Feed Me!!! MSR Micro Rocket

There comes a time in an adventurer’s life where he gets tired of eating pre-made foods like 7-11 sandwiches, energy or protein bars or McDonald’s $1 menu items and wants to branch out into something cooked, and not soggy.  Or when he’s out camping and just wants some hot cocoa but first must pump up and light the huge Coleman liquid fuel car camping stoves, bust out a large pan and wait.

Or perhaps, while he appreciates the effort, is perhaps not in the mood for Randy’s camp spaghetti yet again.  Sorry bro. What’s an incredibly lazy person do to? Buy an MSR Micro Rocket, that’s what.  There are a lot of stove choices out there, and almost all of them will work, some working better than others.

Roughly speaking, your choices are: Hipster stoves, Alcohol stoves, canister stoves, and liquid stoves.

Hipster stoves: 
These are the wood burning stoves like the Vargo and the chemical stoves like Esbit. If you’re an ultralight hiker, are the type who has no problem filtering their coffee through their socks and already know you want one of these, go for it. Or if you’re a hipster and want to pretend you’re extreme. For the rest of us, these suck and you should look elsewhere. If you have to ask, you don’t need these.  Also, are you really spending $50 for stamped titanium plates to hold a mini campfire?  More power to you; not for me.  These are purely for boiling water.  Smoky, chemical filled water.

Alcohol stoves: 
Also known as Coke Can stoves or Cat food stoves, these are incredibly simple and cheap to make. They’re also horrible in the wind, incredibly unsafe when spilled while lit, impossible to tell visually if they’re on other than at night, and mostly have to burn out all the fuel you put in.

They truly are incredibly easy to make. Take a cat food can, eat the cat food (hey, if you’re doing this you probably want to make use of the cheap calories), poke some holes in the side with a cheap handheld hole punch, buy some denatured alcohol and prepare to light your entire campsite on fire. I got it to work just fine the first time I used it and thought it would be my new go to stove until I accidentally bumped the lit fuel and had it spill over the camp table onto the ground below. Was really beautiful, watching this yellow and blue river of lawsuit flowing off the table like the Yosemite Firefall. But I did enjoy some hot coffee. However, I couldn’t get it to work in the morning. So in short, yeah, this works, but it may not be legal in many areas and is frankly to annoying to get to work reliably. If you’re going to do the hipster stove, just do this and be done with it. Not for me though.

These are primarily for boiling water given no ability to control temperatures.

Liquid stoves: 
Think of these like the 15 passenger vans church groups and college students use to get to their destinations or the Land Rovers of yore traveling through Africa of yore – before they took their final step from the dirt to the mall crawlers they are now.  Big, bulky, unwieldy, messy, smelly and awesome in every way.

My brother uses a Primus on his adventures and it flat works.

I have the MSR Whisperlite Universal stove, similar to the above pictures but have only used it once, poorly and mostly incorrectly.

That one time being in 20F weather at the Mt Baldy Sierra Ski hut in 4’ of snow with a storm and cold winds coming in. 40 minutes and frozen digits later I finally was able to change out the fuel nipple, figure out how to mount everything and get a fire lit. The main problem was the windscreen, which kept trying to fly away. But I got my coffee, damn it. The reason this isn’t my go-to stove is because I bought a fuel bottle a few sizes to large – to be used as a potential bike fuel backup on my TAT trip – it’s big and bulky but with many small parts, and makes everything it touches smell like unleaded fuel.  I’ll change it to white fuel in the near future because the unleaded was way too smoky and messy.  Probably will be my go to for larger groups or overland car camping.

However, the reason I own it is because it takes any fuel, including canisters, can handle large pots for large groups, and is a very compact stove for a base-camp style workhorse. Technically it’s also better at elevation and cold temperatures, but that really only becomes valuable at the extremes of both. Like the hipster stoves, if you have to ask, you’re not cold or high enough. Lol, see what I did there?

Also, if you want to actually cook something fancy, more than just boiling water, these are your stoves.  Boil, simmer, flambé, whatever.  With a skilled enough chef you can make almost anything, including complex entrees like lasagna.

Canister stoves: 
There are a million of these and they can be crazy cheap. I bought my parents an Icetek sports stove as a gag gift a few years back but you know what? They’ve actually used it several times, as have I. For $8 who cares about the rather crappy build quality or the fact that it’ll rust out? It’s the perfect stove to toss in the back of your car, just in case.

From there you get into a dizzying array of choices and prices, which will leave you stuck, like figuring out what you want to eat from the menu at one of those 24hr Chinese restaurants which for some reason also serve Italian dishes. Sunday Bistro, I’m talking about you.

In reality, the answers are relatively simple. Do you want to buy into a cooking system or just have a reliable flame? The cooking systems are awesome, with Jet Boil being the most recognizable name. MSR, Jet Boil, Primus, Snow Peak, whatever.

They all have their pluses and minuses but tend to be the quickest boil of all the various systems.  With a system you’ll get the stove and special pot designed especially for the stove.  If the fastest boil is your total bottom line, you can’t go wrong with the all-inclusive systems.  I didn’t go this way because I wanted more options, as being new to the cooking thing I didn’t want to be locked into one system. Eventually I’ll do like my brother did and find a pot with the heat exchanger on the bottom to hasten the boiling process and force it to work even faster.  See my pot review elsewhere for details on that.

I went with the Micro Rocket because it’s small, relatively inexpensive, an evolutionary improvement over the universally praised and reliable pocket rocket. Pocket Rocket the stove.  Get your mind out of the gutter. Unless you’re cute and single, then drop me a note.

Every review of the Micro Rocket basically says it boils insanely fast and is very small. Both are true. The basic difference between the Pocket Rocket and the Micro Rocket is that the Micro has legs which rotate and fold down whereas the Pocket simply folds up, creating a larger profile. Of course, the Pocket Rocket is cheaper.  At the time of this posting it looks like the Micro Rocket has been discontinued and replaced with the Pocket Rocket 2, which looks to be a slightly modified version of the Micro Rocket so I assume it works the same, although it doesn’t look to include the piezo ignitor like the Micro rocket.

While mine did come with a piezo lighter but half the time I just use my Light My Fire Army fire steel which frankly has more utility than a dedicated ignitor, and it starts right up. The fun thing about these stoves is they’re virtually idiot proof. In literally less than 10 minutes (5 if it’s really cold) I can open my stove kit, boil water, make my food and put everything away. By the time I’m done eating and packed up, everyone else is just lighting their stove.

These technically do suffer and fail at elevation and low temperatures, but again, if you have to ask how high or how cold, you’re not going where it’s cold enough or high enough to matter.  I’ve boiled water at 10K feet and 15 degrees F and it worked fine.  At 15 degrees the sides of the canister started to get a little ice, but nothing which worried the flame or otherwise caused any issues.  I’ve read reports that they use Canister stoves on Everest and many tales of extremely cold weather with few problems.  Take a read of this blog for a longer, more technical answer.

However, there are a few downsides.

First, it’s damn loud. It’s called a rocket and it’s as loud as a rocket. Everyone will know you’re cooking.

Second, it’s not windproof and can’t really be made so. You can and should cook in the eddy of a rock or something if it’s windy, but don’t put a shield around it. Gets explody or something.  I “have” done it but with caution.  Or stupidity.  If it’s windy, you’re hating life and the flame will blow out.

Third, it’s a tall system meaning you want to keep your pots small and your load light.  While you can boil an entire kitchen pot of water on these things, I really wouldn’t.  You’ll probably end up toppling the entire get-up or worse.

Fourth, there’s a specific way to fold the legs or it won’t go back into the case correctly. Not difficult, unless you’ve been riding for 10 hours, are tired and dehydrated, the sun is setting and you still have to put up your tent, inflate your mattress and try to fix the aux lights on your bike. Then it S U C K S for a few minutes and then you get on with your life.

Fifth, being a non-refillable canister stove there are some environmental concerns. I believe most people just throw them away, which you’re not supposed to do. The environmentally acceptable way to do it is use all the fuel, puncture the canister, and dump at a mixed metal recycling location. Don’t ask me where that is, I have no clue. I shove my spent canisters up the poop shoots of unicorns and refill them that way – no harm to the universe.  It’s possible that’s not true and I did throw the canister in the trash like a bad human but I’ll only admit that to the unicorn.

Sixth, and this my biggest concern: How much fuel do I have left? The answer is varying levels of guesswork and expertise. The easy answer is that if you’re not sure, buy a new can and take that. If you have space on the next trip, take both the old and the new can and go ‘til you run out. If you’re through-hiking and using up more fuel than you thought, you’ll want to either remember how to do the float method or buy an MSR canister, which tells you right on the side. Hint: The higher it floats, the closer you are to eating uncooked pasta.

So where does all this leave us with regards to camp stoves?  In reality, it comes down to the right stove for the job.  I use my little rocket all the time because it’s small, always works, boils quickly and is more than enough for one or two people.  I should note that I have three stoves (Coleman glamping stove, MSR Micro Rocket, Whisperlite International) and am glad for all three, depending on the situation.