heavy and they take up a lot of room in the pot that can be used to store more useful stuff.

The pot is good enough to cook and eat in, but you can never have enough containers, and it’s nice to be able to fix a hot beverage. GSI makes a nice stainless steel cup that the Stanley Adventure nests in, but you can save some change with Walmart’s shameless knock-off, which is only $5. The cup features fold-out handles so you could also cook in it if need be. The handles are curved so they fold around the cup for compact storage. The lid of the Stanley Adventure even fits on the cup, giving you more options in the field.

Walmart camp cup

One of the things I like about this setup over something like a Jetboil is that the Stanley Adventure doesn’t mind being tossed into a fire. And Jetboils aren’t cheap. The Jetboil Zip, the least expensive model runs for about $85. Our kit, including fuel and a utensil, costs about $50. That’s a big savings, especially if you need to outfit more than one person.

But one of the Jetboil’s advantages is that you don’t need to build a fire to cook or boil water. What if I told you you can buy a gas stove that will not only fit inside your cook kit, but in your hand? The BRS 3000T fits the bill for under $20.

The stove

BRS stove in hand

The BRS stove is an ingenious but fiddly design. The legs and valve handle fold up for a compact design that can fit into the tiny included drawstring bag, but you have to be careful unfolding it, since one leg can block another and prevent it from unfolding. But none of the legs feel flimsy.

BRS stove with fuel attached

You unfold the BRS stove and screw it onto a can of camping fuel—a mix of butane and propane. You then twist the valve handle to open the gas and light it with something from your fire kit like a Bic lighter, match, or ferro rod.

Flame from the BRS stove

The only bad thing about using the BRS stove is that, because of its light weight, it’s easy to tip over, so handle with care. After I boiled my first pot of water I accidentally dumped it on the ground and had to start over. Thankfully, it only takes about three minutes to boil a liter of water. Actually, BRS claims 2 minutes 58 seconds, and in my tests that is spot on.

Stanley pot on BRS stove

What’s great is the fuel canister fits in the bottom of the Stanley Adventure. If you put it business-end down, the concave bottom of the canister leaves enough room for the stove and other goodies like freeze-dried coffee packets. You could also throw in a mini Bic lighter as a backup fire source—there’s quite a bit of room in there.

Coffee packets in the Stanley pot

One problem you might have with this setup is if the gas canister slips past the graduation marks, it can get stuck. It’s annoying, but not a dealbreaker: just turn the pot upside down and smack it hard on the ground. The Stanley Adventure and the fuel canister are durable enough to take the abuse.

Rounding out the kit

But wait, what will you eat with? I found that this folding titanium spork fits in the empty space in the Stanley Adventure. I had trouble with the spork folding back on itself during usage until reader SK pointed out that you can slide the bar at the end of the spork toward the hinge to lock it in place—in the first picture below, it has the word “titanium” on it.

Spork unfolded

Spork folded

As we pointed out in our guide to sporks, folding sporks are pretty lousy. You might consider a better-quality spork to keep elsewhere in your bag or somehow affixed to the outside of the cook kit.

Read more: The best sporks for your go-bag

Once it’s time to put the kit together and shove it in your go-bag, simply slip a ranger band over the whole kit to hold the cup and pot together.

Complete cook kit with ranger band

Cleaning up

We’ve received a lot of questions about how to clean a go-bag pot. I personally don’t carry anything specific in my kit because my plan is to just use it to boil water and dump it in a Mountain House bag. If I make coffee, I’ll just rinse the cup out with water. If I need to wipe out a container, I keep several multi-purpose bandanas in my bag.

If that’s unsatisfactory, there is a clever hack. Cut down a thin scouring pad—one of those green 3M ones—so that it fits between the pot and the cup. That also provides a bit more padding between the two. I’m not a big fan of this, because the green pads tend to flake and leave green dust behind, but if you’re worried about cleaning big messes, it’s an easy option.

In my experience, boiling water does a pretty great job of cleaning on its own, especially if you follow it with a scrubber. The key is to clean up immediately so food doesn’t have a chance to harden and stick. Ideally, you should have some camp soap in your go-bag for larger messes.


  • 8 Comments

    • SK

      You’re supposed to slide the “thingy”  (seen in the picture of the folding spork next to your pinky) towards the joint when the spork ist unfolded. That prevents it from folding back accidently. I have the same spork and was also annoyed at first, but then discovered this safety by chance. 

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      • Josh CentersContributor SK

        Thanks, that is a game-changing tip!

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    • Grant Baugh

      What made you choose this over a standard mess kit?

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      • Josh CentersContributor Grant Baugh

        I have a mess kit, but I don’t like it. You can’t really boil water in the little skillet thing.

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      • Dragoon Josh Centers

        Good point. Hadn’t thought about it before but you really can’t boil very much water in that shallow aluminum skillet. 

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    • M. E.Contributor

      There are SO MANY THREADS where this topic can belong that I finally just had to pick one.

      Today I used my “Go Sun Go” for the first time. I bought it last year, pre-inflation and supply chain chaos, so had gotten it at a much better price than the current $129.  They have sales all the time (too many sales actually – it gets overwhelming), so I would recommend keeping an eye out.

      Suffice it to say that I am THRILLED!  It is a very sunny day today and I packed it with mixed vegetables and let it cook.  I didn’t align it perfectly – I don’t have a sun dial or anything, so just did my best. And after 20 minutes it was still kinda lukewarm. So I aligned it better and 20 minutes later – WOW!  Super, super hot and my veggies are cooking like crazy.  I would definitely recommend this fuel-free cooking solution.  The main reason I bought it was to boil water in a grid down situation but being able to cook is an added bonus. It is very easy to set up and use  

      A friend of mine bought the “Sport” version, which is larger, and she cooks with it every weekend. She even said she prefers it to cooking with a stove, in part because she can just “set it and forget it” while she gardens (vs worrying about her regular oven starting a house fire if she forgets about it).  The “Go” is very small and only enough for a meal for one person, but HEY. It’s super light (2 pounds) and could be something to even keep in a car for emergencies. It is breakable – the tube is glass – so probably not the best for a BOB.

      Naturally there are plenty of options for building your own solar oven but I am as successful at building as I am at gardening, which is to say not at all. So I use my considerable other talents (ha) to earn money to buy things from people who know what they are doing! I will be keeping an eye out for a sale and buying some of these as gifts for friends this year. 

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      • Gideon ParkerStaff M. E.

        All the times I’ve done solar cooking it just turns out so moist and delicious. Pretty nuts how that heat from the sun has traveled 93 million miles and still has enough energy to cook food.

        After cooking in yours, do you like the size you got or wish you had a larger one? A benefit I could see with a larger one is to cook your lunch and dinner at the same time while the sun is out.

        Let us know if you ever see them go on a good sale.

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      • M. E.Contributor Gideon Parker

        Well, Gideon, I have a bit of a gear problem. So I actually own TWO “Go Sun Go” models and ONE “Go Sun Sport“. I am very glad I bought them LAST year, when the prices were much lower. I got this combination because I thought it would be good to have one meat course in the Sport and two side dishes in the “Go” (and also because I needed an excuse to buy more gear – HA!)

        I’d love to have the Fusion, too, since it has a powered option and is MUCH larger. As for sales, I actually had to unsubscribe from their mailing lists because they were INUNDATING me with them. But if you sign up, they’re likely to send you all kinds of deals all the time so just set in your mind the price you’re willing to pay and nab it when it hits that price.  (Sometimes their deals are AMAZING, sometimes so-so, but they last only about 24 hours each). 

        If you’re only going to get ONE, I’d probably go for the Sport. 

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