Aluminum is the cookware of choice for backcountry gourmets. It conducts heat evenly, is easy to clean when hard anodized and even easier when coated with non-stick coating, and is extremely efficient.
Stainless steel is very durable; perfect for when your pots take a lot of abuse. It lies somewhere in between aluminum and titanium in terms of its cooking ability/suitability.
Titanium cookware's biggest advantage is its light weight. Titanium pots are ideal for boiling water, because they can be made with very thin walls. They tend to develop hot spots, however, making them less than ideal for cooking temperature sensitive foods like eggs or pancakes.
Cookware's efficiency is dependent on its color and material. Our testing has found that darker pots (esp. the bottom) are the most fuel efficient. Older cookware, which blackens through use, is more efficient than new cookware. Following is a list of MSR cookware, in their order of efficiency, for boiling water:
- Hard Anodized Aluminum Cookware (Aluminum Quick™ and Flex™ Series Pots as well as DuraLite™ cookware)
- Blackened Alpine™ Stainless Steel cookware
- Titanium Cookware (Exo™ and Quick Series as well as Titan™ series)
- New BlackLite cookware (We suspect blackened BlackLite cookware would be second to DuraLite cookware, but was not tested at the date this was published.)
- New Alpine Stainless Steel cookware
The SimmerLite™, WindPro™, Pocket Rocket™, and SuperFly™ stoves are small enough to fit in an MSR 1-liter pot. All other MSR stoves with a flexible fuel line will fit into all MSR cooksets that are 1.5 liters or larger, except the DragonFly™ stove which fits in a 2L pot or larger. The older MSR XGK™ stoves will not fit inside a cookset because of their rigid fuel line. However the stove and fuel bottle will fit nicely in the side pocket of most backpacks.
Originally the MSR cooksets were sold with a strap to hold them together rather then a stuff sack. We designed the new MSR Panhandler™ pot lifter with two upright tabs on the top of the pot lifter which allow you to easily lift your pot lid by this tab. These new Pot lifters are available from most MSR dealers.
