Advice for food flask, anything new out there?

[gonzo_the_great]

I've read a few pretty good reviews on flasks on this site, but most seem to be quite dated now and there are probably new things on the market.

My trusty stainless thermos type flask recently got left behind somewhere, so I'm looking for something new.
It needs to have a wide enough mouth to be useable for some foods (probably 2.5" would do it), and have good insulating properties, to keep things warm for up to 24hrs.

Any suggestions?

 

[Nice65]

You won't keep food warm for 24 hours with any of them.

What size are you after?

I have a couple of food flasks, a Stanley and a Thermos. I haven't used them enough to know about reliabity long term, but both have advantages and disadvantages.

Both are close on 0.5ltr. The Stanley has a bowl that is a useful size and a wider top, but that and the cap on the base make it too large for me.

The Thermos is a tidy size and has a folding spoon in the cap. It's the better of the two IMO. Both keep heat over a six hour period to within a couple of degrees of each other, but must be well preheated with boiling water.

 

[gonzo_the_great]

Probably in the 1.5ltr range. And warm enough to be pleasent to eat is good enough.
In relaity, it probably won't be needed for more than 12hrs, but nice to have some leaway.

 

[Nice65]

Probably in the 1.5ltr range. And warm enough to be pleasent to eat is good enough.
In relaity, it probably won't be needed for more than 12hrs, but nice to have some leaway.

Ah ok, bigger means it'll hold more heat for longer.

 

[mousey]

I bought three of these from asda as they were reduced for my kids school lunches, it's nice for them to have something warm and a little more substantial than the school cooked meals during the winter. [the link below was just the first place i came across them, other stores will have them...]

https://www.therange.co.uk/cooking-...uO9aOyqYOiwqgGlNzQ-5r7FhRus8ImshoCfmsQAvD_BwE

the kids have reported it keeping pasta and sauce, soups, beans etc hot till lunch time so about 5.5 to 6 hours from putting it in to them eating it. I don't know how hot it is or how much longer it would stay.

However they are only 500ml so below what your after.

Out of interest I looked for 1.5 litre flasks and liked what I saw of this...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/1-5-Liter-Container-Stainless-Insulated-Thermal/dp/B01N78L2BK

Although I have no use for one personally it did make me think of possibilities.

 

[sunndog]

Thermos hercules is my favorite

Its a normal stainless flask then coated in plastic. Only 1ltr though

 

[santaman2000]

I've found that the ones with the larger lids tend to cool faster than the ones for drinks As Nice65 said the larger capacity ones will do better (heat trapped in mass) but the act of opening it will let heat out and unless you eatit all at the one go it'll cool quickly after that. I do like the looks of the one in mousey's second link. I'll be watching this thread for ideas myself.

 

[gonzo_the_great]

I did a quick test with my old glass vac thermos.
Half full with recently boiled water (it's max would be 1.8ltrs). After 9 hours it was at 60deg. By 12-13hrs it was 50deg.
Obviously the heat loss will reduce as it cools, because the temp differential is lower.
This only has a small opening, so mostly useful for drinks. So the leat loss through the lid will hopefully be small.

I think that a glass flask is going to be the benchmark. As it probably still represents the most efficient insulation.
And this, along with advice here, I am probably being over-optimistic. 12hrs for a good temp meal is probably more realistic.
But I will now need to trial what sort of temperatures I find comfortable for food.

(As a bit of an aside, and triggered by the slow cooker thread on this forum..... I wonder how well a stew would turn out, cooked in a flask? Bring it up to a good boil, and load into the flask and let it cook in it's own heat..... Have I just started up a whole new set of projects....?)

 

[Nice65]

I prime my 0.5ltr Thermos with boiling water and leave it 10 mins. Then I do it again. It makes a huge difference in a metal walled flask.

 

[gonzo_the_great]

I'll keep an eye open for further recomendations.
I quite like the stacked insulated lunch box. Reminds me of dabba tins.
(I have a set of those, where the lower tin is modified to take a small meths wick burner.....)

 

[Tonyuk]

I have a Stanley food + 1L drink flask. Very good for bimbling about when you don't want to heat anything up etc..

I've always found glass flasks hold heat better for whatever reason, buy they can be fragile. My Stanley food flask will keep food piping hot for about 4 hours if primed with boiling water, and it'll go to about 6-7 before it starts to be just nice and warm,. much longer than that and it feels tepid.

 

[gonzo_the_great]

A glass flask would probably be ok for me. I can't see me dragging a flask out into the wilds.
Though all the glass flasks I've seen have small mouth/opening.

 

[Robson Valley]

The larger flask should retain heat for longer than the small ones.
Particularly if thoroughly primed with boiling water.

But how do the weights balance out when a little stove and pot are weighed against the bigger metal flasks?

Consider a single sugar cube: it shows 6 faces to the environment.

Now, make a pile of 4 cubes on the bottom and 4 more for a top layer = 8
When you count, you will see that each sugar cube now shows only 3 faces to the environment.

 

[Nice65]

A glass flask would probably be ok for me. I can't see me dragging a flask out into the wilds.
Though all the glass flasks I've seen have small mouth/opening.

Not the best for jamming a spoon into. I haven't seen a glass food flask, is there such a thing? I do like the efficiency of the glass vacuum flask, but long ago gave up on them because they break.

Worked on a building site many years ago and one of the guys had broken a couple in just a week. By Friday he turned up with yet another new one, moaning about his loss. While he was working, one of the blokes slipped a handful of gravel into it. He picked it up for his tea, heard the gravel inside, thought it was broken and hurled it at the wall. Which did break it.

 

[gonzo_the_great]

If I prepped some food carefully, I probably could get away with my glass vac flask. eg. A curry sauce with small enough bits, to pour out and mop up with a nan bread.
The benefit of a wide mouth flask is when you have something which thickens up in time and you need to spoon out.

I'm only looking for a flask for benign outdoor environments. Where it will not get beaten up.

I see a number of stainless vacuum food flasks advertised. But I question if they really are vaccum, or just insulated? You see a lot of mis-described stuff on ebay. Where the seller will just copy a descriotion for something that looks similar. (A favourite seems to be that any shiny metal food impliment, must be stainless.)
No glass food flasks yet.....

 

[Robson Valley]

Also you could start by looking at the Sudbury Miner's Lunch Box. Canadian made.
You can sit on them, the end, and they can get kicked around for 40 years and the hinges still work.
As you will see in Google pictures, these boxes are no stamped metal rubbish.

The are designed to hold a standard Aladdin flask inside the lid part.
That's a steel bottle. If it's a real vacuum or not, I'm going to find out.

I'm really tempted to buy a box for myself if for no other reason that you cannot bash your food to a pulp.
Pack that at the bottom of the load with no worries.
Probably wind up in the shop as a mega engraving project!

My SIL got a job with a top-end landscaping company. He's gone from shovel to site supervisor.
I bought him a Sudbury which sure shows some battle scars after a decade+.
I really do wish that one of these years, it might accidentally get washed.
The Aladdin drink flask, he seems to take better care of.

 

[TinkyPete]

There is the new mountain range of stuff from Stanley as well, which has a flask, pot and spoon as part of the set. Here is a quick link from Youtube and here is one I found doing a quick google search about it. I have one and used it a couple of times on a small stove but the handle is not suitable for a high flame fire, better off with coals.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stanley-Mountain-System-Stainless-Container/dp/B076B86DLV

Hope it helps

 

[Jared]

Also you could start by looking at the Sudbury Miner's Lunch Box. Canadian made.
You can sit on them, the end, and they can get kicked around for 40 years and the hinges still work.
As you will see in Google pictures, these boxes are no stamped metal rubbish.

I don't know, looked at them a while ago and the fact they haven't done something with the edges kind of bugged me.

Would prefer the Stanley steel one if had to chose, https://global.rakuten.com/en/store/30s/item/10003806/

 

[Robson Valley]

I expected rougher edges, too. Not so. They've done something to smooth off all cutting burrs.
Somebody would have complained in the last million made.
I guess for me there's no mistaking what it is, what it's for and where it comes from.
Back in the analog days, not a bad camera case, either.

 

[cbrdave]

I bought two last week, a Stanley one for £20 and a cheapo one for a fiver, both from Tesco's,
tested both by boiling water and leaving for 4 hours, both where hot and measured the same temperature, both hold same amounts,
only plus for the Stanley is the folding spoon is metal rather than plastic.