As the summer starts to heat up, I have to admit that cooking in the backcountry or around the campsite is one of my favorite activities. There are a few things that truly make you feel that you have escaped the hustle and bustle of the city and one of those activities is cooking. You don’t have the luxury of turning the knob on your stove or your 6 burner backyard grill, but you’re typically cooking with a stove the size of your hand or foot that often sounds like a rocket taking off. Aside from the stove, having some nice camping cookware like the MSR Trail Lite Duo System makes camping and backpacking super easy and enjoyable.
MSR Trail Lite Duo System Includes…
The MSR Trail Lite Duo System includes 2 BPA Free plastic bowls, 2 insulated mugs, an aluminum 1 liter pot, and a lid to the pot that doubles as a strainer. The nice thing about all this is that all this fits into the cooking pot making it super compact while not taking up a lot of room in your pack or your car camping bag. And if you want to take it a step further, you can also fit in the MSR foldable utensils and other small items like backpacking salt and pepper shakers, spices, ketchup and mustard packets, matches, into the insulated containers.
Perfect for 2
The MSR Trail Lite Duo System is the perfect cooking setup for two. My wife and I have taken this setup with us on a number of camping trips in Colorado as well as a trip to the Grand Canyon. We live semi simple in the city and when it comes to the campsite and backcountry, we tend to live much simpler. This set allows for each of us to have a bowl and each of us to have an insulated mug. The aluminum pot that comes with this setup is plenty big when cooking for two. We haven’t found a need yet where we needed a bigger cooking pot to cook our food. Out of all the products that come with the MSR Trail Lite Duo System, I would say that we generally use the pot and bowls most and the insulated mugs less. This is primarily because we aren’t always needing to cook warm liquids and our water bottles typically hold all of our liquid needs.
Quality check
The quality of the cookware used in the MSR Trail Lite Duo System is excellent. The bowls are extremely lightweight, hold plenty of food, easy to eat out of, and are easy to clean. The insulated mugs work great for keeping things like coffee, tea, and hot chocolate warm. I wouldn’t suggest eating out of these as it’s a little hard to use a spoon with as the inside shape has a few cracks and crevices. The aluminum pot is super easy to cook with as long as you have a quality stove that doesn’t have too much of a concentrated flame. Too much of a concentrated flame is difficult to cook with for any pot. The inside of the cook pot has a non stick liner which makes cooking and cleanup a breeze. The handle on the pot folds over the lid of the pot so when you’re not using it, it doesn’t take up a bunch of room and it keeps the lid from popping off. The lid has a nice clean fit on the pot and is clear so you can see the progress of your cooking. It has a rubber grip on it so the heat doesn’t transfer to the lid which prevents you from burning your fingers and it makes it easy to grab onto.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I have been extremely happy using the MSR Trail Lite Duo System when camping and backpacking with 2 people. It’s compact, light, and has just what you need and nothing that you don’t need. For more information on the Trail Lite and other MSR gear, please visit www.msrgear.com or www.amazon.com/msr.
