The Camp Stove That Ended Our Cold Campground Dinners

For years, dinner at our campsite was a race against the dark. By the time the coals were gray or the single burner was finally free, the kids had lost interest, the hot dogs were cold, and I was standing over a hissing little stove cooking five batches one at a time. The 12-year-old ate first. The teenagers ate last. Somebody always ate cold.

Last summer I finally got tired of it and bought the Camp Chef Explorer two-burner stove. I picked it for a simple reason: it was the biggest thing that would fit in the back of our Ford Expedition without a fight. I did not expect it to change how our trips work. It did.

The Explorer puts both burners on at once with room to spare. A 12-inch skillet on one side, a pot of water for pasta on the other, and dinner for seven people is done in about the time it used to take me to cook for three. Our youngest sat in a camp chair watching the steam rise and said it smelled like home. That was the moment I knew the trunk space was worth it.

Now, I'm not a gear person. I do not own a truck that has never hauled anything. I buy the mid-priced thing, and if it breaks, I buy it again. What won me over with this stove is not that it looks impressive. It is that the flame holds steady, the wind does not put it out, and dinner actually lands on the table while the sun is still up.

Part of the problem was that we never had a real cooking setup. We had a folding table, a little one-burner stove that wobbled, and a cooler that doubled as a prep counter. Cooking for seven people on that meant constant shuffling, and by the time the second pot was on, the first one had gone cold. I told Jenna we were done eating like that.

Dinner for seven, two burners, one skillet and a pot of water, done before the sun went down. That never happened with our old stove.

The real test came in Wyoming. A wind came up off the plain around five o'clock, the kind that used to turn our old stove into a flickering candle. The Camp Chef Explorer barely noticed. The flame stayed blue and even, and I cooked a full dinner without once standing in front of it with my jacket spread out as a windshield. That single trip paid for the stove in my head.

The other thing I did not expect is how much the kids got involved. The 10-year-old can light it, with supervision. The teenagers take turns cooking breakfast, which means I get to sit down with coffee instead of standing over a griddle. The stove is tall enough that they do not have to hunch, and the controls are simple enough that nobody has to ask me what the dials do.

Setup takes about two minutes. The legs fold out, the hose screws onto a standard propane tank, and a small shelf catches spills so cleanup is not a production. When the trip is over it folds down compactly and slides into the back of the Expedition next to the cooler, and with the rooftop cargo box carrying the tent and chairs, we still have room for seven people's worth of sleeping bags.

We cooked everything on it this summer. Pancakes and bacon in the morning, burgers and corn in the evening, and on the rainy day in Idaho, a big pot of chili that simmered while the kids played cards at the picnic table. Two burners meant I could cook the chili and toast the bread at the same time. That sounds small, but when you are the one doing the cooking, it is everything.

It is also honest to say what it is not. This is not a backpacking stove. It takes up real space in the trunk, and if you are camping alone or with one other adult, it is more stove than you need. You will also want to watch the grease when you cook bacon, because the burners are strong and things can go from browned to burned fast. Those are small complaints against the one thing that matters to us: everybody eats together, and everybody eats hot. That alone is worth the trunk space.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you are on the fence about a big two-burner stove, here is my honest advice. Buy the bigger burner output the first time. We spent years making do with a small stove and cold meals, and the upgrade cost us a little trunk space and a little money, but it saved us an hour of cooking every night of every trip. Camp Chef builds these for outfitters and guides, and after a full summer with the Explorer, I understand why. You do not need to be a gear person to appreciate the difference. You just need to be the person who is tired of eating dinner in shifts. If that is you, skip the small stove and get the one that cooks for the whole crew.