Top Backpacking & Camping Stoves

Top Stoves for Camping and Hiking

There is nothing better than enjoying a hot meal after a day of adventure, except for maybe enjoying comfort of your kitchen, you need a good camp stove to provide you with the power you need to cook to your heart’s delight.
Like so many other pieces of adventure gear, there are probably 50 to choose from, and options can be stressful. What fuel do you use and how much do you need? How many people are you cooking for? Do you need it to be light and compact enough to fit in a backpack, or are you heavyweight car campers?
Find some of the top backpacking and camping stoves from all the leading brands. From light weight backpacking stoves to backyard or camping grills. Everything you need to turn your camp into a backcountry kitchen. Pizza ovens, smokers and camp ovens.

Our Top Picks for Backpacking

As usual, Earth Gear is here to help by giving you our choices in a few of the different categories. Whether you are car campers in need of feeding an entire crew, an old-school mountaineer looking to go backcountry, or a modern off-the-grid with a mobile phone type of person, there’s a stove option for you.

JetBoil Genesis Base Camp System
When you’re the cook for the group, you better bring the gear. The new Jetboil Genesis Base Camp System is designed to be able to handle all the food you need for feed the crew after a long day on the trails. If you’ve seen Jetboil products before, you won’t be surprised at the design. It comfortably combines a two-burner stove with non-stick fry pan and a 5-liter pot with a lid. What makes it special is that it all packs into one incredibly convenient, relatively light for what it is, container that is perfect for car camping expeditions.
This fold-out clamshell stove produces 10,000 BTU of propane powered energy through it’s two 10-inch burners, can actually simmer surprisingly well compared to others options, and can be daisy chained to additional units for even more base camp cooking power. That means it’s got the size and power to handle multiple skillets and pots at the same time, and can then pack away for easy trunk storage. It’s the reinvention of the camp stove.

MSR WisperLite
The MSR WhisperLite is so well designed and well built that it hasn’t really changed in over 25 years. Simply put, this stove has been the outdoor adventurer’s choice for a generation. The key to the WhisperLite has always been its power, simplicity, and dependability. It uses white gas liquid fuel in lightweight reusable canisters – the international version handles white gas, kerosene and even unleaded gasoline – boils a liter of water in a respectable 4 minutes, and can be torn apart and repaired in the field, making it incredibly reliable.
These stoves are built from tough stainless steel and brass, are lightweight – weighing well under a pound without fuel – and are stable enough to handle a two-liter pot but still easy clean up and pack away like a proper minimalist. If you’re going to buy only one stove for all your uses, this has always been the one.

Biolite Camp Stove
Who needs to carry fuel canisters? This revolutionary little 2 lb backpacking stove uses the twigs and needles you find on the ground to cook your meals and then converts that power into electricity for charging your electronic gear. That’s dual threat for a new generation.
Coming in at about the size of a Nalgene bottle, The Biolite Campstove burns hard wood cleanly and efficiently, boiling a liter of water in about four and a half minutes, is built with a quite stable aluminum base and pot holder, and is even equipped with a starter battery to not only get lit and going quickly, but also for emergency power if you need it. The best thing about this little off the grid beauty, aside from the cooking and charging the phone and all, is that it’s wood burning, so you can even sit around it and worm your hands by the fire without that nasty chemical fuel smell.

Featured Stoves for Camping and Backpacking

Camp Chef Rainier 2 Burner Stove with Griddle
Camp Chef’s Rainier 2 Burner Stove with Griddle is an ideal mini-kitchen portable enough to take to every campsite, tailgate, hunting or scouting trip and convenient enough to make just about any breakfast you could make at home (if you get creative enough). Two separate burners, a stove and a griddle, allow you to make breakfast and boil water at the same time.

Jetboil Joule Stove
Jetboil’s new Joule Group Cooking System is the company’s largest backpacking stove to date, and its inverted canister design with a fuel regulator provides consistent heat in sub-freezing temperatures. Equipped with a voluminous 2.5-liter cooking vessel and powered by a 10,000 BTU burner, it’ll boil soup or water for you and two to four of your friends or family members in less than three minutes (2 minutes and 40 seconds to be exact) when you’re spending the night high up on a snowy mountain.

Optimus Polaris Optifuel Stove
The Optimus Polaris Optifuel Stove is an ISPO award winner in the Outdoor Stove category and there’s no question as to why. This stove raises the bar for all other camping stoves because of its insane versatility and ease of use. Don’t fret if you only packed one type of fuel—the Polaris Optifuel utilizes Single Jet Technology, meaning both LPG gas canisters and liquid gas (kerosene, diesel, jet fuel and white fuel) are compatible without having to change anything on the stove.

BioLite BaseCamp Stove
A smart alternative to fossil-fuel stoves, the Biolite BaseCamp Stove gives you wood-fired meals and charges your devices all at the same time. Using just small pieces of firewood or fallen branches for fuel, this thermo-electric stove converts heat to electricity, which charges an internal 2,200 mAh lithium-ion battery and powers a fan to increase the efficiency of the fire.

Jetboil Genesis Base Camp 2 Burner Cooking System
The Jet Boil Genesis Base Camp System is a compact two-burner stove system that runs on a standard 16.4oz propane bottle and allows you to whip up everything from bacon and eggs for breakfast to spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. The compact design allows the stove to fold together and nest in the included pot for easy carrying up to camp, but also limits the mount of space the system takes up in the back of your rig when car camping.

Camp Chef Italia Artisan Pizza Oven
Whether you’re in the comfort of your own backyard patio or roughing it at the campsite, the Camp Chef Italia Artisan Pizza Oven enables you to enjoy true artisan-style pizza. Made from stainless steel, the housing is incredibly easy to clean, has a double-wall construction and a ventilated oven door to enhance the heating dynamics, and a cordierite ceramic pizza stone to truly mimic the cooking properties of an authentic, wood-fired brick oven.

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