Food And Cooking · Volume 2
The Kitchen, Settled — a Small Fridge Comes Back for Under Two Pounds
Introduction
The previous volume left three questions open: which stove, how big a pan, and — the larger one — what replaces the fridge that left the build. All three are now decided, and the arithmetic turned out far better than any of them looked individually.
⭐ The whole round costs 1.8 lb, and it closes a gap that a cooler would have opened at 35 to 50.
2.1 What changed, and what it cost
Table 1 — What changed, and what it cost
| Out | In | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Stove | Camp Chef Everest 2X, 15.0 | GasOne dual-fuel, 3.0 | −12.0 |
| Pan | 12 in cast iron + glass lid, 11.5 | 10 in cast iron, 5.5 | −6.0 |
| Cold storage | (nothing) | ICECO GOPack12, 15.7 | +15.7 |
| Fridge power | (nothing) | ICECO 250 Wh battery, 4.1 | +4.1 |
| NET | +1.8 lb |
🔴 Read that against the alternative. With no fridge, food storage on a multi-day deep trip is a cooler and ice — realistically 35 to 50 lb, most of it water that has to be replaced every couple of days and drained onto the ground. The fridge is not an indulgence here; it is the cheaper option by about forty pounds.
2.2 The stove: already owned, and it was the right one all along
✅ A GasOne 10,000 BTU dual-fuel single burner, about 3 lb, already in the inventory. It runs propane or butane, which matters: the propane side takes the same 1 lb canisters the plan already carries, so there is no second fuel type and no cold-weather compromise.
⭐ This is the outcome the previous volume argued toward without knowing the answer was already on a shelf. The Everest 2X is an excellent stove and it was specified for a cooking plan that no longer exists — the fire does the cooking, and the burner boils water. Twelve pounds recovered for nothing.
⚠ One thing to buy before the first use: stability. A pot on a 1 lb bottle is genuinely tippy. A stabiliser base or a remote hose costs a few ounces and is worth having before the first spill rather than after it.
2.3 The pan: ten inches resolves the mismatch
✅ A 10 in cast iron skillet, about 5.5 lb, replacing the 12 in and its glass lid.
⭐ This is the fix for the pan-and-stove problem the previous volume raised. A 12 in skillet on a small bottletop burner heats a circle in the middle of a large thermal mass, and puts eight pounds of iron on top of a propane bottle. A 10 in pan on a 10,000 BTU burner is a proportionate pairing — the burner can drive the whole pan, and the mass on top is no longer trying to tip the bottle over.
⭐ And ten rather than eight is the right compromise. Bacon and eggs for two in an 8 in pan is two rounds of cooking; in a 10 in it is one. A pound and a half is a cheap price for not cooking dinner twice, and a 10 in is still well within what the burner drives.
⭐ Fish stays on the fire, in a basket — which keeps the fire doing the thing fire is best at, and means no pan has to be sized for it.
2.4 The fridge: 13 quarts, 15.7 lb, and it fits the power system
✅ ICECO GOPack12 — 13 quart, 7.1 kg / 15.7 lb, compressor-driven, waterproof TPU shell, dual-side DC inputs. The lightest true compressor fridge in its class, and less than a quarter of the 62 lb unit that left the build.
Real-world consumption for this class is 240 to 300 Wh per day, with owners of the larger GO20 reporting as little as ~108 Wh on cool days.
2.4.1 Whether it fits, worked against the actual system
Table 2 — Whether it fits, worked against the actual system
| Fridge + CPAP | Wh/day | Days on the 858 Wh pack alone |
|---|---|---|
| Cool ambient, CPAP low | 230 | 3.7 |
| Typical, CPAP low | 330 | 2.6 |
| Typical, CPAP high | 450 | 1.9 |
| Hot, lid opened often, CPAP high | 600 | 1.4 |
Table 3 — Whether it fits, worked against the actual system
| Available input | Wh/day |
|---|---|
| Renogy 200 W, four hours of open sun | 800 |
| The same panel at 40%, under forest canopy | 320 |
| Truck 12 V socket, one hour of driving | 220 |
| Truck socket, two hours of driving | 440 |
⭐ It closes. Even derated to forty percent for canopy, the panel alone roughly covers a typical day; an hour of driving puts it in surplus.
🔴 Where it does not close: stationary, under heavy canopy, for several days, in heat. That is the case to plan around, and the answer is a sunny clearing rather than a bigger battery.
⚠ This corrects an earlier claim in this project. Vehicle Power and Camp Power both state that 858 Wh cannot run a fridge. That was true of the 62 lb unit at roughly 480 Wh/day and is not true of a 13 quart at 250. The statement was right about the fridge it was written about and wrong as a general rule.
2.5 ⭐ The 250 Wh battery is not a cloudy-day convenience — it is load segregation
It is worth being precise about what the detachable 250 Wh pack actually buys, because the obvious reason is the smaller one.
4.1 lb, detachable, charged from AC or a 12 V socket, and good for roughly 10.5 hours at freezer temperature under half load — meaningfully longer at fridge temperature.
⭐⭐ The real value is that it takes the fridge off the CPAP’s battery. As things stood, a continuous, temperature-dependent, entirely discretionary load was drawing from the same 858 Wh as a medical device. On a hot night with the lid opened often, the fridge could quietly eat the reserve the CPAP needs.
🔴 A separate pack makes that impossible. The fridge runs itself down and stops being the fridge; it cannot run the CPAP down. That is a different and much better failure mode, and it is exactly the separation Vehicle Power volume 4 argued for when it insisted a medical load gets reserved capacity explicitly.
⭐ It also restores redundancy the build lost. When the 200 Ah bank left and everything collapsed onto one pack, Camp Power volume 1 noted honestly that three charging paths into one battery is not two batteries. This is the second battery, small and purpose-bound — and either can charge from the truck’s socket.
2.6 🔴 The 12 V slow cooker: no, and the arithmetic is not close
The idea was a small 12 V crockpot for squirrel, rabbit and other slow-cooked game. It does not survive the power budget.
Table 4 — 🔴 The 12 V slow cooker: no, and the arithmetic is not close
| Per meal | Against an 858 Wh pack | |
|---|---|---|
| 100 W × 6 h | 600 Wh | 70% of everything |
| 150 W × 6 h | 900 Wh | 🔴 More than the pack holds |
| 200 W × 6 h | 1,200 Wh | 🔴 140% |
⚠ A 12 V slow cooker uses the same energy as a mains one — the voltage does not change the physics. Heat is heat, and six hours of it is six hours of it.
2.7 ⭐⭐ What does the job instead, with no power at all
A thermal cooker — a Thermos Shuttle Chef or equivalent. The food is brought to a boil for fifteen to twenty minutes on the stove or the fire, then sealed into a vacuum-insulated outer vessel that holds it above 160 °F for up to eight hours. After the initial boil it uses nothing at all.
⭐ It is a better match for the intended use than a crockpot would have been, on three counts.
Tough game is exactly what retained-heat cooking is for. Squirrel and rabbit want long, gentle, moist heat, which is precisely what a sealed vacuum vessel delivers — and it cannot scorch, because there is no heat source.
It cooks while the truck is moving. Sealed, unpowered, no spill risk and no flame. Start it at breakfast, eat it at the next camp.
⭐ And it is the Dutch oven this project already talked itself out of, at a fraction of the weight and with no coals to manage.
⚠ Not yet bought, and not yet in the load plan — the weight is modest, around three to five pounds, but it should be weighed and entered like everything else.
2.8 What is still open
⚠ Weigh the 10 in skillet and the camp table — both are carried at class or listed figures.
⚠ The camp kit remainder is still a placeholder at 25 lb for food, cookware, coffee, wash kit and lighting, and it remains the least trustworthy number in the load plan. ⭐ The fridge changes what goes in it — cold food replaces some shelf-stable weight — so it should be re-estimated after the first real pack rather than adjusted on paper.
🔴 And the burn-ban question from volume 1 is still unanswered. With a 10 in pan and a 10,000 BTU burner the answer is now much less painful than it was — that combination genuinely cooks — but it is worth deciding deliberately rather than discovering on a dry August weekend.
References
- ICECO GOPack12: 13 quart, 7.1 kg, compressor, waterproof TPU shell, dual-side DC inputs. ICECO 250 Wh detachable battery: 4.10 lb, AC and DC-socket charging, approximately 10.5 hours at 32 °F under half load.
- Compressor fridges of this class draw roughly 240–300 Wh per day in normal use.
- Propane vaporises at −44 °F; isobutane fails below about 11 °F — the reason the dual-fuel burner runs on the propane side in Michigan.
- Retained-heat cookers hold above 160 °F for up to eight hours from a fifteen-to-twenty-minute boil.
- Vehicle Power vol 4 and Camp Power and Solar vol 1, this project — the medical-load reservation and the single-battery redundancy note this volume answers.
- Weight and Balance vol 3, this project — the load plan these figures feed.
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