The Heat Diffuser: An End to Unevenly Cooked Trail Food

You may have noticed that several of our meal kits recommend using a heat diffuser to offset an unpredictable level of heat when cooking over a camp stove or open fire to cool: primarily those meals that are most likely to burn quickly on thin-bottomed camp pots. We've had a lot of questions about what that is . . . and how we developed the technique. To give credit where credit is due, the idea was inspired by my own grandmother who often used a heat diffuser (or flame-tamer) on top of the kitchen stove to keep the bottom of the pan from scorching when she was baking skillet-cornbread or simmering a big pot of stew.

We've carried a heat diffuser as a regular cook-set companion for years . . . and its been the saving grace to many a camp meal! The one we carry is the same one that we sell in the Packit Gourmet gear store - an old-fashioned looking lightweight aluminum model with a fold-up removable handle that we stumbled upon in a feed store here in Austin. We also use it as an occasional cookpot lid when duty calls. It's perforated with tiny holes which allows steam to pass through, so it easily doubles as "steamer tray" when we need to keep a plate of something warm while a side dish finishes cooking; or as a "tortilla rejuvenator" when we need to warm or re-moisturize tortillas on the trail. It also works great to help stabilize a pan when the pan bottom is larger than than the stove surface.

Commercially made heat diffusers come in a variety of shapes, sizes and weights - some with perforations / some without. You can fashion a simple make-shift model on your own by folding a piece of heavy weight aluminum foil into a square large enough to cover the bottom of your cookpot - - and punching a few holes in it to allow air to flow through. It may not guarantee a burn-free zone . . . but it will certainly help the intensity of the heat reaching the bottom of your pan.

It might be an old-fashioned technique, but it's been a fabulous addition to our camp kitchen and one of our all-time favorite tip and tricks. Pass it along!