I recently attended the Scottish Bushcraft Group’s Spring Gathering. This took place in a wonderful mixed broadleaf and coniferous woodland at the foot of the Lammermuir Hills. What better excuse for testing out a number of products by Rockland?
Rockland is a Polish company that has been trading since 2005, originally as Raven. They distribute high quality clothes, shoes and outdoor equipment to retail outlets aimed at the outdoors market. Whether you’re keen on trekking or more extreme outdoor recreation, Rockland could be a company you’re interested in.
Anyway, for this review I decided to look at a few products, rather than just one, suited for outdoor cuisine. This would hopefully give a good idea of the general quality of the company’s products too.
Product 1: Rockland Cook Set
The Rockland cook set comprises a sauce pan and a frying pan. Handles fold in on the sauce pan making it convenient for packing away. As for the frying pan, it doubles as a lid on the sauce pan. Its handle clips firmly into place, but can be completely removed if necessary. Made of anodised 0.5mm thick aluminium, the cook set is lightweight and seem very durable. Furthermore, the pans are non-stick. The handles are made of stainless steel but are ‘cool-touch’. A silicon coating makes them comfortable to hold and they really do reduce heat transfer.
Full capacity of the sauce pan is 1 litre although 0.6 litres is the recommended maximum. A measuring scale is marked at 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9 litre intervals on the inside of the pan. They are also legible on the outer in ‘mirror image’.
Breakfast in the wilds
Breakfast in the woods, or elsewhere in the wilds, is arguably best when cooked. Scotland is very often cold and miserable which is ideal for testing products. That was not the case on this day but I’d already planned on what to have.
Sausages, bacon, black pudding and haggis were the order of the day. A very basic gas stove was used in conjunction with the frying pan to cook with. Breakfast was excellent but it would have been very difficult to fit everything in to the frying pan at once. The images provided give an idea of the size. I would suggest that the Cook Set is a fantastic product for one person. At a push, and depending on what you were cooking, it would do for two.
Home made lentil and sweet potato soup
To try the sauce pan part of the cook set I decided to cook on a fire pit. Really this was to try it out on a different heat source. For this, I chose to make lentil and sweet potato soup. Water was boiled with a couple of ham stock cubes. Finely chopped onion was added, followed by lentils. Finally sweet potato that had been cut into small cubes was added to the mix.
Sweet potato doesn’t require a lot of boiling to become soft and easy to eat. However, onion (if not previously caramelised) and lentils require substantially more thorough cooking.
The pan worked exactly as I hoped and the soup was cooked to perfection. I did make use of the frying pan as a lid at times to help get everything up to temperature. Perhaps if I had used a gas stove or had more flame on the fire, the lid wouldn’t have been necessary.
In general, this is a great cook set. The simplicity of a pan and a frying pan is often all that we need.
Product 2: Rockland Travel Light (cooking pot)
I used this for boiling water to make a cuppa with. What I especially liked about the pot was its spout which makes pouring so much easier.
Another great feature is that, like the sauce pan, measurements are marked on the inside. This is much easier than checking measurements on the outside and guessing that the level on the inside tallies correctly! Measurements are in both metric and imperial too. That makes it perfect for someone of my age who uses both systems!
The Travel Light pot fits comfortably into the cook set for storage too.
Product 3: Rockland Comet (Flask)
The Comet is also excellent quality. With a double-wall structure, it’s designed to maintain constant temperature for a dozen hours or more. It’s ergonomic design and non-slip outer surface gives a really nice feel. The size of the cap means that it’s really useful as a mug or bowl.
To test this out I decided to add the lentil and sweet potato soup I had made in the morning. Normally, I would carry such a flask in my day sack when out hiking. Naturally this would give some extra insulation. I therefore decided to leave the flask standing on the ground by my shelter exposed to the elements.
The soup I made was poured into the flask. Since the flask has a 1 litre capacity, the amount of soup I had made didn’t fill it. However, that wasn’t the point of this exercise. Leaving a gap would enable the soup to cool more quickly. This, I felt, was a good way of testing the flask.
After three hours the soup was, as I expected, still blisteringly hot. I didn’t want to use a thermometer to give exact temperatures. What I wanted was to determine acceptability of heat for eating or drinking. At six hours, the soup was still hot and an ideal temperature for eating. Another three hours later and it had, quite naturally, cooled down a little more but still very edible. Unfortunately, I neglected to sample again until the 24 hour point, by which time the soup was cold! Not a problem as I just heated it up again using the pan from the cook set.
Product 4: Mug
What can I say about a mug. It’s a mug! It does the job of a mug! What I did particularly like about it was the great quality. As with the other Rockland products tested, it’s made of stainless steel and has the silicon coated handles that fold away. A scale inside the mug is really useful if you need to measure any liquids. With a maximum capacity of 0.6 litres, a decent sized hot drink or soup can be held.
I also store the mug inside the cook set for transporting so it doesn’t take up extra space.
In conclusion:
Overall, Rockland produce really nice quality products aimed at active outdoors people. Whether you’re a bushcrafter, hill walker or canoeist, these Rockland products will be of great use.
Further testing was carried out in a variety of situations, including more mundane ones such as using the flask for coffee to take to work.
Look out for, or even ask for, Rockland products in camping and outdoor stores.
For further information visit the Rockland website.
