What do you look for when considering buying an outdoor burner for your next barbecue or upcoming picnic/camp? So many things come to mind including fuel type, cooking surface, the burner and its supports/frames, and so forth. Your favorite camping store may have all sorts of burners but you are more concerned about the longevity, flexibility, and mobility of the cooking system. One may also throw in aesthetics - after all, who does not want his/her burner to be the envy of their peers? We can buy these systems as single or separate units but most people opt for the former.

The regular barbeque grill is now giving way to the outdoor burner incorporated with an iron wok. These large convex pans make cooking easy and interesting as you can prepare different types of foods at a go. Aluminum woks are also available but for outdoor cooking many prefer the steel types. The choice of heat source is also changing to propane. Though it is quite interesting to collect and use firewood, we would rather save the environment and/or avoid the disappointment of wet firewood or lacking firewood altogether. Propane is a clean fuel and a single tank can serve several outings, of course depending on the cylinder capacity.

An Outdoor Burner/iron wok combination is reminiscent of those large pans used in Asian cooking. With their convex nature they can be used to cook everything from fatty dishes to rice, pasta and so forth. Steel woks come seasoned to protect against rust. Seasoning here means covering the cooking surface in a thin layer of oil to prevent oxidation of the iron as a result of the elements and eventual corrosion after many years of use. We should therefore always maintain a thin layer of vegetable oil on the woks when they are not in use.

The cooking setup of outdoor burners needs to be simple yet sturdy to support the unpredictability of the outdoors. A reliable outdoor burner should be of solid construction and not some thin pieces of sheet metal and rivets or tiny bolts here and there for the burner’s structure. A solid steel base and supports joined together by strong welds should be the minimum. This should be enough to carry the propane tank, burner, the wok, and the food being prepared. Further, this structure being pretty heavy, a set of castors at the bottom will ease the system’s mobility.

How about aesthetics? The handles of the wok, the support stands, as well as the base of your burner, can come handcrafted with beautiful artistic elements or you may also personalized the burner with your name, initials, logos and so forth.