Portable Butane Stove
by MR. BAR-B-Q
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List Price: Our Price: $27.21 You Save: $12.78 (32%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $25.99 (click here) Category: Kitchen See more product details |
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Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of Portable Butane Stove
Customer Review: Camping Rescuer + Gas Not Included
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a must have product if you are camping and your camp stove runs out of fuel as it did for out group of 33 that visited Yosemite National Park last weekend in the middle of breakfast. I bought it for our many hotel stays with their over-priced and over-crowded breakfast restaurants. It is very clean and packs up like a breeze. I would have rated it 5 stars if it had included a set of butane canisters which I had to order separately from an Amazon partner at a price that was too high when shipping and handling was included. The stove was sent promptly and there were no shipping or handling fees.Customer Review: Couldn't live without it!
Summary: 5 Stars
This single burner is great. I threw an outdoor brunch and used it as an omlet station. It also serves as an extra side burner for the grill cooking up peppers, onions, mushrooms or whatever else you can think of. And because it's portable, it goes on picnics and camping trips with us. I have an electric stove and when power goes off, I can still have coffee and heat up some soup. It heats up quickly and hot(10,000 BTU's). It is a lightweight(4 lbs.)and quaility burner. I highly recommend Mr BAR-B-Q.Customer Review: Does as stated
Summary: 4 Stars
This stove can come in really handy even without a power outage. Used it to cook brunch for a crowd. Also was handy during an outdoor BBQ as an extra burner to sautee onions next to the grill. Would be easier to clean if the base around the burner was a smoothe paint rather than dull. Overall, works well.Customer Review: Excellent!
Summary: 5 Stars
This butane stove is sturdy and strong. It's big enough that you don't have to worry about the whole thing tipping over, the way you do with a tiny camping stove.
The butane canister kind of looks like a large bottle of hairspray. It's simple to install the butane canister - you just put the canister in there gently and flip a lever to connect it - there's no chance that you will get it in there the wrong way. (You don't have to pour any fuel in with a funnel, or anything smelly like that.) When you are ready to store away the stove, you just disconnect the butane canister, pop the plastic cap back on, and put it away.
I found out that butane canisters can be purchased on the web, but the shipping costs are more than the cost of the canisters, so it's easier to buy them locally at restaurant supply stores, or sporting/camping stores. On the other hand, if you are in the middle of a big weather disaster, and every store in town is sold out of butane canisters, then who cares about how much it costs. Thankfully UPS and Fedex deliver will stuff to your door, even in the middle of a winter wind/ice storm. Normally a butane canister costs about $2 or $3, and lasts around 3 hours. It's better to have a few in the garage, because they sell out pretty fast during a big windstorm, even in a metro city area.
This is a great stove for when the power goes out. The next time we get a windstorm, and the power goes out for 3 days, like it did during the big windstorm of Jan 2007 in the metro Seattle area, I'm all set.
By the way, I would recommend getting a butane stove even if you have a generator, because you will need the generator to run some lights and a heater. It's not much fun to have to disconnect the heater and the lights from the generator, , in freezing weather. With a butane stove, you can have your coffee, and your lights and heater too. It makes life much more pleasant during a long power outage.
Customer Review: Good -- but not perfect
Summary: 4 Stars
I wanted a portable butane stove to use in emergencies. I spent a long time reading reviews of different models, and had a hard time making a rational decision because, to tell the truth, stoves of this kind hardly differ in their feature sets at all. They all use the same 8oz butane canisters, all have piezoelectric igniters and let you adjust the flame from high down to nothing. As far as I know they're all light (including this one -- some online data I saw gave its weight as 7 lbs., which is misleading at best as it's really more like 4) and I think most of them come in a plastic case. I finally chose this one because it had many reviews on Amazon, most of them positive, featured a 10,000 BTU burner, and had a carrying case right in the product photo so I knew for sure it came with one.
Although I only expect to use my stove in emergencies, I tested it out when I first got it. I put a pan of water on, and it boiled in a very reasonable time. However, there are some annoyances that I have to point out. First of all, as others have said, you have to make sure the notch on the fuel can is lined up with the pin on the fitting before you press down the lever that pulls the can into the fitting. Unfortunately there's no kind of guide to help you line it up, you just have to eyeball it. In contrast, I found an instructional video for the Sterno ActionStation stove, and it has a little tab that folds down into the slot so you know it's lined up correctly. In hindsight that would be a nice feature to have. Second, when you do push down the lever, the torque of the lever-driven assembly pulling the fuel can into the fitting causes the entire stove to bend a little bit out of shape until things are fully seated. This is a little alarming, so it would be nice if the stove were just a little more rigid. Third, the control knob is a little wobbly so it's hard to tell whether you have the gas set on "max" or "min" without actually looking at the flame. Finally, like most butane stoves of this kind, this model has only four supports for your pot or pan to sit on (as opposed to my kitchen range, which has eight). This makes it seem a bit precarious if you're using a small-diameter saucepan. It would be nice if the supports extended a little farther toward the center of the burner to provide better stability.
All in all, this stove is just fine and I'm going to keep it, but I can't give it five stars.