Portable Gas Stove Review: Hot Food and a Brew When the Power Goes

This post contains affiliate links. Learn more

When the power goes off in a rural village, it rarely comes back in ten minutes. We live with regular power cuts, and so does my step-daughter, so we’ve each got a portable gas stove in the kitchen cupboard. It’s the cheapest bit of kit in our power cut setup, and it’s the one that gets used every single time, because the first thing anyone wants when the lights go out is a cup of tea.

The government’s emergency kit list sticks to food that needs no cooking, and it has no stove, no fuel and no way to boil water. That’s fine for an evening. By day two of cold beans, a portable gas stove that boils a kettle and heats a pan is what makes a power cut bearable rather than miserable.

What This Portable Gas Stove Is

This is the classic single-burner portable gas stove that comes in a plastic carry case: a flat tabletop cooker that runs on the long butane cartridges (CP250 type), with a push-button piezo ignition and a dial to control the flame. You’ll find the same design sold under a dozen different badges, and honestly, they’re all the same stove underneath. Ours at home is a different brand to the one we link to here; the stove is identical.

The one we recommend is the Green Haven kit, because it’s properly in stock from an established seller and it comes with 8 gas cartridges, so you’re ready the day it arrives. Its key features:

• 2100W burner: plenty of heat to boil a kettle or cook a proper one-pan meal.
• Piezo ignition: push and turn to light, no matches or lighter needed.
• Adjustable flame: from a gentle simmer up to a rolling boil.
• Cartridge locking system: the gas cartridge only seats one way, so it goes in correctly every time.
• Fixed enamelled pan support: stable under a kettle or saucepan, and it wipes clean.
• Carry case and 8 cartridges: everything lives together in one box in the cupboard.

How We Use a Portable Gas Stove in a Power Cut

Ours lives in the kitchen, and that’s where we use it. When the power goes, the portable gas stove comes out of its case and goes on top of the electric hob. The hob is heat-proof, it’s already at cooking height, and it’s exactly where your pans and kettle live anyway. Then we crack the kitchen window open, and that’s the setup.

Kettle on first. Always. A stovetop kettle on this burner gives you a brew in a few minutes, and a hot drink does more for a household in a power cut than any amount of torches. After that it’s tins, pasta, soup, scrambled eggs: anything you’d normally cook in one pan on a hob.

Here’s ours doing exactly that during a power cut:

Portable Gas Stove for Indoor Use: How to Set It Up

A lot of people looking for a portable gas stove for indoor use are really asking one question: can I cook in my kitchen when the power’s off? This is how we do it, and it’s simple:

• Cook where you normally cook. On top of the electric hob is ideal: heat-proof, stable and the right height.
• Crack a window open while it’s lit, the same as you would with a gas hob.
• Use it for cooking and boiling, then turn it off. It’s a cooker, not a room heater.
• Keep the spare cartridges in the case, in a cool cupboard, so the whole kit is in one place when you need it.

Why a Butane Camping Stove Beats the Alternatives at Home

There are plenty of ways to cook without power, but for a normal UK kitchen the butane camping stove wins on almost every count:

• It cooks like a real hob. Full-size pans, a proper kettle and a flame you can control, unlike tiny backpacking burners.
• The fuel is easy to get. Butane cartridges are sold in supermarkets, DIY stores and camping shops, and they’re cheap to keep a few spare.
• Nothing to charge. A power station will boil a kettle, but only if it’s charged. A portable gas stove works the moment you light it, however long the power’s been off.
• Nothing to learn. Click it in, turn the dial, cook. Anyone in the house can use it.

It’s also the same camping gas stove you’d take to the campsite, the caravan or a festival, so it earns its cupboard space all year rather than sitting in a box waiting for a storm.

An Emergency Cooking Stove for Two Homes

We liked ours enough to buy a second portable gas stove for my step-daughter’s house, which gets the same rural power cuts we do. That’s the real test of any bit of kit: would you buy it again for someone you care about? For an emergency cooking stove that costs less than a takeaway and sorts out hot food and drinks for a whole household, the answer was an easy yes.

If you’re building a power cut kit, or filling the gaps in the government emergency kit list, a portable gas stove and a few spare cartridges is one of the best-value things you can add.

What the Rest of the Team Think

Meet The Team →

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Boils a kettle and cooks a proper meal with no electricity at all
• Sits neatly on top of an electric hob, so you cook in your own kitchen
• Push-button piezo ignition, no matches needed
• Butane cartridges are cheap and sold almost everywhere
• Comes with 8 cartridges and a carry case, ready to store
• A portable gas stove you’ll also use for camping, caravans and the garden

Cons

• Single burner, so cooking for a big family means one pan at a time
• Butane works best indoors or in mild weather; keep the cartridges inside rather than in a cold shed
• You need a window you can open while the portable gas stove is lit

Frequently Asked Questions