Cleaning pots on trail

Keeping your gear clean and organized is a daily task when out on hiking trails, there are many different ways to clean your pot and eating utensils. Here are some of my favorite options to clean your pot.

Cleaning cooking pots is always a challenge, whether at home or in the backcountry. You don’t have a magical machine in your backpacking loadout that does the work for you, and neither can you carry all the washing-up tools you normally use. Some hikers don’t feel the need to clean their pots at all when all they do is boil water in their pots. For homemade trailmeals however, it is more necessary to clean up afterward. The key points for cleaning your pots when hiking are:

Minimal water use
It does not add much weight
Compact
Reusable
No unnecessary fuel use

The simplest solution for cleaning your pots is a scouring pad that you can easily use to scrape up any gunk from your pot. The key is also to eat as cleanly as possible and scrape up as much food from your pot with your spork.

Scouring pads bought straight from the grocery store are often bulky, and not really suited for the task. They can also store bacteria easily and are a handful to clean themselves. Regular scouring pads can be cut down, but this does not eliminate the other problems. This strategy of a cut-down scouring sponge I used for years, but did not work fully to satisfaction. Below are two other ways that I like way more and both have their advantages.

Cut down Vegetable netting from the grocery store

A tip that I saw on another hiking channel on YouTube (Oscar Hikes) that I have since tried out a bunch is to take some netting where for example onions, potatoes, or other vegetables are packaged in, cut out a patch, and use that to scrub your pots clean.

This is a way to recycle something that is normally trashed, and for that alone, I like it a lot. It works like a charm and weighs a few grams.

To clean them you can wash them out in water, and thanks to the bit bigger holes in the netting, food bits are less likely to get stuck.

Metal scouring Sponge & Cast iron scouring Pad

You can get these in a few different shapes and sizes, but these are common sights in many kitchens. What the metal ones have as a big advantage is that they are easier to clean themselves than the regular scouring pads. They can be put in a fire or held over your stove for a minute. They do weigh a bit more, and depending on the type you get will be a bit bulkier than the vegetable netting option.

With access to a fire, and a bit more cooking than regular hiking trips these can be more useful and practical than other options. Don’t use them on any nonstick coating though, since they will scratch that up.

There are also specific scouring pads out there for cast iron, those are a bit of chainmail that can be used to clean cast iron pans and pots. They are nice to use, but for ultralight backpacking a bit too heavy duty in most cases.

Improvised and natural

Often the best for get rid of the worst gunk is to take a bit of grass or moss and use it to wipe out the biggest pieces and mess. And afterward, clean up with your method of choice. Moss is excellent for this since often it even holds moisture and leaves minimal sand or other debris in your pot.