A tea kettle is one of those utilitarian vessels used to heat and boil water for coffee, tea, cocoa and instant oatmeal. Well, the GSI Outdoors Halulite Ketalist II ($34.95) does all that and more.
What I Liked
The Spout
Instead of dumping boiling water from a pot into a mug, bowl of instant oatmeal or bag of dehydrated camp food, and risk scalding a hand or spilling on a tent floor, the GSI Outdoors Halulite Ketalist II brings civility and precision to the process. You no longer dump. You pour.
Compact and Lightweight
The GSI Outdoors Halulite Ketalist II tips the scales at a svelte 11.3 ounces and packs down to the size of a (hard) softball. This makes it ideal for backpacking and dayhikes. Especially this time of year. When the weather is cooler, I’m more inclined to have a mug of hot tea or cocoa at lunch stops or at the summit than a trail or summit beer.
Integrated Bowl and Mug
If you’re by yourself, you have a bowl and a mug. If you’re with a friend, you have two bowls. GSI Outdoors added an insulating sleeve to keep food, tea, coffee, etc hot, and a plastic “foon” (also known as a spork) to eat or cook with.
One Kettle, Many Uses
The GSI Outdoors Halulite Ketalist boils water beautifully for coffee, tea, cocoa, instant oatmeal, or even to reconstitute dehydrated camp food. But I found that if I remove the lid it becomes a one-liter pot for cooking. This latter piece of camping cuisine I figured out on my patio one cold October day. Could I actually cook something useful in it?
Sure enough. The Ketalist behaves like any camp cook pot. It sits atop a campstove–any campstove. It has a lid, and you can’t turn your back on it, not even for a second. I thought I wouldn’t have to babysit it due to its keen little spout that acted like a little chimney to prevent boil-over but it didn’t. Before I knew it, mac and cheese-laced water spewed from the spout and from around the lid. Note: this is not the fault of GSI Outdoors. It’s just basic common sense that I failed to follow.
When the macaroni and cheese was done, I lined up the prongs of the “foon” to the spout and voila. I had a strainer that worked very well to separate the noodles from the water.
Durable, Anodized Aluminum Construction
Why is this important? Or better than stainless steel? For camping pots, hard-anodized aluminum offers better heat conductivity, allowing food to cook evenly in a shorter amount of time. Hard anodization involves a process that adds a layer of aluminum oxide to the surface. This also makes anodized aluminum twice as hard as stainless steel and creates a non-stick surface for easy clean-up.
But like any cooking pot, you get the best results when you add a bit of oil to keep noodles from sticking.
What I didn’t Like
The handle gets very hot, even when in the upright position and you need the jaws of life to extract the mug from the bowl. Hardly a deal breaker though.
Final Thoughts
To be perfectly honest, I thought the GSI Outdoors Halulite Ketalist II was one of those superfluous pieces of camping gear that’s more indulgence than necessity. More suited to car camping instead of backpacking. It’s a kettle. You boil water in it. That’s it. Or so I thought.
Then I cooked a box of Annie’s Macaroni and Cheese in the pot. Suddenly, ten thousand angels descended and illuminated a bleak forest. A rainbow appeared. Nightingales sang and I recited Baudelaire. The GSI Outdoors Halulite Ketalist II is a kettle and a cooking pot—with a spout.
There is nothing superfluous about it.
