Vertical toast is the best kind of camping toast.
Throughout the years, Daiso’s line of affordable but incredibly useful camping gear has expanded to the point where you can comfortably camp overnight almost exclusively with Daiso gear. Along with the standard equipment like sleeping bags, tents, stoves, and camping pots, they’ve also started making more niche camp cooking devices.
Enter Daiso’s camping stove! This compact, 550-yen (US$4.76) kitchen stove is designed to help you make perfectly browned toast by cooking it vertically around a built-in heating stove. To test it out, our Japanese-language reporter and camping enthusiast Haruka Takagi took it on a trip with her. Here’s what she thought!
Her first impression upon opening it was that it kind of looked like a frisbee, and since it was only 1.5 centimeters (0.6 inches) thick, it didn’t take up much space at all.
▼ Just make sure you don’t confuse it for a real frisbee.
To use it, all she had to do was set up the metal bread holders to their standing position.
▼ The grooves fit together nicely to stop it from slipping during use.
▼ And that’s it! Easy setup.
You do need a gas can to power it, though, so you just need to attach that to the base. The stove can fit two slices of standard-sized white bread or four smaller slices.
But did Haruka actually prepare bread, jam, or butter? Nope! Instead of taking up all that space in her bag with food, she relied on 7-11 Japan’s snack bread section. She ended up getting a thick and fluffy morsel of cheese bread, as well as a premade, crustless sandwich filled with strawberry jam and margarine.
▼ Yet another reason we love Japanese convenience stores.
As per the instructions, Haruka set up her two sandwiches vertically, along with her cheese bread. Since they were all fairly small in size, she was able to toast all three of them in one go!
▼ Even the thick cheese bread could balance without falling over.
Then, she fired up the heating plate. It only took about three seconds for the center to get red-hot. It alarmed Haruka at first, but she assures you that it won’t blow up or anything!
▼ Well, as long as you’re using it properly.
After five minutes of toasting, her sandwiches were nice and lightly browned. She flipped them around to toast the other side and waited another few minutes.
▼ This may look light, but lightly toasting things is commonplace in Japan.
▼ Taste test time! Here’s how the sandwiches turned out.
The outside was crisp, and the inside was fluffy. It got hot enough to melt the margarine in the sandwich to gooey perfection. When compared to a hot sandwich press, Haruka thought this was more enjoyable since the bread wasn’t crushed in the process.
There’s also no manual labor or elbow grease involved! You just need to set the sandwiches up vertically and turn them around when toasted on one side. There’s also less of a chance of you burning them since you can visually see how toasted they’re getting.
▼ However, the cheese bread didn’t fare so well.
While the outside of the cheese bread got hot, it wasn’t enough to penetrate to the cold, hard center. The cheese also melted and stuck to the bread stand, so Haruka was not impressed. This would be best used with plain, sliced bread.
A word of warning from Haruka, though: this may not be the safest cooking device to use without some extra protection! The heating plate and the gas can are rather close together, so she was worried about the gas can getting too hot and exploding.
▼ Like, actually exploding.
There is a heat shield plate included, but it’s too small for Haruka to feel secure. She recommends getting a larger one separately if you can. As an example, Haruka put the heating plate on a larger portable gas stove, where the gas can is totally separate and protected from the hot plate.
▼ Now it’s nice and safe! It does add some bulk to your pack, though.
You should also never use solid fuel sold at Daiso with this gadget! The fuel emits methanol fumes, and they’re not the greatest thing to consume when they’re directly seeping into your food.
▼ This is only appropriate for cooking where the food is completely untouched by the flame.
And finally, Haruka does think that since this is really only good for making toast, it might take up valuable space that you’d use for something that’s more multipurpose.
▼ But then again, camping for leisure is about making things a bit more difficult than they need to be, right?
People drive to the middle of nowhere with almost no human comforts just to be surrounding by nature and cook outside, after all.
So if you find yourself craving fluffy, perfectly browned toast on your camping trips, consider getting Daiso’s camping stove! Haruka gives it two thumbs up. Serve it up with some Daiso-sponsored, perfectly seasoned eggs for a complete and nutritious breakfast.
Photos ©SoraNews24
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