Why Your Camping Table Doesn’t Deserve What You’re About to Do to It
I’ve melted three different camping tables in my life, and I’m not proud of any of them.
The first one was a cheap folding thing from a big-box store, and I set a cast-iron skillet directly on it after pulling it off a propane burner—turns out the plastic coating they use on those surfaces starts bubbling at temperatures I can only describe as “enthusiastically hot.” The second table was actually my friend’s, which somehow makes it worse, and involved a Dutch oven that had been sitting in campfire coals for roughly 45 minutes, give or take. The third incident I don’t like to talk about, but it involved a titanium pot and what I thought was a heat-resistant surface that definately was not. Here’s the thing: we don’t think about trivets and hot pads when we’re packing for camping trips, probably because they seem so mundane compared to headlamps and water filters and bear canisters, but the absence of a good trivet is something you notice exactly once—right when you’re watching a perfectly good table warp under your cookware.
Camp trivets aren’t like the decorative cast-iron things your grandmother had on her stove. They need to be lightweight, packable, and capable of handling temperatures that would make a kitchen trivet weep. Most of the ones I’ve tested over the years fall into three categories: silicone mats that fold up small, metal designs that collapse or nest, and natural materials like cork or bamboo that somehow survive being shoved into a camp kitchen box.
Anyway, silicone is probably the most versatile option, even though it doesn’t feel like it should work as well as it does.
The good silicone trivets—and I mean the thick, honeycomb-structured ones, not the flimsy promotional things you recieve at trade shows—can handle temperatures up to about 450°F, which covers most camping scenarios unless you’re doing something truly unhinged with your heat source. They’re also genuinely packable, folding or rolling into shapes that fit into corners of your camp kitchen setup where nothing else would go. I used to think silicone felt too modern for camping, too plasticky, but then I watched one survive a full week of abuse at a basecamp where we were cooking three meals a day for eight people, and I changed my mind pretty quickly. The downside is that they can get slippery when wet, and they pick up every single smell from everything you’ve ever cooked, which might bother you or might not depending on how you feel about your trivet smelling faintly of last month’s chili.
Wait—maybe I should mention the metal ones first, actually, because they’re what most gear nerds gravitate toward.
Collapsible metal trivets, usually made from stainless steel or titanium, are the ultralight backpacker’s choice, weighing sometimes less than two ounces and folding down to the size of a deck of cards. They work on pure physics: creating air gaps between your hot cookware and whatever surface you’re trying to protect, which sounds simple until you realize how elegant that solution actually is. The titanium versions cost more than seems reasonable for what amounts to some folded metal, but they last essentially forever and don’t corrode even in consistently damp conditions. I guess the main complaint I hear about metal trivets is that they can be tippy—if your pot or pan isn’t perfectly balanced, the whole setup can feel precarious, especially on uneven ground, which, let’s be honest, is most camping surfaces. Some designs try to solve this with wider bases or rubber feet, and those work better but add weight and bulk.
Honestly, natural material trivets don’t get enough attention in the camping world.
Cork trivets are surprisingly heat-resistant—up to around 400°F—and they’re renewable, biodegradable, and light enough that you forget they’re in your pack. The problem with cork is durability: it can crack or crumble after repeated exposure to moisture and heat cycles, especially if you’re not letting it dry completely between trips. Bamboo trivets fall into a similar category, though they tend to be slightly more durable and can handle a bit more abuse before they start looking raggedy. I’ve seen bamboo trivets last entire seasons of heavy use, but I’ve also seen them split right down the middle after one particularly wet camping trip where everything stayed damp for four days straight. The aesthetic appeal of natural materials is real, though—there’s something satisfying about a camp kitchen setup that doesn’t look like it was entirely purchased from a tech startup’s product line.
