I alternate between the French army mess kit and the Serb army mess kit, and I don't have a favorite between them. They are both rectangular, so they fit well in my ruck. They both have shortcomings, because military mess kits are made less for cooking and more for eating out of after a unit cook has made the food. However, with practice, the bushcrafter can cook well with either one. I'd say the French kit is more versatile; I've made all sorts of meals in it, even baked bread and corn bread in my set (the bottom of the handle-less "plate" fits nicely into the small skillet). You can bake in the Serb kit, but you need aluminum foil for a cover. For soups and stews, I favor the Serb kit, as it's taller and food won't slosh out of it. Anyhow, great demo. Thanks for posting.
I have the Serb kit too. I don't care for the plastic bowl and cup in the set. But the pot is nice and I like the pouch and silverware set. My canteen has a bad smell that I can't get rid of so it doesn't see much use. I would have to agree that the french kit is more versatile. Its limit, as you said, is not having a deep pot. Thanks for watching and for your comment!
Seems a little more versatile than the British kit because of the 3rd tin. I grew up knowing this dish as "Egg In A Basket". Another enjoyable review! Thanks John!
I have to agree with you with the British vs French kit. It seems that would be the case. I guess the dish I made has several names. My wife's family called them "Hole in one". I got the "Eggs in a hole" name off the internet. I should make up a name for the omelet style version I made! Thanks again for watching and commenting.
I was making some tea, and it poured perfectly from the corners. I used the small pan, and put the middle pan on as a lid. I have a USGI pan, and the USGI canteen, but you could just use the French kit for cooking, and boiling water from, without bringing the canteen.
All these old surplus mess tins have become harder to find and sky rocketed in price over the last few years. 3 or 4 years ago you could get the full Yugo mess kit in pouch with kfs for £10 where I am ($12), now they cost more than double that and are few and far between. 5 years ago I bought an East German mess kit in Holland from a surplus shop for just 3 Euros, $3.30, now in the UK they are £20 ($25) minimum. Wish I'd bought more of that gear back then. As it is I have a bombproof Dutch canteen cup I bought in Holland for 2 Euros, and a pair of Dutch stainless tins I bought here for £6 ($8), those are my go to for out in the woods, with after market lids (Pathfinder and BCB). There are Chinese knockoffs of this French mess kit now, also not exactly cheap at £20/$25. The originals are very few and far between, saw one for £48 / $60 on ebay.
I own a french ''M52'' mess kit : perfect in rucksack , needs less space and have two pan ( cook and boil water ) perfect for bushcrafting and cost only 10 dollars on ebay ! See also the french water bottle fully metal, perfect to boil water directly in fire
Another excellent video John, thanks for taking the time. I call them "eggie in a basket" and use my BA mess tins to make them. I have a French set and although heavy at least it's built to last. Keep up the good work ATB, Malc.
I do eggs the same way on the Australian mess kit, just melt a knob of butter in the pan first and the bread will soak it up, some jam on the little piece. Nice vid John.
Most excellent. I watched this & bought a set; gotta say, it is one of the best cooksets i have now, and it has kind of pushed the others out, lol. Thanks, John -- I really like the mess kit. Cooking the eggs like that was, well, perfect. :)
👍. With that kit, one could set up a little Bain-Marie to keep the already-cooked food hot, whilst having boiling water on hand for coffee later and still have a cook pan available. Have done that with my SADF Dixies but then had to scrounge another pan for the cooking bit. Nice Posting, thanks .. Take care ..
Nice review. I'm not to family with many of the foreign military mess kits, I learned some stuff from this. Thanks! enjoyed your breakfast examples also!
You hit the nail on the head, if you have time and energy to make some effort cooking the French mess tins are fantastic. They're over engineered and heavy but a pretty unique design and I wouldn't part with mine!
It has become one of my top three military mess kits. Because of the thickness and the number of the pans, it outperforms the US GI mess kit when frying and it packs smaller. Thanks for watching my video and for your comment!
Well, thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed what I did. It was fun to do. I think this kit is one of the best military surplus kits. It can fry, make a small stew, rice and you could bake in it. And it's so small that packs well. Thanks for watching and for your comment!
To save some space and extra clean up, when you're making omlets or scrambled eggs, just mix it in the plastic baggie. The baggies work for mixing other things. I almost bought the French kit last night.
Yes, it's very nice, and compact. I store two Opinel knives, some utensils, ferro rod, lighter, and some utensils inside it. Then I wrap a bandana around the outside, to use as a towel, and for other things. I have so much stuff inside, the bandanna won't fit in inside.
I'm glad you liked the video and the mess kit! I hope your egg in a hole turns out great. I might make some this weekend during the hurricane. Thanks for watching my video and for commenting
I have a bit of experience here. Twenty-six years in the military, seven or so in Scouting and camping for more than fifty. I see so many people cooking in mess kits; they're mess kits, not cook kits. They were meant to be deployed and held out before you in line at the field mess where Mess Sgt Scruffy would fill them with something closely resembling food. You cook in cook kits. Things stick when you cook in them - and then there's the soot. You only coked in them in an emergency. When mess kits were still issued to us we were threatened with weekend KP if we were caught doing any more than boiling water for coffee in our canteen cup.
First off, thanks you for your service! I really appreciate you serving. I did not but I wish I did. I know that the mess kit was designed as you describe but I find it fun to go out and use them to cook with. There are definitely better options! At first it was just with the 1944 US Marine cross flap canteen set that someone gave me as a kid and then later I added a 1959 US mess kit with silverware. It was so much fun and I still have those US sets that I use. In the last three years I have collected mess kits and canteens from countries all over the world and some old BSA kits. I try to review each one with a bit of history (that I can find) and then go out and actually try to use them as cook kits. It takes a lot of practice and heat control to actually cook successfully with a mess kit. Some times it’s a fail but that’s part of the fun. I hope if you choose to check out more of my channel that you enjoy what I have uploaded. Thank you very much for watching and for your comment!
looks good john...i can't cook without burning everything myself, so i'm limited to pot cooking and shoving everything else on a stick! lol i really like the looks of that M35 kit...be handy for boiling up and stews n such...thanks for sharing...woods
Thanks Woods. I guess one of my talents is camp cooking. I had a crash course many years ago cooking with my Royal Ranger boys. Our cooking motto was "If its smokin, it's cookin, when it's black, it's done". I had to learn or suffer! Lol!
Another good video. I was hoping to see a can of corned beef hash but that's not very healthy 🙁 Thanks for the review. I'll be looking forward to the next. ATB, John.
I don't fix up hash very often and if I do its the canned stuff. I wonder if its hard to make it from scratch? Something I will have to look into. Thanks for watching and for your comment.
donna donlea Just when I thought I heard all the different names, you chime in with “Eggs in a Frame”. That’s definitely a new one. Lol. Thanks for watching and for your comment!
Great vid learned something new to cook and want to add a French mess kit to my collection after watching this do you know any French recipes to cook in it? Do you have a video on cooking in a German mess kit maybe a German dish would be cool I use my German mess kit when I go on overnight runs.
BluegrassBushcraft Yes I do but mine in the video has Israeli markings. Apparently it served the IDF before I received it. Here is the link: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-FzqZPi-nlSw.html
@@John-Sherwood-W4JFS ps your review convinced me to get the French canteen for cooking on a twig stove in the woods. I love it. For me on Ebay in the UK it was MUCH cheaper than the UK aluminium and much lighter than the UK steel ones. Incredibly strong bit of kit - have made several rounds of food & drinks in it.
Mark Hager Most of the genuine army surplus kits available are aluminum. The stainless ones I can think of are the USGI mess kit and canteen cup, the Dutch mess kit which is a copy of the aluminum British mess kit and the stainless version of the Swedish mess kit which is very hard to find and is expensive. There may be a couple more but I can’t recall them. Of all of those I mentioned, the best for the cost, performance and availability in my opinion would be the USGI mess kit paired with the US canteen, stainless cup and pouch. This set is hard to beat. Thanks for your question and for watching my video!
Food looks GREAT! Where'd you get that mini spatula? It looks pretty handy. What kind of knife are you using too? Please advise. Thank You Sir! Nice video!
The mini spatula actually belongs to my wife. I couldn't find my mini GSI spatula at the time of this video. Here is a link to the spatula used in the video: www.pamperedchef.com/shop/Cook%27s+Tools/Spatulas%2C+Scrapers+%26+Spreaders/Mini+Serving+Spatula/2622 The knife I'm using is the CONDOR Kephart knife. It's a nice knife for what I do. I did remove the black coating on the blade that looks like gun bluing with 1000 grit sandpaper and put my own "coating" by soaking the blade in apple cider vinegar for a few hours which turned the blade black. Here is a link to the knife on Amazon. It can be bought at many other places at different prices: www.amazon.com/Condor-Kephart-Hardwood-Handle-Sheath/dp/B007QUVIX0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499778423&sr=8-1&keywords=condor+kephart+knifeThanks for watching and for your question! I hope you have a good one!
Awesome recipe John !!! I'm gonna have to try that with my Pathfinder skillet. Can you give us the height/thickness dimension of that kit after it is packed/nested together? Thanks for sharing and thanks for the video.
The kit all packed is about 2.5 inches thick. I have a Pathfinder skillet too. It will work well for the recipe. Thanks for watching and for your question!
Seeing that tape is abit strange, imperial only. Here in the UK our measuring tapes have dual metric and imperial scales. Best wishes from Northern Ireland.
Thanks for the answer John. I just received this mess kit, and I'm looking forward to using it in when camping in the spring. I enjoyed your multi-faceted video where you not only showed the kit, but also added some cooking tips as well.
bobbymorgret I checked too but I didn’t see anything. I bought this one on from Keepshooting.com a while back. They still list them on the site but they are out of stock. Good luck on your hunt.
John Sherwood I've heard these are stainless steal? the reviews I've seen say it's aluminium because it's not magnetic, but you can get non magnetic stainless also, I've heard one review wher they was convinced the handel is aluminium but they think the tins themselves are stainless, he based this on the handel soften with the heat like ally but the tins don't, what are your thoughts? love the videos
Egg in a basket, is what it's called around here. We also make French toast the same way, which makes it even better. You can also dip the bread you cut out into the egg mix.
That's really cool! I have never seen one in person with that marking. Only pictures. I hope you enjoy it a lot. Thanks for watching and for commenting!
HAY THERE, THIS IS SZYQz , yes , ide like to know where you can get one of those kits and ide like to know what kind of stove you have there... I like them too. thanks made me hungry lol god bless you and your family
I bought my French kit from keepshooting.com. My stove is the medium sized Lixada stove. I bought it either from eBay or from Amazon.com. I can't remember which. Thanks for watching my video and for commenting!
I really wish people would review entire kits. The American mess kit is a good example. It's meant to be used with the canteen cup and stove. They're all one unit, so unless you have both, your mess kit is incomplete, and you really can't demonstrate how it's supposed to be used, or even use it properly yourself. According to military spec, gear, and inventory sheets, the entire kit consists of the mess kit, which, in turn, has a plate and a frying pan, a canteen, a canteen cup, a canteen cup lid, and a stove. Both the canteen cup and the frying pan are designed to be used over the stove. In an older kit, the canteen should be metal, which gives you extra boiling capacity. There's a myth that the mess kit was not designed for cooking. This myth arises from the fact that it is also designed to be used as serving utensils at a field kitchen. But it is just a myth, and right up until production stopped, the military listed the parts as a plate and a frying pan. Anyway, why the fry pan can be used over an open campfire, that is not the best way to use it. It functions much better over the stove, whether the fuel you use is tablets, alcohol, or wood. One very nice thing is that the Mini Trangia alcohol stove fits perfectly under the stove. So does a Fancy Feast cat food can. Anyway, while many military mess kits are complete as are, others are not, and the American version is one that is incomplete without the canteen cook set components. As a side note, it amazes me how easy it is to find military mess kits, even very old ones, but finding the covers for many of them is almost impossible.
I've seen a few of these reviews. Do any of you Reviewers comprehend the concept of a "Double Boiler"? You put water in the bottom pan, and something like milk (for tea or coffee - some cultures prefer it) or anything else that might easily burn in the top pan and fit them together and boil the water.
ARRJAY Yes I know about the double boiler method but I don't use it much. I don't prefer to warm milk for my coffee and here in my part of the US we like mostly iced tea without milk. I have used the method to cook rice in the bottom pot and warm up canned black beans on the top with a German mess kit. That worked pretty well.
You might be able to use it as one, but that was not the intention of this mess kit, not even a French one. They are designed to stack like that so a soldier could go thru the mess line and be able to walk back to his position or where he was going to eat without having to juggle a bunch of pans.
