cooking with what? a single burner stove or a full 4 ring jobbie? answer currently is as long as a piece of string without knowing what your using r cooking, is it just heating the water up and a tin of beans? or cooking a full meal from scratch?
As said above, we need details of what appliances you are using, and what kind of gas supply you're using before we can estimate how much gas you'll need.
Then there is how much you use the appliance, if only boiling the occasional kettle for a cup of tea or two, or cooking more complex meals a couple of times a day.
There are a whole bunch of variables that we have absolutely no insight into to give us any chance of answering you realistically.
You can usually work it out for yourself, most gas appliances have the MAX gas consumption either in the instructions and/or on a label on the appliance, in the form of g/h (grams per hour). You can then estimate how long the appliance will run from whatever gas supply you use. That will be the WORSE CASE, as you are unlikely to be running any appliance full on for the duration of use, so a lower setting will extend gas cartridge/cylinder life.
I was once new to camping myself long before the internet was invented so couldn't ask a question on a forum for an answer such as this one. So the only way was to work it out for ourselves by trial and error by the appliances and rings we had available because one camper may use more gas than another simply by the amount of gas they would consume daily. The amount of kettles being boiled in one day and how many saucepans were going to be used for a meal and so forth is part of the question which we don't know. So the real answer to your question is take one gas cylinder with you and do it by trial and error to see how much gas you consume on a personal basis and make your own judgement of how much gas is remaining in the cylinder for next time.
As tango55 says… that’s how we did it too. We weighed the canister before & after our first trip. But we knew how much it weighed empty (when we got it) & how much it weighed full. I’m out of touch with the different sizes now, as the MH has a tank instead.
You appear to be using a refillable gas cylinder.
If it appears nearly empty it won't last the weekend.
If it appears nearly full it should last the weekend.
If during the weekend it suddenly appears nearly empty and you like hot tea with your breakfast then order a takeaway for dinner or go to a pub/restaurant.
A quick internet search will find locations where you can exchange your gas cylinder for a full one near your campsite.
The grills on camping stoves are usually not very good and use a lot of gas, don't waste all your gas making toast or trying to grill a chop.
If you fancy a toasted chop sandwich you'll wonder where all the gas went.
Based on my earlier reply of how to calculate usage, as a rough empirical guide, last year tent camping in France, 2 of us were fully self catering with a gas fridge and 2 burner stove (no grill) for 4 day camp, we used 1.5Kg of gas from a full 5Kg cylinder, which turned out to be about 70% of my calculated estimate of use, mainly because the fridge didn't need to be on Max setting. I needed to know fairly accurately what my gas usage would be to decide which gas cylinder to take (had a choice of types and sizes available), as no refills for some types available in France, so needed to be sure we wouldn't run out if non-refillable cylinder taken!
As mentioned in above posts, the grills are next to useless and waste huge amounts of your gas, even the grill in my caravan on a otherwise perfectly decent 3 burner/oven/grill cooker is near useless, nothing like a domestic cooker! If you want toast, better off with a hob type toaster accessory, if you want meat/veg get a griddle type pan on the hob.
Probably worth mentioning that beginning of the year, Calor discontinued a number of their smaller cylinder sizes that were very popular with campers and refills are no longer available, so if you acquired your gas cylinder some time ago or someone passed an old one on to you, check you can still get refills! https://www.calor.co.uk/news-and-views/press-release-cylinder-range
Campingaz cylinders are a convenient physical size for tenters, but tiny capacity (only 2.75Kg) and obscenely expensive per Kg of gas compared with other refillable cylinders! They are also Butane gas which is only suitable for summer use as won't produce gas below about 3C!
Oh - “quick & dirty test” - shake the canister. You’ll be able to tell by feeling the balance & listening if there’s only a little liquid sloshing about in a big space or lots of liquid with only a little room for movement
And weigh it now, however full or empty, and when you get back. That’s how much you used this trip.
I'd advise to use a popular brand,, most campsites will have a supply close by, then just exchange your empty for full as needed.
We cook mainly with an electric hob and pressure cooker, we also have a picnic butane stove with 4 canisters as backup.
------------- Knowledge is recognising that a tomato is a fruit: experience is not putting it in a fruit salad.
Not long back from a 3 day trip with a campinggaz chef CV stove. I used this once or twice a day for cooking but used an electric kettle and used (I think) just under 1 450g bottle of gas (CV470). Obviously your mileage may vary depending on how much cooking you do and what type of stove etc.
It gives you a good idea depending on the number of people in your group, number of days, your boiling / cooking needs etc, even if you are car camping. Hope this helps!
You've resurrected a post that's been dormant for a good few months now, but your link may be of some guidance to others.
Only caveat, it's a VERY brand/model specific calculator! As the brand doesn't see fit to publish is gas usage (g/hr) rating, it's difficult to use the calculator figures to translate to any other brand stoves as no hard figures to compare and extrapolate usage.
Looking at burner size, I'd speculate that it'd be a lot more frugal (but we are on a unknown heat output vs time comparison here!) than many larger cookers of say twin burner and grill type. Of the larger type stoves I've used, there's been something in the region of 30% difference in gas consumption figures between them, that can be mitigated by quicker cooking/boiling on the higher powered ones, which reduces length of time in use, so gas consumption can balance out more than simple gas throughput figure may imply.
The actual appliance gas consumption figures (max g/hr) are always going to be the most reliable estimate, and empirical usage experience the best guide.
Grills are built into double burner stoves for marketing rather than practical reasons. The customer sees the grill and imagines melting butter into hot toast and then slapping on a thick layer of honey or their favourite jam. The customer easily parts with his money.
Once at camp he discovers the grill only holds one slice of bread at a time, takes ages and uses masses of gas, after trying to grill bacon the grill never gets used again.
As a new camper you will try to make toast on your first morning and you will consume much more gas than you expected.
Get frozen Indian bread from your local supermarket, heat it in a frying pan and you'll have fresh hot bread for breakfast and your neighbours will experience the smell of fresh baked bread and become jealous.
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Topic: Cooking gas
via mobile 14/8/2023 at 4:07pm
