outdoordesigns Titan Pan - Quick Look

outdoordesigns Titan Pan Quick Look

Price: £20.00

Weight: 118 grammes

Features: 14cm titanium pan withfolding integrated rubberised handle, internal graduation marks, 0.9 litre capacity, also available in 1.2 litre version plus matching lids with non-stick coating and handles which work as frying pans - all £20 each.

Light, nicely designed, integral handle excellent. Slightly slower to boil than aluminium pans, harder to clean.

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The Concept Come on, these are just cooking pans, they're intended as lightweight camping gear and the integral handle promises no hassle pan removal at the point where your roaring expedition stove is on the point of incinerating your wilderness souffle.

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Features Apart from the obvious - the use of the lightweight fashion victim's fave metal, titanium - you also get a neat folding handle with rubber grip and a series of graduated marks on the inside so you can judge how much fluid to add to your soup, porridge, instant custard or whatever.

Also available for the same price is a matching lid with handle which is non-stick coated and doubles up as a frying pan. Both are also available in a 16cm size too.

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In Action First, the pan is definitely a 'nice thing'. Titanium's one of those materials with a technical wow factor and the gunmetal grey looks always score. The design's nice too and that folding handle is a god send if you're fed up with elusive pot grabs - even when the pan's full of boiling water, the handle stays nice and cool.

Top marks so far, but there are a couple of things you should note. First, when we boiled set amounts of water back to back in the Titan and an aluminium non-stick pan, the Titan was consistently slower suggesting that it doesn't conduct heat quite as well as aluminium, though the difference was only 30-40 seconds in a total boil time of around four minutes.

Next, although the titanium pan is light, it's no lighter than a non-stick alloy pan of similar size and in fact weighed 10 grammes more than our hack about Tefal. We'll let it off though as the handle means you don't need a pot grab.

Finally, if you burn food onto the titanium, the pan's hard to get clean even with a scourer and the slightly textured surface doesn't help, though of course it's more robust than a non-stick finish and you don't have to worry about scraping it with metal spoon and forks. Size is about right for one person, if you need to cook for two, look at the slightly larger 1.2-litre version.

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Verdict

You're saving big over steel pan-sets, approximately 45 per-cent according to one estimate, but weight saving over aluminium is minimal and you lose a little heat conductivity at the same time we think. That said, this is a really nicely designed pan and we love those inegral handles. Plus, like titanium bike frames, the pan should last you a lifetime, which is more than we can say for aluminium, particularly with a non-stick coating.

It's a little harder to clean, for sure, and at £20 an item, the outdoordesigns set would cost you £80 for two pans and matching lids - about the same as the MSR equivalent, though that's slightly larger in capacity with a 1.5-litre pot - or a lot more than a typical aluminium cookset.

We'd want the lid for practical cooking use as well, which would add another £20 to the cost, but together they'd make a great one-person, backpacking ensemble if you need a combination of lightness and durability and are prepared to swallow the cost along with your breakfast....

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outdoordesigns Web Site

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