A small gas stove is a practical thing for on the road, but also during power outages. Usually you operate gas stoves with gas cartridges, but you may store only a few of them at home in germany. So I wanted to know: How much gas does my camping stove use and how far can I get with a 500g butane gas cartridge.

My camping stove comes from Amazon, as well as the gas, my stove is not available at the time of writing, but there are many similar models. The gas quantity is adjustable, the gas connection is via a screw connection to the cartridge, an adapter for other types of connection is included. I assume that the stove is also operable with a large gas cylinder via a pressure reducer, but I have not considered this case here.

Preparation

First, I weighed the gas cartridge and got several pots and a measuring cup ready.

After the test, I weighed the cartridge again.

The measurement of gas consumption

To determine the consumption I have thought of 2 scenarios:

  1. boil 1 liter of water, for example, for tea.

    I used a pot with 20cm diameter + lid

    Consumption: 18 grams of butane gas

    With a little practice, you can certainly get by with 15 grams.

  2. A longer food preparation.

    On the trail, you usually only have a gas stove and therefore a pot available. For this measurement, I steamed potatoes and cauliflower together until done, then drained the water, put the potatoes and cauliflower back in the pot, and added a sauce. You certainly could have boiled instead of steaming, but that would have required more water. Steaming the preparation time compared to boiling. I probably used more gas than necessary, in the simmering phase I turned the gas down a lot, but there would have been potential for savings here. If you cut the cooking pieces smaller, they steam through faster, savings would probably also be possible here.

    Consumption: 53 grams of butane gas

Pasta with sauce goes faster, depending on the type of pasta and the cooking time required, so it should use much less than 53 grams of butane gas.

I performed the measurements at room temperature at about 23 degrees. 

Findings

  • I also had to greatly reduce the amount of gas with larger pots so that the flame would cover the bottom of the pot well and not extend beyond the outside of the pot.
  • Very little gas is needed to keep water simmering.
  • With a full 500 gram cartridge, I can at 23 degrees ambient temperature - überschlagen:
    • 27 times boil 1 liter of water
    • Cook the food described in point 2 9 times
    • Cook a meal at least 10 times with a consumption of 40 grams of butane gas

However, there is one major unsafe factor here: How does cooking behave when the butane gas cartridge is increasingly empty? With my Weber gas grill - which consumed significantly more gas, the perceived performance decreased after a short time when using these cartridges, which is why I converted it to a gas bottle.

You should also consider the temperature and the behavior of the cookware.