Initially, to get a baseline for each stove’s general performance, we focused on how quickly they could boil water (similar to the process of many of the sites listed above). For the three that couldn’t, we stopped the test at 15 minutes and recorded the temperature of the water. Stoves with 9,000 to 15,000 BTUs will get the job done, but you’ll notice slower boil times and a drop in cooking performance.
The Classic consumed an average of 5.18% of a green Coleman fuel can or 0.8 ounces of fuel during each test. During the windy test, it consumed 1 ounce of fuel, and in the wind-less test, it used 0.6 ounces of fuel. Out of all our tested stoves, this one ranked in the upper third of the windy fuel test. This stove is likely more fuel efficient owing to the lower output 10,000 BTU burners and the snug windscreens. If conserving fuel (and saving money!) matters more than a quick boil time, this could be an ideal stove for you. While the Coleman Classic isn’t fancy or feature-rich, it does everything you need a stove to do in a timely and proficient manner.
Smaller units, like the Coleman Triton, can only fit two 10-inch pans. If you regularly use larger pots or pans, it’s worth digging into this spec closely before making a purchase (most manufacturers and retails will publish the dimensions). Alternatively,
if your stove will be your first purchase, make sure the cookware you buy will fit on your unit’s cook surface. It’s no coincidence most of the big-time sellers come with two burners—they’re all the vast majority of us will ever need.
As with cooking at home, two burners going at the same time will get most meals cooked in a timely manner. And for large gatherings, there are three-burner stoves like the Coleman Cascade 328. And we’ve never heard the maxim that a tired and hungry family is a happy family. This is why two-burner camp stoves are the workhorse of any group camping trip,
since they can quickly cook meals for four or more people. Perfect for those times when trail mix just won’t cut it, the Cascade Classic Camping Stove makes it easy to cook great meals outdoors. Its compact design makes it easy to bring along on your adventures, and its chrome-plated grate and aluminized steel cooktop are quick and easy to clean.
The burners are coated in black paint that burned off in the first few uses, producing a pretty awful smell and staining the bottoms of the pots we were using. It wasn’t a major long-term issue, but it was definitely an unpleasant surprise the first couple times we fired up the stove. While we loved the ability to
cook over extremely high heat and fine tune the heat settings, this stove has a hard time maintaining a good simmer. It was the most powerful of our tabletop stoves, with two 25,000 BTU end burners and one 10,000 BTU central burner. While it couldn’t match the performance of our other award winners, it’s durable.