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Reviews > Cook Gear > Cook Sets > Ozark Trail Stainless 7 pc Cookset > Owner Review by Thomas Lindemuth
OWNER REVIEW - Ozark Trail "Stainless Steel 7pc. Camping Kit" Cookset
Review Date: 2004.06.24 REVIEWER INFORMATION Name: Thomas Lindemuth Age: 39 Gender: Male Email address: tlindemu(at)ix(dot)netcom(dot)com Location: Oakland, California USA
Backpacking experience: I've camped my whole life, and backpacked
occasionally starting at age 12. After a break of several years, I've
picked it up again starting about three years ago, and I am currently
introducing my sons to the joys of camping. When not backpacking I greatly
enjoy day hikes, and make a regular practice of hiking the trails near my
home. I prefer backpacking, but will occasionally car camp. I
probably would be classified as a heavyweight backpacker, but I am experimenting
with ways of lightening my load; I don't expect to go hardcore ultralight, but
I've dropped nearly ten pounds off my base weight. I generally camp
in the mountainous regions of California. I am a destination backpacker,
not a through-hiker (I don't currently have time for extended trips). I
enjoy hiking in, setting up base camp, and exploring what is nearby.
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION Product Name: Ozark Trail "Stainless Steel 7pc. Camping Kit" Year of manufacture: 2002, 2003 (I have two sets) Manufacturer: Ozark Trail Outdoor Equipment Manufacturer's Website: unknown (I could not find one) Specifications
Parts List o 1.3 qt (1.2 L) pot, with lid o 0.9 qt (0.85 L) pot, with lid o 6.5 in (165 mm) diameter fry pan (henceforth referred to as "large pot," "small pot," and "fry pan," respectively) o Tea cup, capacity 1 cup (8 oz/0.24 L), (qty 2) o PVC carry bag
Size (measured as delivered; not spec'ed by manufacturer):
Weight (measured as delivered; not spec'ed by manufacturer):
Material:
o Stainless steel
Features:
o Fold-away twin bail handles on all 3 pans o Copper plating on bottoms of all pans o Plastic handles on lids o Plastic coated wire bail handles on pots
Price: $15.99 US
(note: this is the Wal-Mart standard price. I could not find a true MSRP, but it appears this product may only be available at Wal-Mart.) INITIAL IMPRESSIONS OF THE PRODUCT This cook kit is available at Wal-Mart. The box specifically says "Marketed by Wal-Mart Stores, Inc." I am not certain whether this product can be purchased at other stores; I have not noticed it elsewhere, though I think I have seen other Ozark Trail gear in other stores. I was not able to locate a company website for "Ozark Trail Outdoor Equipment" (the brand name on the box).
The set comes in a color printed cardboard box. All pieces come
individually bagged for transport, which makes for nice, shiny, unscratched pots
on delivery. The "7pc. Camping Kit" comes with 2 pots, 2 lids, 1 frypan, 2
cups, and 1 bag, which comes to, count 'em, 8 items in a 7 piece set.
The pots have a copper coating on the bottom, which appears to be chiefly
ornamental (see below). This coating is protected by an overcoat of
lacquer, which apparently can be cooked with, but will burn off, given
sufficient abuse.
All three pans have paired swing-out wire bail handles. The bails are
covered in a thick coat of (somewhat) high temperature plastic. Pot lids
have round knobs, apparently of the same plastic.
The insides of the pans are uncoated. This is a mixed blessing.
On the one hand, burned food does indeed stick. On the other hand, I can
use a stainless steel pot scrubber with utter abandon, since there is absolutely
no chance of ruining the (nonexistent) nonstick coating.
Lids fit the pots just right: not too tight, not too loose. The lid
on the smaller pot must be turned upside down to allow nesting when
packed. The fry pan nests snugly outside the bottom of the larger
pot.
The tea cups are black plastic, and have a capacity of, well, 1 cup (8
ounces or about 1/4 liter) each. They have graduated markings on the
inside, labeled in increments of both 1/4 cup and 2 ounces (59 milliliters,
however milliliter labels are not present). I promptly, er, retired them:
1 cup capacity is way, way too small for me. On a cold morning I like a
warm drink to be big, and I hate spilling out of cups that are too small and
fiddly.
The pots seem to be of a slightly heavier gauge than other backpacking
cooksets of a similar nature. (I haven't measured it, but they seem to feel
ever-so-slightly less bendable.) However the weight is reasonably
comparable. Not long after I got the first set, I cut the swing-out bail
handles off all the pots in my set and substituted a pot-lifter. (The
other set is my son's, and therefore has been left intact. Pot lifters can be
tricky for younger hands.) This saved approximately 1.6 ounces (45 grams) per
handle. The reduced weight of my modified set (pots, lids, lifter; sans
bail handles, cups, and bag) is 23.8 ounces (675 grams). Aside from the
weight savings, I no longer have to cut a notch out of the windscreen for my
alcohol stove for the handles to poke through. One last thing is that the
plastic on the handles will melt if exposed to an overzealous burner flame --
another reason why I cut them off.
FIELD RESULTS
I have been using these pots steadily for 2 years. I take them on
both backpacking and car camping trips, and also on my morning exercise hikes,
where I often fix myself breakfast among the trees. The weather conditions
on trips where I have used these pots have varied, ranging from 60 to 70 F (16
to 21 C) calm mornings (a lot of those); 50 F (10 C) evenings with a fresh
breeze; 20 F (-6.6 C) with incipient fog rising off the lake; and 18 F (-7.7 C),
sunny but cooking directly on a snowbank. (No cooking in an out-and-out
storm, yet.) Not that I would expect something as simple as a pot to
change much due to the weather; however, it is worth noting that the pots and
lids can be manipulated successfully with snow-gloved hands.
This cookset fits my expectations of thin-walled stainless steel
backpacking pots perfectly -- which is to say I don't expect culinary genius
from the pots, and they don't deliver it. What they do deliver is rugged,
no-nonsense, basic cookpot duty. I use them for: boiling water for
coffee; wet meals like soup or oatmeal; dry meals where extended 'on-flame' time
is not required, like couscous; and heating things where I can add a bit of
water to the bottom to keep them from scorching, like ham or sausage. Oh,
and baking; see below for details.
The pots seem to conduct heat unevenly. In other words, there is a
significant hot spot directly over the burner flame. Food items that need
an even pan temperature, such as pancakes, generally turn out overdone in the
middle and underdone on the edges, and as far as I can tell it is not a matter
of adjusting the heat just right, either. Soft items like oatmeal or grits
can usually be cooked successfully, provided that constant (nay, vigilant)
stirring is applied; if, on the other hand, they are allowed to cook
semi-unattended, a patch of scorched food stuck to the bottom of the pan usually
results.
Interestingly, these pots have turned out to work well at baking.
Being a stove nut, I have developed a homebuilt alcohol stove that also converts
to a pretty decent backpacking oven. These stainless steel pans work just
fine for baking within this oven system. (I suppose this makes sense after
all; the oven setup cooks with indirect heat, so no hot spots). With a
liberal greasing and flouring of the pans (I use squeeze margarine), cakes pop
right out. The large pot can be used to bake up to one half of a boxed
cake mix into a credible, though trail-sized, cake, while the small pot will
bake up to one third of a mix (more of a gigantic muffin). Since
completing the design of the oven system I have baked cakes, muffins, cinnamon
rolls, cookies; probably about thirty successful bakings by now, apart from the
other duties that the pots pull.
On more than one occasion while experimenting with the design for the
alcohol oven, I seriously overheated one or more of the pans. I mean
serious overheating: that is, glowing, red-hot overheating. This caused
the pans to darken on the outside, and the larger pot is now just slightly
warped on the bottom. However, this has not affected their cooking
characteristics, as far as I can tell. Also, between attempting to melt
them and scrubbing off residue from Esbit tabs, I have managed to remove nearly
all the lacquer and copper plating. Again, this does not seem to affect
the utility of the pots. I was a little disappointed when I started seeing
silver through the copper bottom (you mean this six dollar pot is not really
Revere Ware going incognito? aww, rats), but I got over it pretty quickly
when I realized that nothing important was being ruined. As to the cakes
that I fused to the pans as a byproduct of the various failed experiments:
well, they came out with a generous application of pot scrubber and brute force,
and the insides of the pans were none the worse for the experience. It's
nice to know I don't have to baby these pans.
The PVC carry bag was somewhat flimsy. The one on my personal set
tore early on, and I discarded it. I have not missed it. The pots make a nice
compact package when nested, and go in the pack just fine.
One gripe: when pot manufacturers rate their pots for capacity, they
apparently mean "full to brimming." That's not a very useful number, in my
opinion. A 1.3 quart pot is really a 1 quart pot, when doing anything real
with it. Not that that is a fault unique to this cookset or this company;
still, sometimes I wish Ozark Trail would have extended this set with the next
size up, say 2 quarts. (Ozark Trail does make a different set with 3 and 4
quart pots, but they are of a different design, and besides, that starts being
too big for my backpacking preference.)
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS
Things I like:
1) Very inexpensive. 2) Sturdy. 3) Reasonably lightweight.
Things I don't like:
1) Uneven heat transfer. 2) Cups too small for my preference. (But that's just me; and hey, a lot of pot sets don't provide cups at all.)
Things I really don't care one way or the other:
1) Fake copper plating wears off quickly (who needs it?). 2) Cheap carry bag (who needs it?).
Recap: These pots are great for boiling water or soup; problematic for
cooking anything that actually has to be "cooked" over the burner, as
opposed to just heated up; but with the exception that they work just fine to
bake in. The best thing, in my opinion, is the price, which is somewhere around
one-half to one-third what similar stainless sets go for. Gourmet, no, but a set
as serviceable as this for such a low price strikes me as an exceptional value.
I liked my first set well enough that I bought a second one for my 7-year-old
son to use, now that he comes backpacking with me.
Read more reviews of Ozark Trail Outdoor Equipment gear Read more gear reviews by Thomas Lindemuth Reviews > Cook Gear > Cook Sets > Ozark Trail Stainless 7 pc Cookset > Owner Review by Thomas Lindemuth | |||||||||||||||||||||||||