Planning cook water: the weight nobody budgets for

Water is the heaviest thing in your pack — 2.2 lb per liter — and freeze-dried meals quietly demand a lot of it. A typical dinner pouch needs 1.5–2 cups (350–475 ml). Add a hot breakfast and you're carrying nearly a liter a day just for cooking, on top of drinking water.

The daily water budget

• Drinking: ~0.5 L per hour of hiking; 3–4 L/day is typical, more in heat or altitude
• Cooking: 300–500 ml per hot meal — check each meal's number, they vary widely
• Rehydration insurance: a little extra for cleanup, coffee, and cold-soak snacks

Every product page on LightSack lists exact cook water, and the trip planner sums drinking + cooking water for your whole trip — with a toggle for whether you're filtering along the way or carrying everything.

When cook water decides your menu

If you're camping near a lake, cook water is free — filter and boil what you need. But on dry camps (desert sections, ridgelines, late-season sierra), every cooked meal is water you hauled uphill. For those trips:

• Swap hot breakfasts for no-cook options (granola pouches work with cold water — or none)
• Favor lower-water dinners: 1-cup meals over 2-cup meals saves 235 ml each
• Consider ready-to-eat meals for the driest stretch — zero cook water, zero fuel
• Filter the catalog by "no water needed" or "≤ 1 cup" in the shop

Fuel follows water

Fuel math is water math: a 100 g isobutane canister boils roughly 10–12 liters in calm conditions. Sum your trip's cook water (the planner does this), add a margin for wind and cold, and you'll know whether the small canister is actually enough — instead of packing a second one "just in case."

Rules of thumb

• 1 hot dinner + 1 hot breakfast ≈ 0.8 L cook water/day ≈ 1.8 lb if carried
• Boiling ~0.8 L/day ≈ 8–10 g of canister fuel/day in fair weather
• Cold-soaking eliminates both — at the cost of hot food morale

Plan your trip's full water picture — drinking, cooking, and carry weight — in the trip planner.