The Campsite Breakfast That Made My Whole Group Buy a Coleman Triton

It was a Saturday morning at Mueller State Park, about an hour south of Colorado Springs, and six of us were standing around the camp table waiting for coffee. My buddy Derek had brought his single-burner backpacking stove, which is a fine piece of kit when you're covering miles but a complete disaster when you're trying to feed six adults before a morning hike. We boiled water for two cups at a time. By the time the sixth cup was poured, the first guy's coffee was cold. Breakfast was going to take until noon at that rate.

I had the Coleman Triton 2-Burner Propane Stove in my truck, tucked into its carrying case. I had picked it up a few months earlier for a solo trip and brought it along on a whim. I set it up on the table, hooked in a standard 16.4-oz propane cylinder, and fired both burners. The whole setup took about three minutes. Bacon went on the left burner in a cast-iron pan. Scrambled eggs went on the right in a nonstick skillet. While both were going, my wife Sarah started on pancake batter at the camp table.

The bacon was done in eight minutes. Eggs came off two minutes later. I wiped the right burner grate, put a griddle pan over it for the pancakes, and turned the left burner down to the lowest setting to keep the bacon warm. All six people had hot food on their plates at the same time. That had never happened on any camping trip I can remember. We were hiking by 8:45 a.m.

My friend Kira, who camps three or four weekends a year with her family and had never owned a camp stove beyond a basic one-burner setup, put down her fork and asked what stove that was. Derek photographed the sticker on the side. By the time we got back to the campsite that afternoon, two people in the group had ordered one from their phones. By the following weekend, a third had picked one up at a sporting goods store.

All six people had hot food on their plates at the same time. That had never happened on any camping trip I can remember.

None of that surprised me once I had actually used the stove a few times. The Coleman Triton puts out 10,000 BTUs per burner, which is enough to run a cast-iron pan at proper searing heat. The burner controls are separate, so you can hold one side at a low simmer while the other is cranked up. The grates are solid and stable, which matters when you are lifting a heavy pan. The whole unit folds flat with the burner grates locked down inside, and the side panels close up like a box so it stacks cleanly in a truck bed without rattling around.

What I will tell you honestly is that the Triton is not a backpacking stove. It weighs about 12 pounds assembled, and the footprint open is roughly 22 by 12 inches. You need a flat surface, which means a camp table or tailgate. If you are hiking more than a few hundred yards to your site, you are going to want something lighter. But for car camping, that size and weight is fine. The stove sits stable, the frame does not flex, and the enamel cooking grates do not corrode even after sitting in a wet truck bed overnight.

I have since cooked on it at five more group trips. The most ambitious was a Dutch oven chili on one burner with a whole pot of rice on the other while eight people watched a lightning storm roll in from the south. The chili simmered for two hours without scorching because the low-end flame control is genuinely low, not just 'medium.' That is the thing single-burner stoves almost never get right. The Coleman Triton gets it right.

The propane connection is a standard 1-pound green cylinder fitting. You can also adapt it with a hose to run off a 20-pound tank if you are at a site for multiple days, which is worth doing if you are staying more than two nights and do not want to cycle through small cylinders. The adapter is sold separately, but it costs less than a case of the small canisters and is reusable indefinitely.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you are car camping with more than two people and you are still running a single-burner stove, you are making breakfast harder than it needs to be. The Coleman Triton is not fancy. It is not going to impress anyone who wants a precision induction cooktop or a restaurant-grade burner. What it does is let you run two separate pans at two separate temperatures at the same time, outside, reliably, for years. That is what actually matters on a campsite at 7 a.m. when six people are hungry and the hike starts at nine. The stove costs around a hundred dollars at current pricing. It will last you ten or fifteen years if you wipe the grates down after use and store it dry. That is about seven dollars a year to never eat cold food at camp again. I would make that trade every time.