A pot cozy insulates the pot, speeding the rehydration of camp meals!
This past Christmas, I gave into the craze and treated myself to a set of new titanium cooking pots for outdoor adventures. To be honest, the amount of weight I saved by replacing my old, tried-and-true aluminum cook set was minimal. But it was Christmas!
The extra light titanium pots will make every portage and every hill I climb that much easier! (At least in my mind).
However, every new technology has some disadvantages. In the case of titanium cookware, the disadvantage is the instant transfer of heat. I will never use a titanium frying pan because the heat distribution is uneven. Give me a clunky, heavy frying pan every time. Likewise, when I add boiling water to my dried meals, the titanium pots release the heat too fast, resulting in cold food before it is fully rehydrated.
The solution: a pot cozy!
"Cooking" with freeze-dried and dehydrated foods only requires that you cover the ingredients with boiling water, then wait about 10 minutes to eat the "home-cooked meal". The HUGE advantage of rehydrating foods is that this process only requires that you boil water in camp. The meal is precooked, then dried. Once rehydrated, it has the same taste and texture of the original meal, with minimal effort in camp.
A meal that would take 30 minutes to an hour to prepare is ready to eat in 10 minutes. This is especially welcome after a long hard day on the trail, paddling, or biking. Nothing beats a great meal when it is cold and rainy. In contrast, if you had planned a meal that requires lengthy preparation, it could be detrimental to your physical and mental condition to skip a meal when you need it the most!
A pot cozy is only a layer of insulation around the pot. Many campers get by wrapping the cooking pot in a down vest or towel. This insulation means that you can set the rehydrating food aside and turn off the stove, saving fuel. If cooking over a fire, you can conserve fuel or immediately begin heating water for washing dishes - or yourself!
The steps to making your own pot cozy are easy. Here is a video:
Note that at the end of the video I show a storage bag for my cooking pots and pot cozy. Now that I have taken the time to make the pot cozy, I want it to last for as long as possible. I reached out to Troy Pond of Pond's Edge and he graciously offered to supply a super-light Dyneema storage bag that should last FOREVER! Thanks, Troy! See his full range of CUSTOM stuff sacks, wallets, and packing bags at his Etsy store: CLICK HERE (etsy.com/shops/PondsEdgeLLC)
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