The 2 Best Stoves for Car Camping (After 2 Years Living in my Car)

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Struggling to choose between ALL the possible camping stoves for your road trip?

I lived in my car for two years, cooking every day, and I tested a few setups. But I quickly learned that simple is better and ended up with 2 small stoves that cost under $100:

• The Gas One single-burner
• The Pocket Rocket

These two stoves were the centerpiece of my minimalist kitchen setup and eased a lot of the stress of living in my car.

Together, they covered 95% of my car camping needs, why is why I think these are the two best stoves for car camping.

In this blog post, I’ll go into why I never changed my setup (it was perfect), but I’ll also list some other stoves you might like to include in your own setup!

Types of Stoves for Car Camping

Your stove is the most important part of a good car camping kitchen.

So, getting a good one from the start will make cooking every day less stressful.

There are three main types of stoves out there: ultra-light stoves, single-burner stoves, and two-burner stoves.

• Ultra-light stoves are stoves like the jetboil and pocket rocket. They fit in your hand, making it the most portable stove, but they heat things up EXTREMELY fast… too fast sometimes, actually!
• Single-burner gas stoves fit one 10-inch pan perfectly. They’re nice and portable, but you can actually make a real meal with them. We store ours under the front seat of our SUV.
• Two-burner gas stoves are bigger and allow you to cook two things at a time. You can make some seriously nice meals on the road, but they take up more storage space.

Table: Best Car Camping Stove Comparison

This table lists a bunch of features (some good, some bad) of the different types of stoves for camping!

Which car camping stove is right for you? (REALITY CHECK)

So, by now you might be asking yourself, “Which is the best stove for car camping for ME?”

And it really comes down to a couple simple questions:

1. How much do you love cooking outdoors?
2. How OK are you wish washing dishes?
3. How long are your car camping trips going to be?

Let me answer these questions from my experience:

1. Not much, really.
2. I HATE washing dishes outdoors!
3. I was traveling full time and living in my SUV.

And that’s why I went for the simplest, most effective setup.

Cooking every day and washing dishes every day isn’t too bad. But living in your SUV full time with less-than-optimal ways to cook and clean makes it all add up until it’s unbearable.

Actually, it took 1 meal for me to realize how much I disliked cleaning dishes.

So, basically, if you like cooking and don’t mind cleaning, feel free to get a two-burner stove. If you don’t want the hassle, don’t get one.

I’ve made my stance clear: the best stoves for car camping are the ultra-light and single-burner stoves, and two-burner stoves can be a hassle. But let’s delve deeper into the WHY.

The Best Stoves for Car Camping

1. The Best Overall Stove for Car Camping

The best overall stove for car camping is the single-burner stove.

It’s the simplest way to make real meals.

What I mean is that it’s small and efficient, but you can still cook what feels like a delicious, healthy meal with it.

A 10-inch pan fits perfectly on a single-burner gas stove, so our go-to meals were all one-pot meals made with a combination of fresh ingredients and canned/packaged food.

After driving or hiking for hours, we could get a proper meal ready in less than half an hour.

These were my favorite things about my single-burner:

1. Less burners means less kitchen equipment, which means less dishes to clean after eating. Seriously, I feel like my life on the road was spent looking for ways not to clean dishes.
2. It comes in a compact briefcase, so it was safe from damage and perfectly sized to fit under a car seat. When car camping, especially full time, storage is super important, so the fact that the stove was so easy to store away was huge for us.
3. Some of them run on propane or butane, so you can choose a propane cannister for it to last longer, or a butane cannister when you want to get started cooking NOW.
4. They’re super affordable. Our Gas One stove was actually cheaper than the tiny Pocket Rocket.

The ONLY problem with these single-burner stoves is that they don’t have wind protection. Wind really messes with the heat output, which makes cooking in the wind a little difficult.

We kept having to come up with creative ways to keep wind off our stove (or just cooked in the back of the SUV).

So, which single-burner stove should you get?

Well, I can vouch for the Gas One stove sold on Amazon.

It only cost me like $30, which actually made me think it wouldn’t last long.

Then it lasted 2 years of cooking on it every day.

You can read my full review of the Gas One single burner stove here!

I would also vouch for the Coleman single-burner because it’s Coleman. But the problem is that it doesn’t seem to have the dual-fuel feature that the Gas One stove does.

Both of those links are to Amazon because they’re the most affordable options, and I’m all about budget travel.

But REI also sells a Coleman single-burner gas stove that looks even higher-quality, at a higher price. However, it still doesn’t support the two types of fuel.

So, you know my recommendation.

2. The Best Ultra-Compact Stove for Quick Meals

The two best options in ultra-light stoves for car camping are the Pocket Rocket and the Jetboil.

But I’m partial to the Pocket Rocket for three reasons:

1. It’s WAY more affordable.
2. It’s perfectly compatible with gas cannisters of all different brands.
3. You can cook more of a variety of things with it.

The Pocket Rocket is super simple.

You just unfold it and connect it to an isobutane/propane gas cannister.

Then, you light it and cook.

We didn’t actually cook food with it that much because it delivers such a focused flame (like a rocket) that it burns food before it actually cooks it.

We did make quesadillas and simple food with it, but it was best for boiling water.

Our breakfast was oatmeal most mornings, so we boiled water using our Pocket Rocket every morning (not even kidding, we ate oats almost every day for 2 years).

We also used it for boiling water in our pot when we made ramen or soup.

This diversity of ways to use it is why I prefer the Pocket Rocket over the Jetboil.

Why not a Jetboil?

There are 2 reasons I don’t love Jetboil!

First, you don’t just buy the stove. You also buy the big cup attachment.

But what if you want to cook in a pot? You have to spend another fortune on the whole system again.

Jetboil is made to only work with Jetboil, which is annoying and means it costs a lot more because it’s premium.

That being said, it is the highest quality ultra-light stove. But others work well enough and last long enough (mine worked for 2 years of everyday use), so I’m always going for the cheaper option.

If you do love the Jetboil system but don’t have the budget, you can try out the Fire-Maple Ultralight Stove.

It’s pretty much a copy of the Jetboil, but way more affordable.

I haven’t used it, so I can’t vouch for it, but my set of pots is from Fire-Maple and I really like them.

The Pocket Rocket is my favorite because it’s compatible with pretty much anything you might already have (like, you can use a pot from home) and it works great.

3. If You Really Want a Two-Burner Stove

So, you do love cooking outdoors and don’t mind cleaning dishes? Let’s talk about your two-burner gas stove.

The truth is, you’re going to have fun.

Looking past the hassles, two-burner gas stoves do allow cooking awesome meals.

So, instead of eating canned food for the 5^th day in a row or cooking an easy meal in one pan, you can make a feast.

Two-burner stoves can usually fit two 10-inch pans or anything smaller.

They also almost always have wind protection, which is SO nice in terms of efficiency.

But, bad two-burner stoves are REALLY bad and frustrating, which means you need to invest in a good one.

How to Love your Two-burner Stove

Cooking on a two-burner gas stove can get annoying quickly because they’re not the best stoves for car camping.

They’re just too big for easy storage and seems to pressure you to make big meals.

But if you really want one, this is what you should keep in mind to actually have a good time:

1. Make sure they have wind protection. If it doesn’t come with wind protection, it’ll be SO hard to do it yourself, and wind can completely ruin a camping stove’s heating capabilities. Like, it’ll be on high heat, but the food won’t cook.
2. Buy an expensive one because that means it’s well-made. For example, a common problem with two-burner stoves is that the flame is strong in the burner closest to the fuel and weak in the furthest burner. This doesn’t happen with the higher-quality stoves, but they’re more expensive.
3. Plan out where you’re going to store it first. Storage is everything on a car camping road trip, so make sure you can fit it in your car beforehand! Don’t only make sure it’ll fit, but make sure it has a safe place where your expensive stove won’t get damaged.

So, which one should you get?

The only two-burner gas stove I ever tried was a cheap Walmart stove and it was TERRIBLE!

So, I would go for a much better Coleman stove.

If you’re partial to REI, get the Coleman Cascade 222 stove. It’s simple but looks like it has a really good flame.

But, honestly, the Coleman Triton stove sold on Amazon looks even better quality and costs about half as much as the REI stove.

So, I would buy the Coleman stove from Amazon and try it out.

Why I Didn’t Need Any Other Stoves for Car Camping

The Pocket Rocket and Gas One stoves were all Lala and I needed for 2 years of living in our SUV because they did everything we needed!

What did we need?

We needed 2 stoves on which we could cook yummy, healthy meals with the least amount of hassle (time & dishes).

They also needed to be easy to store.

Another reason we never needed any other stoves for car camping is that these lasted the whole time!

Both the Pocket Rocket and Gas One stove worked perfectly for 2 years straight without a hitch.

They’re very durable, and we put them both through the wringer.

Summary: The Best Stoves for Car Camping

This table includes what I think are the most important pros and cons of each type of stove:

Frequently Asked Questions