A lightweight gas camping stove with a selection of cooking surfaces
After the tent, the camping stove
The Safari Chef is basically an adjustable burner plus a variety of cooking surfaces, all of which slot in snugly together when packed up in its carry bag.
THE BITS EXPLAINED
1. The grill lid. It can also be flipped and used as a large pot for cooking stir-fries and other vegetables.
2. Aluminum non-stick plate.
3. Reversible griddle with flat and ribbed surface options.
4. Bbq grill with fat catcher.
5. Stainless steel burner sits on fold-out, rubber non-slip, tripod legs and connects to a 1lb gas cartidge (not included) via a rubber tube.
Interchangeable cooking surfaces
The main advantage of the Safari Chef is its versatility. You can barbeque, grill, stir-fry, boil… even slow cook. I’ve included some videos below of how to make pizza (yes really!) or broil a Christmas gammon with the Cadac. We haven’t tried these yet. The pot stand allows you to safely place your own saucepans, kettle, cafetiere etc. on top of the burner so you can boil things and make coffee. For us, the fact that it folded up so compactly was a big plus. And it’s lightweight enough that we could easily take it down to the beach for hot chocolates at sunset.The downside…
It is just one ring though. So if you’re doing pasta with a sauce for example you need to cook the sauce first, then keep it warm while you make the pasta which will double your cooking time. For meals like this, to speed things up, we dug out our basic one-ring burner to boil the pasta. You can pick these up in any camping stores or on Amazon. Also, although the burner unit is fairly sturdy, it’s also fairly lightweight so could be knocked over easily with kids running round. You do need to be careful with that.Here’s some pics of what we cooked on our Cadac stove:
In conclusion
So not perfect, but you can’t have everything when you’re camping. Then it wouldn’t be camping would it? Weighing up this stove against other two-ring burners,
the Cadac suited our needs best. It’s compact, lightweight, you can make a variety of different meals on this, getting it out and set up isn’t a big production and afterwards it’s easy to clean.
Some advice: Before your first camping trip with this stove, it’s a good idea to read the manual at home and get familiar with the parts. It’s pretty simple to use but initially all the bits and pieces can be overwhelming.
View the Cadac Safari Chef on Amazon
I found this video of a couple cooking their Christmas ham – I kid you not! – on the Cadac stove:
And here’s the dad from the camping blog Get out with the kids, (one of our favourite outdoorsy blogs), cooking pizza on his Cadac stove: