Review: MRE review 1/2 day's rations

I had the opportunity to take a pile of Australian issue MRE components to work to test out, following on from a small selection of them falling in my lap from more than one undisclosed source. I will not be on-selling these, they're for my own entertainment and preparedness.

I wanted to give myself a good trial, so selected a full menu to replace what I would normally eat during the day at work. It is common to see "8,700kJ" as the average recommended intake and I have breakfast, lunch and two breaks at work, so I selected accordingly.


For breakfast I had a brown of muesli/porridge, which I mad with boiling water and a sachet of instant creamer. It made a solid, heavy and hearty porridge, which was flavoursome and had enough variety of ingredients to have a good and palatable consistency.










I had the "blueberry and apple" cereal bar for my mid-morning snack, it was again, dense and for all intents and purposes, could have come out of any kids

Interestingly when I looked up the nutritional content of current US issued MRE kits, they suggested that service-members (who were classified as highly active men between the ages of 18 and 30) typically use about 4,200 Calories a day. The conversion is  1 kJ = 0.2 Calories (Cals)or 1 Calorie = 4.2 kJ, giving a figure of 17,640 kJ a little over double the "average adult intake diet". Bear that in mind later.

Lunch was a bit more involved; a sachet of freeze-dried rice, beef and onion stew, a can of "diced two-fruits in syrup" with a sachet of tropical flavour Thorzt sports drink powder to drink.

The dehydrated rice was reconstituted with a canteen cup's worth of boiling water, and once ready, I simply upended it into a bowl, and added the cold stew to it. I could have tried reheating the stew, either by suspending its retort in a bowl of boiling water, or throwing it all in the microwave, but this would totally have been cheating.

It was a pretty decent meal, there were enough chunky bits of meat and onion to make it more than just thick gravy, but it was hardly a hefty chew. The stew itself was quite palatable cold, but a quick mix with the hot rice made it all the better.

Obviously you have to reconstitute the rice to make it in any way enjoyable, but it will reconstitute in cold water, if you don't have a source of heat, or are under restrictions.



I finished off my lunch with the can of fruit in syrup, which I popped open with my trusty EDC P-38 opener, and tucked into the just-as-off-the-shelf canned fruit. Nothing special to report there though.












For my afternoon break and to snack on in e afternoon, I had selected the chocolate drink, infamous canned cheese and even more infamous chocolate ration. Again, boiling water into the chocolate drink, which made a quite passable hot chocolate.

If I had wanted it to be extra creamy, I could have saved the instant creamer from breakfast and added it, but I think it didn't need it.





The Bega canned cheese, reported to me as a legendary constipation cause, appeared to be exactly the Kraft cheese stick cheese, in a can. It was firm but elastic, and "split" rather than crumbled. It was tasty enough, and reminded me of school-yard snack breaks for sure.

Lastly was the equally infamous legendarily laxative chocolate ration.  I don't actually enjoy milk chocolate, but I wanted the full experience, and even with all the food I'd included in my half-day's ration, I wanted to make a real showing of it.

I snacked on it throughout the afternoon and finished it just before going home, and suffered no ill effects.

Perhaps the cheese and chocolate battled each other into a stalemate, but I was the victor.

Adding up the constituents, I had had 8907kJ (2129Calories) in this selection, and this was just my daytime food.

All this, and I was pretty full, and certainly didn't feel that I had gone without. If anything, I felt I had wanted to eat the cheese or the chocolate, but not both.

It's also worth noting that this only made up a small portion of the full ADF ration-pack. Given that, and the full kJ load in that full pack, you could make one of these stretch a long way, or spread them out between a number of people to make a survival situation both more palatable, but also more secure.

If you can lay your hands on an MRE, you'd have to go a long way to find a better, more densely packed, supplied and readily consumable source of nutrition and energy than the ADF ration-pack. If you're in a position to lay hands on one, do it.

If you're in a field where you might be able to swap out, try swapping for an ADF rat-pack, you won't be disappointed.

Sneak-Peek: ADF ration pack H

Behold the full contents of an ADF Ration pack, menu "H".

I had the good fortune to have some of these fall into my grabby hands, and I wanted to show off the contents.

This represents an entire days consumables for an Australian infantryman.

 

 

 

Bundled in a heavy plastic cover (broken, for legitimacy's sake).

Snacks, three meals, drinks, tea and coffee, a FRED eating tool, spoon, matches, wipes, Vegemite, all a fighting body needs. 

Stay tuned and I'll cover what a meal is like in more detail.

Wish-Lust: MotoGriddle packable fireplace

Hot off the press, here is a Kickstarter project that was brought to my attention by its creator, Phillip Kauffman, who was the mind behind the ScrewGrabber Kickstarter, I covered a while ago. This time, in a totally different direction, he has a set of flat-packing trail fireplace, specifically designed to be mounted on a trailbike, or outside of a 4WD.

The concept is not dissimilar to other "fold-flat" grill systems, but this one is designed to be vehicle mounted, and as such, it is bigger, sturdier and rather than back-pack or pocket packable, to be accommodated by an existing mounting system. A rod runs through the middle, and clamps tight to give you a secure mount. The MotoGriddle is designed to use that same mounting system.

When folded flat, the MotoGriddle is designed to be mounted underneath the  Rotopax jerry can system. Check out Rotopax system here: Essentially it's a modular locking system that lets you fix a range of proprietary jerry-can's to the back of a motorbike, ATV or other outdoors adventure mobile.

The original Motogriddle was very practical but a flaw became apparent; size. It was too small for a big camping trip. So the team scaled it up to create the 4WD and Trail Griddles. As a result, the 4WD Griddle is their new favorite in the Motogriddle line.

The original MotoGriddle (Small) for motorcycle mounting comes in at  9" x 13.5" x 5/8" when flat-packed, and 9.25" x 12.5" x 13.5" when set up. It weighs 5kg (11 lbs) without the top-plate grill, and  5.8kg (13 lbs) with the grill.

The Large for 4WD or RV carriage, is offered in either "4WD" or "Trail" patterns, but these appear to be aesthetic differences only.

When packed flat they are 16" x 14.25" x 5/8" and when set-up: 16" x 14" x 12". Bigger means heavier, so it's no surprise that they weigh 8.6kg(19 lbs) without the grill, and 10kg(23 lbs) with it. Hardly back-pack ultralight gear, but it's not intended to be.

Cut from 0.07" (3/32") A36 mild steel, these are intended to be for campers looking to comply with camp fire regulations. and have a complete solution no matter were they go. I've built fires in sand-dunes where you might despair for a couple of rocks to prop things up on, but with nothing in sight. This would be perfect.

Construction appears to be as simple as inserting tab-A into slot-B a couple of times and you're ready to go!

Both the 4WD and Trail Griddles easily accept pre-cut sold firewood, making preparation for a camping trip simple. With the larger size you get a larger cook top, more heat, and more light. Built in folk holes for levering off the grill-top for adding more wood and skewer-notches add to the functionality and really present the thought that has gone into these products.

The practical uses to the Motogriddle, the 4WD, and the Trail Griddles seem endless. The makers have used the Motogriddle on motorcycle trips secured by the Rotopax mounting system. They have also used the 4WD Griddle in campgrounds that had fire pits solely so they could move the fire where they wanted it.

Its a good looking invention, and whilst not the first of its kind, the inclusion of the Rotopax mounting system and overall size make it a very appealing project for those of us who camp from vehicles.

Check the project out here:

Review: Back Country Cuisine - Cooked Breakfast

Here is the fourth and final chapter in my "instant meals" pieces that I've been covering. The first was the Outdoor Gourmet Butter Chicken, which was delicious, the Back Country Cuisine Roast Chicken which was passable, the Outdoor Gourmet Tandoori Chicken, which was also delicious and now the last entry of the four I had collected to sample, the Back Country Cuisine Cooked Breakfast.

Billed as a "satisfying beef bacon, scrambled egg in a hash brown potato mix served with baked beans" I wanted to have non-dinner one to try, to give a range of meal options in my mix, so it seemed like a simple enough addition.

As with the other three meals, the Cooked Breakfast consisted of a full meal, freeze-dried to preserve them, and make for a light-weight, portable and stable foodstuff. In the freeze drying process, crystals of frozen ice in the food are sublimed (evaporated) to water vapour in a vacuum chamber.

This produces a completely dry food that allows water to quickly get into the pores left by the ice crystals to give a juicy, tender food product when reconstituted. After packing, the Back Country Cuisine meals are heat-sealed in their foil pouches from which all the air has been removed and replaced with nitrogen. This keeps the food safe and "fresh" for at least three years without the need for preservatives.

The Cooked Breakfast meal weighs 90g dry, and requires 250mL of hot water, and comes with a second retort within the main pouch, which contains the haricot baked beans component of the meal. Once cooked, this is a 340g (12oz) meal, and again, it is quite possible to eat the whole meal in the bottom half of the retort, which comes with a "tear-here" notch for ease of use, to change it from a cook-pot into a bowl. Splitting the boiling water between the main component, and the beans, re-sealing and waiting for 10 minutes to reconstitute produces the meal.

Nutritionally, the meal provides 1702kJ (408Cal) as a unit, which breaks down to 501kJ (120Cal) per 100g, and equates to 20% or the recommended daily allowance.

However. This is probably the worst instant meal I have ever tasted. The egg was simultaneously stiff and spongy, and tasteless like foam. The bacon beef was not even TVP standard, the hashbrown mix was mush and the beans. The beans. The tasteless, white, sauceless beans didn't rehydrate, and were still hard and dry in the retort, and didn't further reconstitute with additional water.

This is one of my rare negative reviews. This was terrible. Not only that, but I became very ill shortly after eating it, and I had to go home from work following eating it early in the afternoon. I was sick for a couple of days. It wasn't even tasty. Sure, it might not have been the BCC Cooked Breakfast, but I'll not be having another one. So, 2:2, the OGC meals were 2/2 delicious, the BCC meals were one passable, one awful and sick-making. Certainly not what I would have wanted if I had been out bush, or living in the Bunker.

Review: Outdoor Gourmet - Tandoori Chicken

This is the third of the pre-packaged instant meals I wanted to cover, following on from the Back Country Roast Chicken, and the Outdoor Gourmet Butter Chicken camping meals and I wanted to go through them all. This is the Tandoori flavoured chicken, which comes with a yogurt sauce.

As with the Butter Chicken, and the Roast Chicken, the pouches are tear open and zip-lock sealable, in order to cook your meal in the same retort you then eat out of. The Tandoori chicken meal includes a sachet of yogurt sauce, which needs to be removed before the boiling water goes in, and is added following the 10 minute "cooking" stage.

There were a number of nice ingredients in the mix, making for a nice variety of textures and tastes in each mouthful, even though, in something that escaped me when I bought them, included red capsicum, which I'm mildly allergic to (but it didn't seem to have too bad an effect). The meals are listed as a 370g serving size, with a 190g net package weight (obviously this equates to the cups of boiled water that goes in).

With that serving size, you are getting 1830kJ (437kcal) from the meal, or at 100g as a reference you are getting 486kJ (116kcal) per 100g. It's a pretty filling meal, but you'd need to have several to make a full days nutrition, or even more than just these to make a complete meal in any given setting. But when you need a flavour filled, hot meal, especially after a long hike, or getting caught in inclement weather,  these might just be the ticket.

The Outdoor Gourmet Company gives a 3 year "best before" on all their products but also state it is safe to eat beyond that, provided it’s stored appropriately and the packaging remains sealed. These could easily sit in a bug-out-bag or in the camping-box of a vehicle for ages without any trouble. They aren't vacuum sealed, but have limited volume and it's no big deal.

Other types of dry food might only last a year or so, but because of their exceptionally low moisture content they handle higher storage temperatures better than most wet-pack meals & higher moisture content dehydrated product. They may need a couple of cups of water to fully rehydrate, but they are delicious.

The zip seal pouch makes rubbish disposal a breeze; you just toss in any other rubbish, roll it up, zip it closed and pop it in your pack.

Review: BackCountryCuisine Instant meals - Roast Chicken

As my second part in the four dehydrated meals reviews I have been doing,  I will cover the Backcountry Cuisine "Roast Chicken" meal.

The first of these reviews, on the Outdoor Gourmet Butter Chicken meal was published on Breach Bang Clear, and I had some interesting feedback on it. Go check it out here... The principle is the same, the plasticised foil retort is both the cook-pot, the serving dish and eating bowl.

The Roast Chicken meal weighs in at 175g (6.2oz) tender chicken in little squares, vegetables and stuffing smothered in gravy and then served with the mashed potato. You simply add 220mL of hot water to the mashed potato sachet and 250mL hot water to the chicken meal sachet, stir and let stand for 10 minutes. The result is a delicious hot meal wherever you may be.

About half way down the retort a second tear tab on all pouches allows you to tear the lower perforation and use the pouch as a bowl once the food has reconstituted. It's a great idea and saves getting messy hands when using your spoon or fork, but be sure to tear carefully or you can make a hot mess of the meal. It might even be an idea to cut it into a bowl, to be sure. You have a knife with you, right?

The mashed potato comes in a separate retort, stored inside the main retort, which is good in that it allows you to serve it separately and keeps it from becoming a thick sludgy mess. I found the texture of the main meal to be really appealing, with the mashed potato being fairly standard for instant mash. The flavour balance was good, and it wasn't too salty.

The waiting time wasn't too bad, especially from water brought to a fast simmer, through to eating it only took 15 minutes.

One thing that I found was important, but not required was to have a flat surface to plop them down on as they are reconstituting, but the retorts fan-out from the bottom as part of their design, but I think they did better from standing up than laying down. One good thing however, was that the zip-lock top seal allows you to squeeze-mix the contents to reconstitute your food. This made me feel like an astronaut, given food served on the ISS.

Nutritionally, the whole meal makes up 1549 kJ (370 Cal) which Back Country Cuisine state is 18% daily intake requirement, so it's not a hefty food source, but being light, you could pack a bunch of them, and if you had three a day, that's 54%, so don't leave out the snacks when you're packing.

One thing I found was that the mashed potato didn't quite reconstitute properly, and when I spooned it out, I found some dry patches, but by mixing it up when in a separate bowl, it all came good. All in all, this was a really good meal and I enjoyed it, it was tasty.



Well worth adding to your pack if you are wanting to travel light, but also want a home-cooked style meal.

Be sure to pack enough potable water, or have access to enough wherever you are going, and enough to balance out your hydration as you go.

Wish-Lust: Weltevree - Groundfridge

I saw a very cool article on "If it's hip, it's here" which covered an award winning Dutch design company's new product, a passive refrigeration system and a modern take on the age-old root-cellar concept.

They're not unlike the pre-made storm-shelters that have become quite popular in tornado and hurricane prone areas in the US, and even the tsunami pods that came to world attention following the 2011 Tohoku earthquakes. These are a far more sedate creation, with a far more pastoral aspect of food and produce storage. This is the Weltevree Groundfridge.

It is an ingenious way to provide an affordable, insulating, cooling and storage system for wine, fruit, vegetables and cheese. It is a modern, pre-fabricated root-cellar which can hold as much as 20 standard refrigerators, without the use of electricity and uses the insulating effects of the soil and water to keep the internal temperatures at between 10 and 12oC (50° and 53°F) throughout the year.

This airtight, water-tight, vermin-resistant and ventilated system (the ventilation system supplied can be operated remotely using an app) which also monitors the temperature and humidity within the Groundfridge. Being a small design company, their products are mostly small-production oriented with the polyester shell being hand-laminated and are fitted-out with a wooden handrail and shelving. Other options they offer include LED strip lighting and built-in cabinetry.



The Dutch based Weltevree will transport and deliver the Groundfridge locally, dig it in and cover it up with the very soil taken from its new lodging place. This covering layer of soil ends up being about 1 meter thick and has ample insulating properties for a steady core temperature within the Groundfridge as subterranean water provides additional cooling. Depending on where you live, there may be an added benefit: installing the Groundfridge may require no permit, and when digging it in, because all the excavated soil then becomes the covering, no soil need be carried off of the premises.



The Groundfridge has a storage capacity of 3,000L and will store around 500kg (or 1,102lbs) of food (Weltevree suggests the harvest of a 250 m2 vegetable garden). That’s enough to prepare 350 meals for a family of 5. its main diameter is 228 cm, (7'5") and weighs 300 kg (660lbs). So it is a significant piece of construction.



On average, 20 A grade EPC (Energy Performance Certificate) Refrigerators combined, use 6,620kWh per year, whereas the Groundfridge performs the same feat completely without any electricity. The autonomously functioning underground root cellar with a constant temperature of around 10oC. You'd need to be sure about your local water-table, including seasonal variations, because it would be terrible if it broke free due to raising water-tables, and some areas might have different subsurface temperatures.

That said, this looks like a really cool idea, and I'd love to have one myself.

Review: BioLite thermoelectric stove

I finally laid hands on one of these, the BioLite thermoelectric power generation stove and have had some fun trying it out. I've covered these before, in a WishLust post, so I was really happy when a good deal came my way.

The general principle is this: a steel pot, an inner layer with air-holes, a protective outer mesh to prevent accidental contact with the hot pot, built in folding legs, and an attachable, thermocouple driven, high-capacity battery, with both USB output and an internal fan to drive the fire.

The fire output is measured as 3.4 kW (at low power with the fan) and 5.5 kW (With the fan at high power). I haven't yet timed it, but BioLite state that it takes as little as 4.5 minutes to boil 1 liter of water, but obviously boiling times vary by strength of fire, which then comes back to the quality of the fuel used.

Officially, 46g (1.6 oz) of wood to boil 1 liter of water, when I used it, I simply chopped up a fistful of wood, and fed it in, feeding as it went. One thing to note is that with a small combustion pot, you need to feed it regularly, as it burns down rapidly, more so if the fan is set to high.

The varnished pine ex-furniture I was using here went up like a candle, but I expect that denser, or damper wood to burn a bit lower and slower. Charcoal would be an ideal fuel, but anything form hay (which I used to light it) to paper and cardboard, twigs, pinecones, whatever, would do. If you have the fire going, and can fit the solid fuel into the firepot, it will probably work.


The output of the USB varied, with the intensity of the fire, but is documented as 2W @5V at a continuous burn, and a peak output of 4W @5V. This in turn gives a phone such as the iPhone 4S (2G) 20 minutes of charging provides 60 minutes of talk time.

As with the boil times, charging times would vary by device and by the strength of the fire.

I really like how by clever design the fan/charging pod, fits neatly into the fire pot, with the thermocouple poking out.

When packed, its 21cm (8.25") tall, and 13cm (5") around, and weighs only 930g (33 oz).

The triangular trivet which clips over the scalloped triangular metal lip provides extra security for placing pots or cups on the top, for cooking, water sterilizing, or what-have-you, doesn't clip nicely back onto the lip when the charging pod is stored, but the whole package comes with a nylon drawstring bag, so you're covered.

The USB port is nicely fitted, and covered by a silicone flap which keeps it drip, splatter and ash-free when not in use. The external honeycomb grill shields you from direct burns, but still heats up pretty swiftly, so don't try picking it up once burning.

I look forwards to coupling this with my newly-replaced PowerPot XL and doubling the off-grid charging and powering that I can offer my camp-site.

If the little BioLite looks a bit small for your needs, they also make these jumbo versions too, the BaseCamp.

Review: MTECH XTREME TACTICAL - Tactical cleaver

As first seen on BreachBangClear, makin' fun o' me accent ....

I do so love my knives, and I am always on the look out for new and excellent blades  to add to my collection. This was no exception to that. I was browsing through my email newsletter from Global Gear (who have supplied me with a number of other things in the past, from my M48 Walking Axe to the Zombie Outbreak series of nylon costume gear, to Mainstay foot rations) and up popped a rather tacti-cool looking cleaver.

One of my ladies was looking over my shoulder and exclaimed "oh, you need THAT" and as it happened, I was thinking the same thing.  I placed an order, and shortly there after, this arrived in the mail for me.

This is the MTech xTreme Tactical cleaver.


Sitting about 30cm (12") in length overall, 15cm (6") of that is the heavy chopping 440 stainless blade, which is black finished, that extends as a full tang with integrated finger ring the entire length of the piece. The textured black G10 handle is affixed with a large nut at the throat of the handle, and with several others along the length, to ensure a really firm attachment. 440 steel is a middling steel for high-end knives, but bear in mind, this is a cleaver.

The knife weighs 525g (18.5oz) but it very nicely balanced, especially important for any blade I intend to make use of extensively. This one in particular has found a lasting place in both my household kitchen knife collection, but also as a camping and adventure camp knife.

The rugged construction, with G10 being waterproof and resistant to cuts and scratches, its very hard-wearing. The black finish on the metal parts hasn't shown any significant wear either, which is nice.


The blade is very sharp out of the box, and has a gentle curve to it, so it is easy to maintain.  The edge is neither too fine, nor too shallow to be both an effective cutting and slicing tool, and allows it to be a resilient chopper. It is fluted in six places on either side to ensure an easy cutting action is achievable, by providing airflow along the surface. Like a big cheese knife. A very, very big cheese knife. For big cheese.

I've had no problems cutting vegetables,  frozen items, or even slicing steaks from a haunch of beef, Gangs of New York style.

I have had a perfectly serviceable Chinese cleaver on my knife-block almost since I left home, and they come in very handy when breaking down carcasses, or even big veggies like pumpkins and the like, but the MTech Tactical cleaver does it with modern flare.

The skeletonised handle lets juices and any other muck through to keep your grip solid and well placed. The gentle contour of the handle is well suited to carry the the index finger and gives very careful control over both cutting AND chopping action.

I trusted the edge and handling that I used it to dispatch a rooster from the most recent batch of chookens. The last thing I want is to make a mess of ending any of my creatures, especially if I'm then going to be eating them (he was delicious). The MTech didn't disappoint, made a clean cut, trimming feathers on either side.

I can't say that the finger ring really does anything for me, I suppose if I had hands like a hill-troll they might, but its just  too big, and too far for it to be of any practical use for me.

The Cleaver comes with a black nylon belt sheath, with utility pocket, and includes both a press-stud retention strap, and a three press-stud spine closure, but also a single loop to sling the knife, if needed. I was a bit disappointed by this, because it neither offers much in the way of protection from the pointy corner edges of the blade, or the edge itself, but it also lacks any really secure attachment options.

That all said, this is a very functional blade, in a rugged and modern style, and I find it very useful both in the home, and in the field.

Review: Cast iron pots

Following on from my article on cast-iron frypans, I thought I'd cover my collection of cast-iron pots as well.

Sharing the same qualities that make the cast iron pans attractive to apocalyptic cooking an preparedness, namely their ruggedness, good thermal transfer and thermal retention properties that is part and parcel with cast iron products. I have quite the collection of cast-iron pots, which get more use in regular rotation in our regular cooking, beside we like to cook a lot of long and slow.


The down-sides are the same too, its heavy, a touch brittle and can rust if not maintained. There is also quite a variety of sizes and styles of pots as well, but the key points to look for are the combinations of lips, handles and hangers. Lids are of course highly desirable, and also have some variety. I have a range of pots, from the massive 20L, through to the tiny 150mL ones.

As I've been collecting these for some years, I've come by them in several different ways. The biggest pop cam by way of Omega and her own reenacting past, the lipped large pot can from a disposal store, where as the two mid sized pots came from second-hand shops, and didn't come with lids. The littlest ones came from a cookware shop, for fancy sizzle cooking, but cast-iron is cast-iron!

I'm most pleased with my legged Dutch Oven, with its tripod feet allowing it to be placed over coals and cook in ashes without needing a standalone tripod, and settling on uneven ground without spilling. It also comes with a lipped lid, with a solid handle. The lipped lid lets you stack coals on top allowing you to cook evenly on all sides.

A wire handle lets you hang it from a tripod, and collect it from the fire easily, essential when cooking over an open fire.


For those screaming at me for the rusty look of my pots, giving them a good clean and re-season is usually as easy as a bit of a scrub, heating it till good and hot to burn off any stuck food and water, then re-oiling. I use spray-on vegetable oil from a can to get a even thin layer, and it works really well, as you can see here, following camping for 6 days over Easter.

I bake cakes and bread in mine (for cakes I tend to nest one pot in the other as seen here, with spacers between the pots to distribute the heat a bit). Delicious and magical for all the ramen-noodle and sachet cooking crowd.


I also cook directly in them, both stews, chili and roasts.  They also serve to keep hot food hot, as different dishes are prepared, and as well-sealing serving containers, keeping both germs, bugs and critters out, especially if closed when its sizzling.

The other thing I look for in cast-iron pots is nesting for storage and transport. Cast-iron is be necessity, heavy, and sometimes difficult to pack, store and transport, so having all that in one place can be an advantage (or not, depending). I like mine to nest.

I take them away with me on almost every camping trip, which I'm not hiking all my own gear, which is when I'd use my lightweight gear, like the Optimus: Terra-solo cook or the Power Practical: Power-Pot. For old-timey camping or homesteading, you really can't go past the rugged and robust charm of cast-iron though. It takes a lot of abuse, cooks delicious food and lasts a long, long time.