feature: Stove + Grill

Campingaz Camping Chef Stove and Grill

VERDICT: A puny grill but worth buying if you’re on a budget & find it discounted

PRO’s: Compact, runs on Propane and Butane. Often heavily discounted.

CON’s: puny grill which lacks power. Grill difficult to clean. Prone to gusts of wind

OUR RATING  

On the face of it the Campingaz Camping Chef Stove and Grill is perfect for family camping as it sports two powerful burners and a radiant grill. And if you buy the version which comes with a regulator and storage bag then all you need to add is a gas cylinder. But is it any good ?

There no way around it – it’s simply not possible to cook for four people on a single burner stove. Two burners is what you really need whilst the inclusion of a grill widens the range of meals that can be prepared. The two burners on the Campingaz Camping Chef are widely spaced which means that two large pots or pans can be used at the same time.

Sitting immediately below the two burners is a grill. In theory this is a plus but in the case of this stove it’s been poorly executed and lets the stove down. The main problem is that the grill is actually smaller (6 inches x 2.5 inches) than two slices of bread placed side by side. This means that you’ll need to constantly rotate the slices. A further problem is that the grill is located too far below the element which means that a lot of the heat is simply wasted. Whilst this means that your toast is extremely unlikely to burn, you’ll probably end up holding the toast nearer the element to speed things up and this probably will result in it burning.

The lower section of the stove which holds the grill is designed to collapse. Whilst this means that it packs away into a smaller size than it otherwise would do, setting up and packing it away does involve take a little longer especially if the grill has been used as this is fiddly to get at to clean. In order to keep the grill clean we’d just use it for doing toast. Sausages would be better of fried rather than grilled.

Frustratingly the sides of the stove are fixed and offer very little protection from the wind for either the two burners or the grill. The metal lid does act as a windbreak but only protects the back of the unit. When in use it’s a little too far back for our liking. Because the sides don’t extend up above the level the burners (unlike the Coleman Perfectflow 2 burner stove) as soon as the wind changes direction you’ll have to re-align the stove.

All of this contributes to the relatively long boil time of seven minutes and the poor performance of the grill already noted above. The burners and the grill each have individual control knobs all with good adjustability although none of them have piezeo-electric ignition. To light any of them you’ll need to use matches.

At the bottom of the stove a pair of thin but relatively sturdy metal legs fold out to raise the stove a little. Unfortunately these don’t have a rubberised feet on them so on metal camping tables there’s a chance that the camping cooker could slide around. Campingaz actual produce an enhanced version of this stove called the Campingaz Camping Chef Plus which includes a collapsable stand although this can also be bought seperately.

A plus point of this stove is that runs not only on Campingaz Butane cylinders (specifically the Campingaz R904 refillable cylinder or the Campingaz R907 refillable cylinder) but also will run on Propane too which means that a fuel supply should be easy to find wherever you are.

So, would we buy one ?

Possibly, but not at the recommended retail price as we feel, given the various shortcomings of the design that it offers poor value for money at the full price. That said, by mid-June this stove is often heavily discounted by outdoor retailers and that’s when we would buy one.  Bear in mind also that Campingaz have launched the Campingaz Camping Chef Vario stove and grill which has led to further discounting of the older Campingaz Camping Chef.

There are undoubtably better stoves out there but at the discounted price that you can pick this up for (often with the regulator and carry case thrown in) then it does offer good value as long as you’re aware of the flaws.

Todays Latest Prices for Campingaz Camping Chef