Blog

MSR Ceramic Cooking Pots

Non-stick coatings have a chequered history with camping pans, traditionally they are, well.. not very good. Titanium is the worst offender with non stick coatings being easily damaged and not that effective - the problem is that we are used to the real 'non stickiness' we get on the pans we use at home.

Aluminium non stick is a lot better than Titanium but it still lacks that certain....performance. So there was a ripple of excitement round the office when this new crop of non stick arrived from MSR, and I got one for testing which I took up to Scotland in February this year.

Before microwave ovens cleaning up after making scrambled egg was hellish so I decided to test my ceramic pot on the freeze dried equivalent - the Adventure Food Farmers Omelette. With this meal you reconstitute the omelette using boiling water, stirring and leaving it for five minutes, then you have a solid looking lump which is flash fried in a pan. It even says on the packet to use a non-stick pan so it must be bad.

I was using a petrol stove (= lots of heat, poor simmering) and didn't have any cooking oil so I just dumped it in dry and kept it moving. The results were spectacular - the omelette cooked perfectly with no sticking at all to the bottom of the pot. You can see in the photo that there was a build up of omelette on the sides but this was really easy to remove with my GSI compact scraper (rubber edges so as not to damage the coating).

Its true the Farmers Omelette is bulked out with potato, onions etc so that its not as bad as true scrambled eggs but I think it was a good test and the ceramic pot came through with flying colours - brilliant, we've made the ceramic range one of our top picks. Best bit - the ceramic pots weigh no more than the pots they replace.

(Please also note I was using a plastic spoon, essential to preserve the ceramic coating.)