Part 3. A DIY foil lid for backpacking cooking gear
A DIY foil lid for light cooking gear can be made from aluminium foil tart trays that can provide light, compact and backpackable lids for multiple cooking pots.
I mainly use the DIY foil lid with light cooking pots from stainless steel food storage containers that do not come with effective lids for cooking.
For more context for the use of the DIY foil lid, please see Part 1. Unusual light cooking gear.
Also, for discussion of the good thermal efficiency of thin aluminium foil lids please see this post on BPL.
I make a suitable DIY foil lid from used or new disposable aluminium tart dishes as shown below. If not using used tart dishes, packets of new ones are cheap and abundantly available in most $2 shops. Take your pot to the shop to help to select the best size.
DIY foil lid forming
For the more ambitious amongst us, I found that beautiful forming can be done by pressing the lid between two close-fitting bowl shapes.
Be warned, the beauty of your handiwork can be mangled in an instant while out bushwalking. Luckily, the repair to the lid can also be done in an instant on the bottom of a pot. Your pride in your workmanship might take a little longer for recovery!
Mothy The Elder
A simple and less beautiful method is to cut a circular disk of foil and shape it into a lid using the bottom of a pot as an anvil or a former.
Note: Any unwanted wrinkles in the disposable foil tart dish can be smoothed out by stretching against a firm flat surface and rubbing the wrinkles out using the back of a spoon.
l find it is easiest to press the pot down onto the foil disk on a flat bench-top and then bend and crimp the foil edges upwards with a bread and butter knife or steel spatula.
[Add a video of the pot forming with a bread and butter knife.]
Lay flat lid handles
For safety, efficiency, and convenience, while cooking, these lids need handles and they need to lay flat or be removable to function well in a compact backpacking mess kit with multiple nesting pots and lids.
The last handle option described below is probably the simplest and the best. However, I have included the progression of alternative handles that I have used over the years that have slowly evolved to such obvious simplicity. The journey to such simplicity may interest some readers. Otherwise, just jump to the last solution.
The experimental lid shown below has two handles, or really three if you could see underneath the lid.
The handle that is furthest away is an early prototype that is welded through the lid. “A very clever idea I thought at the time as I explored the potential uses of my new micro welder!” This is not a suitable solution for most MYOGers without micro welders. The handle is also useless if the lid is damaged and must be discarded.
The second handle is an improved removable double-sided handle that clips together through a small slit in the lid (as shown below). This means that the lid can be used either dome side up (as shown below) or the other way around, depending on the pot that it is used on.
With lots of use, the handle can slowly cut a progressively larger hole in the soft foil lid. To prevent this I now use RTV silicone rubber to glue on a small plate made of scraps of 0.1mm thick stainless steel foil with a short slit cut through it with a craft knife (hole cutting in sheet metal by hand). This arrests the hole enlargement and makes the lid last many years if the wind does not blow it away first.
An example of such a glued plate can be seen in the photo of the underside of the mangled DIY foil lid below.
![A stove packed in a custom pot that has been ‘covered’ neatly by one of the above slightly larger pots. The DIY foil lid can be carried safely on the bottom of a cooking pot if appropriately bagged up as shown in Part 8. Packing light cooking gear for backpacking. [Link to be added].](https://i1.wp.com/timtinker.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Pot-and-pans9.jpg?resize=900%2C675&ssl=1)
Weld free lid handle
Another simple option (without welding) is to use acetic cure RTV silicone rubber to glue on scrap strips of low conductivity (SS or titanium) metal foil. If aluminium foil must be used, it can be coated with some of the silicone rubber glue, or an insulating pad so that it is not hot to grip.
Similarly, a totally soft, weld-free, and non-conductive handle maybe my final solution? A little strip of DIY silicone rubber impregnated cotton cloth can be glued to the foil lid. Such simple glueing, surface preparation and other DIY gear making tricks are described in the above link.
DIY foil lid reforming
If the foil lid is damaged, or more likely when it is damaged, it can easily be reshaped to make it as good as sort-of-new by reshaping it on the bottom of a pot. “This is also my preferred position to store the lid in while backpacking.”
Using DIY foil lids
These DIY foil lids only weigh ~7g and a pebble or a cooking implement is required to hold the lid on if cooking outside the tent in wind. While doing lightweight camp cooking it is sometimes nice to be able to keep a food item hot while another part of the meal is heated or cooking is finished.
For this situation, a foil lid with a deeper side wall may be useful so that the inverted lid can be used as a bain-marie. In this case, I find it worth reinforcing the enlarged lip of the lid by folding a portion outwards and back onto itself.
[Add a video of folding the double thickness pot lip over a biscuit tin. ]
When using the DIY foil lids on pots on open fires, I use them with dome side down, as this seems to trap less smoke taint in the cooking than using them the other way round.
Please see pot lid/frying pans from the opportunity shop. These alternative light and cheap but more robust lid options can complement foil lids when multiple pots are carried in a cooking kit. Also please see Part 1. Unusual light cooking gear to provide a context to this post.
Tim
