Group Cooking! Trangia Life

Welcome to your dinner time!

As well as good hydration & rest, good wholesome food is vital to your outdoor experience, so make the effort to cook a nourishing meal & enjoy your dinner time. It is often the most enjoyable part of the day as the group is centralised in one spot, chatting and reflecting upon the days activities. Tragically though, history has shown that Trangia’s and cooking time can be the most dangerous part of any program. The combination of fuel and fire is potentially lethal. Make sure the students know this & have them always thinking about ‘am I doing the right thing?’

This briefing is just one way to do it and it is a guide only. Ultimately the decision is up to you upon how you operate the stoves and what safety you put into place.

Briefing:

• Go through the parts of the stove, emphasising not to loose the strap (use as a headband or wristband). It’s the students responsibility to ensure that all the stove’s parts are returned
• Always use stove on a flat spot with ideally no grass/ undergrowth so that stove is stable
• Demonstrate how to assemble stove with grippers on top of lid to symbolise that stove is in use & HOT
• Set up a fuel station (e.g. ‘BP’) which is ~10m away from stoves where ALL fuel bottles are stored and never leave this location. Therefore fuel bottles never get taken to kitchen (and near any flames)
• Show the students how to carefully fill the stove burner with fuel

– Students take the cold stove burner to the BP station & fill it up there only

– Unscrewing the red lid enough to pour the metho into the stove burner. When pouring the metho, be sure to break the continuous pour to safeguard against any possible flame entering the fuel container

– Fill it up at least ½ way, so it has plenty of cooking time

– Return burner to stove. If any metho is spilt on student in transit, ensure skin has dried (a minute or so) or remove clothing

– If stove burner runs out while still cooking, wait until burner is cool enough to carry and then refill at the BP fuel station

• Demonstrate how to light stove

– Remove the top plate (holding the bottom plate)

– Light with a match from the side (never from straight above!)

– Check it is lit by waving your hand across the burner.

Never hold your hand straight above the flame/ burner

– Put top plate back on

– Mention how the metho is slow burning, so it will not explode at time of lighting

– When lighting the stove, decide whether there must be a staff member watching the students to ensure it is being lit safely. If necessary have only the staff to light the stoves.

• If stove is bumped/ knocked over & fuel spilt – Don’t Panic! Most fuels are so burning. Simply move away to be safe & let it burn out & check with staff
• Always hold the pots with the grippers when stirring (otherwise you knock your pot off the stove). Similarly, always hold the bottom plate (Trangia ‘stand’) with your hand if you are lifting the top plate off
• Use the simmer ring to lessen the burning heat of the stove burner. Similarly, use this to extinguish the flame. Put this on by removing the top plate using grippers while holding bottom plate. Don’t go for a ‘three point’ basketball shot!
• With any left over fuel in burners, this may be burnt out or staff may pour this fuel back into fuel containers
• Strongly discourage any frying on the Trangia lids as this always leads to a lot of cleaning/ charcoal!
• Never sit an empty bowl on the flame (it will burn badly)
• Never attempt to blow a flame out! Only use the simmer ring
• If in any doubt regarding correct use of the stove, don’t guess, ask a staff member. There is no such thing as a ‘silly question’!
• Decide whether a staff member must always be present at the kitchen table/ stove arena

A great idea is to have a circle of rope being your kitchen table.
Explain:

• Same as at home, no ones walks/ runs across the table
• Everyone sits around the outside of rope and the stoves go on the inside of rope
• This ensures that that no stoves get knocked over & no food or fuel get spilt
• This also makes a social/ interactive environment where the staff can monitor everyone’s cooking 🙂

Featured in “Bag of Tricks’ an app thanks to  Wild Exposure!