This wide-base 800ml offering from Fire Maple is the latest in their Petrel range of heat exchanger pots and goes some way to improving both efficiency and stove compatibility, but not ease of use.

Chinese manufacturer Fire Maple are an increasingly big player in the outdoor gear market. They produce premium products alongside cheaper entry level goods. Not only that, but they continue to innovate, or at least lead the pack in latest trends. Despite cookware with heat exchangers being available since at least the 1930s, there has been increased awareness and interest in heat exchangers in recent years. I have been using either the Jetboil Stash or now obsolete Sterno Inferno heat exchanger pots on most of my recent backpacking trips.

Backpackers, campers and anyone cooking, or even just heating water, are looking at improving efficiency and are in the market for lightweight cook pots that incorporate a heat exchanger- vanes on the base that better transmit heat from the stove, heat that would otherwise be lost, to the pot, and thereby, the contents. Following the release of their fairly generic heat exchanger (HX) pots and kettles, Fire Maple released the Petrel G3 600ml HX pot that featured three narrow slots in the heat exchanger, positioned at 120° to each other. This enables many stoves with three pot support arms (in particular, their Petrel and Polaris stoves) to securely nest with the pot, stopping it slipping off and placing the burner right in between the HX vanes.

• Gear talk: Heat Exchanger pots
• Gear talk: Fire Maple’s G3 Petrel heat exchanger pot and stove compatibility

Fire Maple followed the 600ml G3 with the larger Petrel G2 750ml HX pot. Another release has now joined the group, but this one is a little different. Fire Maple’s Petrel ‘Ramen Pot’ is an 800ml capacity HX pot with the capability of allowing stoves with either three or four pot support arms to nest with it. It achieves this by having additional slots in the heat exchanger vanes.

The pot is made from anodised aluminium, with a fold-out stainless steel handle. Despite being advertised as an 800ml pot, it has increments of 500ml and 900ml marked on the side, and a full litre will squeeze in. Fire Maple call this a pot, whereas I would call its wider squatter profile a pan. Another welcome change is to the lid. The G2 and G3 have Tritan lids with three pour/steam vents and a central silicone grip. The Ramen Pot has an aluminium lid with three pour holes in its side and a single vent hole in its top. This lid also has a silicone tab as a grip but is a little different underneath the lid. The design of the silicone allows it to be hung off the side of the pot, instead of laid on possibly mucky ground. A nifty little feature. To stow the pot, the deployed and locked handle is squeezed at the sides to release, then flipped over the lid, straddling the silicone grip and holding the lid down. To deploy and use, simply fold it down and it clips in to place. It is a reliably locked handle and does not fold when pouring or inverting the pot. There is a pour spout on one side of the pot to enable accurate pouring or aid in straining if the lid is held in place.

Unfolded, it measures 276mm x 146mm x 108mm. With the handle folded, measurements are 147mm x 146mm x 108ml. Fire Maple advise a weight of 188g. On my scales pot and lid comes in at 192g. I tried a replacement, if somewhat heavy, 140mm titanium lid I had knocking around in a gear locker and this actually came in as heavier than the supplied lid. 49g for the Ti lid against 39g for the aluminium Fire Maple offering. Obviously there is some variety amongst replacement lids, and mine is quite a thick gauge that also has a turned lip around the circumference that adds weight and there are no doubt lighter examples out there. But for now, I’ll be sticking to the supplied lid. 140mm is too tight anyway on the 137mm internal diameter pot, while the Fire Maple lid is a very loose fit, rattling away on the top. The supplied 21g mesh stuff sack goes some way to reducing the noise when stowed but I’ll be looking at one of the suppliers of DCF pot sacks on eBay for something lighter to slip it in to.

I first tried using the pot (pan) with a lightweight titanium trivet on an alcohol (meths) burner, but simply couldn’t get on with it. The low height and lack of visibility beneath made alignment really awkward and while repositioning, the heat exchanger vanes kept on lifting and knocking off the trivet. I moved on to trying it with canister top and remote canister gas stoves. I didn’t try the pot with every stove I have, just a handful, which was enough to reveal a few issues. The pot has markings on the bottom rim that show which slot is for use with three pot support arm stoves and which is for four pot support arm stoves.

Despite the pot having a flexible design that allows it to be used with stoves with either three or four support arms, it will not work/nest well with every such stove. While a degree or two off wouldn’t matter at all with a smooth base pan or pot, an accurate 120° angle between three support arms, or 90° between four arms, is crucial to easily fit a stove into the slots in the heat exchanger base. The MSR Pocket Rocket Deluxe has slightly kinked pot supports that do not align with the slots in the heat exchanger.

Canister top gas stoves:

The Kovea V1 is an uncommonly found stove, combining the best of the Soto Windmaster and MSR Pocket Rocket Deluxe, and is a bit of a favourite of mine however I didn’t feel it suited this pot. While I found it fairly easy to position the pan on this stove, because the three support arms extend far enough out that they are visible, the support arms on this stove are so light that they catch and lift while putting the pan on and off.

Also, because their deployment is by rotating them around the burner head, the pot supports can easily be a degree or two off, then making it harder or impossible to fit the heat exchanger. If they are correctly deployed, despite then fitting quite well, it frequently took a few seconds to properly position the pot on this stove. A ‘fiddle-factor’ that grew tiresome.

The Kovea V1, and similar stoves, is quite a tall canister top stove. Shorter, and consequently lower to the ground, is the reasonably priced BRS 3000-T. This is a popular choice amongst the ultralight crowd. It was surprisingly easy to place the Ramen Pot on this stove. But this is purely because the pot support arms on the BRS are so short they sit inside of the heat exchanger vanes.

It is an uncomfortably wide pot for such a narrow stove and is by no means a recommended combination. I also noted the titanium pot supports glowing red when in use and this stove has historically had a poor record of supports flexing and bending when overly heated.

Stoves with four pot supports are often better than three when used with heavier or wider base pots as the supports usually have a wider spread. The Soto Amicus is a canister top stove with four pot support arms. These pivot out from beneath the burner to deploy. They softly but firmly clip in to place and do not flop about like those on some other stoves. They are also fixed at 90° so align perfectly with the slots on the Ramen Pot.

I used the Stealth version of this stove, with piezo igniter, which also makes for easier lighting of the burner when the pot is in place. Despite the short pot support arms not poking out of the side of the heat exchanger vanes to aid placement, because the pot supports are firmly in place and do not move, I found it easier to correctly position the pot on this stove. This stove worked well and due to the four rather than three supports makes for a stable combination. There are no rivets or anything mid-length along the pot support arms to catch on the heat exchanger.

Camping Moon sell a couple of regulator stoves with four support arms. I tried their Frex-MicroMax XD-2F, with piezo ignition, with the Ramen Pot and found it a good fit. This is a cheaper, knock-off, version of the excellent Soto Windmaster.

The tips of the support arms poke out from the side of the heat exchanger sufficiently to enable easy alignment. This stable combination makes for a reasonably priced option for those on a budget.

Remote canister gas stoves:

Three Points of the Compass has long appreciated the advantages of a remote canister stove, lower centre of gravity and more stable footprint amongst them. Remote canister stoves position the burner closer to the ground, meaning that a fairly small (short) windscreen can be placed around the stove and base of pot, further improving efficiency and reducing gas use.

I was keen to see what would work well with the Ramen Pot. Sadly, one of my favourite remote canister stoves, the four season Fire Maple FMS 117H Blade 2, with generator loop, will not fit the pot, nor will it’s lighter cousin, the titanium FMS 117T Blade. Both stoves have kinked pot supports that will not fit into the slots in the heat exchanger fins without bending them permanently. Both of those stoves do work well with another heat exchanger pot; the 170g one litre Olicamp XTS Pot, which is itself a rebranded Fire Maple FMC-XK6 Heat Exchanger Pot.

Fire Maple’s chunkier 182g remote canister Polaris stove does fit fairly well however the base of the Ramen Pot isn’t actually sitting on the stove support arms, instead, the thin aluminium covering to the vanes is taking the weight and this flexes slightly as a result.

A really excellent remote canister stove is the Kovea Spider KB-1109. This was a really good fit with the base of the pot properly sitting on the stove support arms/legs, which also extend to the edge of the Ramen Pot and providing a good stable unit. A bonus with this stove is that it has a pre-heat generator loop, suiting use with a gas canister in colder weather. A gas canister can be inverted and the stove used in liquid form. This was the stove/pot combination I was probably happiest with. Weighing just 173g, this is a fairly bulky stove when folded but easily stows inside the pot. No surprises there, as it also stows inside my smaller Evernew pan, shown below.

The Kovea Spider is a tried and tested stove that has been around since 2012. New on the market in 2025 is a lighter, three-season remote canister stove, that also works well with the Ramen Pot. The Fire Maple Petrel Titanium Ultralight Backpack Stove is also badly in need of a name change. This sub-100g gas stove gets it’s own review where I show its compatibility with the Fire Maple G2, G3, Ramen Pot and others.

• Fire Maple Petrel Titanium Ultralight Backpack Stove

The G2 and G3 HX pots are fairly tall and narrow. The Petrel Ramen Pot is wider and shorter in shape, enabling it to suck up more of those potentially lost BTUs and is also easier to eat a meal out of, though food will also cool quicker due to the increased surface area. In common with all HX pots, not only the weight, but the bulk is greater than simpler pots as a result of those vanes protruding from the bottom. It makes for quite a chunky pot to stow in a pack. Before I switched to the Stash or Inferno HX pots, I had been using the titanium 900ml Evernew for the previous decade. This would slip into a side pocket on my pack, this pot will not. I am a solo backpacker and the Ramen Pot is also just a bit large for my needs. I do not require a litre capacity and would prefer it if it had been a little smaller, perhaps 700ml or 600ml while retaining the wider format.

The Fire Maple Petrel Ramen Pot would be an easier product to use if the slots in the heat exchanger were tapered, making pot/pan placement on stove support arms easier. I often found removing and then trying to return the pot to a stove a little troublesome, occasionally catching on pot supports or taking a few seconds of twisting and repositioning to get it to sit again.

It may have been my carelessness but the fiddle factor was exemplified to me when I tried the MSR Pocket Rocket Deluxe with the Ramen Pot. The pot support arms did not extend far enough for me to see them in the slots and I turned the pot and wiggled it, attempting to get it correctly aligned. I thought I had succeeded, and it was only when I looked at the photograph I had taken, shown here, that I found that it wasn’t correctly placed at all. There is a risk here that the pot could slip, potentially pouring boiling water on an unwary user. My fault I appreciate, but a factor nonetheless.

It seems as though every other backpacker likes to pack their gas canister inside their pot. I don’t like doing that. A canister sits on the ground when in use and I have no wish to contaminate the inside of my pot. Also, gas canisters come in a range of sizes. Even same capacity canisters from different manufacturers can have different dimensions. So there is a consequent lack of consistency when packing and I like routine. With routine packing I then know where everything goes and can easily locate what I want and notice when something is missing. My stove does go inside the pot while hiking, together with a small ferro rod and striker, tiny Deejo knife, all wrapped in a square of Lightload towel to stop rattling. All the stoves I tried with this pot easily fit inside it, including the quite bulky remote canister Polaris gas stove. But for those interested, the 230g canister used in most of the images, will not stow inside the pot with lid on, it is too tall.

The Ramen pot is available from various places, including Amazon. It usually comes in at around £20 and will be cheapest ordering direct from China via AliExpress or similar. But look around as price varies. Because it is made of aluminium rather than titanium, it is a reasonably priced pot and might suit those on a budget and is certainly large enough for two people. No doubt Fire Maple will be adding more to the range.

In conclusion:

Some combinations of Fire Maple Petrel Ramen Pot and stove work better than others and it will be up to the individual to decide whether to purchase one of these pots to try it out with their own preferred stove. It may prove to be the ideal combination, it may not. Even amongst the very small sample I show here, some were absolutely disastrous couplings. Which takes nothing away from the innovation presented by the pot as the three or four support arm capability is an interesting development. Now, if Fire Maple could make another version, just slightly smaller capacity, with tapered slots in the heat exchanger…