GSI Outdoors Compact Scraper

A double-sided tool, with a hard, plastic edge for more difficult scraping, and a soft, silicone edge to lightly scrape leftover liquid or softer foods. If you like cooking and don't like washing dishes, this is an essential tool to have as part of your camp kitchen, no matter how small or large it may be.

Pair this with some baby wipes and your dishwashing will never be easier. Spending five bucks on this scraper will save you the cost of having to prematurely replace worn-out non-stick cookware.

If you like cooking and don't like washing dishes, this is an essential tool to have as part of your camp kitchen, no matter how small or large it may be.

It is a double-sided tool, with a hard, plastic edge for more difficult scraping, and a soft, silicone edge to lightly scrape leftover liquid or softer foods.

This came included with my GSI Crossover Kitchen Kit, and is easily one of my favorite items in my kitchen. Using this scraper saves time and effort when washing dishes, and if your non-stick cookware is slick enough, it makes a tedious and lengthy chore into a short and simple one.

(Scraper is in top right corner of photograph above)

The size (3.5" x 2.25" x 0.125") is large enough to be useful in backpacking cookware, but small enough to nest into whichever cookware set you may own. The .4 oz. weight is well worth it, and far better than carrying soap, a scrubber pad, a drying cloth, and all those accessories.

The shape I wouldn't call anything less than universal (after all, the whole point of a silicone edge is to shape itself to the cookware it's cleaning) though it is uncannily well-fit to the inside curvature of GSI's pots and pans. 

Here's the mess left behind from a tuna noodle casserole - the perfect meal with which to put this scraper to the test.


The picture directly above shows me methodically cleaning this pot: first using the hard plastic side to scrape the  food scraps burnt to the bottom of the pan, and afterward, flipping it over to the soft silicone side to consolidate the rest the food scraps into a neat little pile, which can then either be packed out or disposed of. I was going to take an "after" photo, but I was test-pitching a tent in my backyard with the vestibules open and the lawn sprinklers went off. 

The only foreseeable downside to this item's features would be the included hole to string a lanyard through. Doing so would make the silicone edge awkward to use, but if the sole use of the hole was for transport and/or storage, this would be easily solved.

I should also mention the necessary irony: you will need to clean your cleaning tool, and make sure food scraps don't stick to the scraper. This isn't a teflon-coated piece of equipment, and unless you want to start a microorganism farm, you will need to wipe this down occasionally. Do yourself a favor and don't leave too much time between your cooking and cleaning.

Pair this with some baby wipes and your dishwashing will never be easier.

4.5 stars.

The backcountry tool you never knew you needed. Scrape clean bowls and pots before washing. Worth 10 times its weight in recovered calories alone.

I stumbled across this little beauty while browsing my way through the cookware section of a big Norwegian outdoor sports retailer. I didn't think twice. The utility of it was obvious, especially for our 8 member JMT group where hygiene is especially important. Now I wouldn't leave it behind on a solo or even hut-to-hut trek.

It's a win-win-win tool — you can recover precious calories, including that oh-so-luscious film of greasy cheese sauce in your pot, AND pre-clean pots and bowls to make the main cleaning job easier AND keep food scraps and bits out of the soil and away from wildlife (you wouldn't wash right in the lake or stream, would you?).

At 17 grams and 4-5 bucks it can pay for itself (in both dimensions) in recovered calories in the course of a few days. The gray part of the tool is grippy silicone rubber with a soft edge for routine scraping jobs, while the orange part is a harder plastic that lends stiffness and has a harder edge for chipping away at more resistant substrates, for example burned oatmeal. The round edge works for bowls, the squared-off one for getting into pot corners.

We used it for 24 days on our JMT trek and it held up well. I suppose it might crack or tear if you got too aggressive with it, but used with reasonable restraint it should last a long time. A great stocking stuffer for all your backcountry friends!

An indispensable camp kitchen clean up utensil. This scraper reduces clean-up time and helps protect non-stick coatings on expensive cookware.

Its hard to get excited over a utensil that scrapes food remnants from cookware but, this tool works great. It has two sides that can be used to remove excess and stubborn baked on food.

One side is a pliable rubber that easily gets into tight radius pot corners to get the scraps out quickly. The other side is harder and made of a nylon composite that allows you to put some muscle into removing that burnt, baked on residue from dinner.

Using the scraper instead of an abrasive pad/sponge helps maintain the non-stick coating on my cookware by not scratching it and rubbing it off. Also, removing as much of the food particles as I can with the scraper helps keep the sponge from collecting food particles and eventually stinking.  I also use less water for clean up by removing the excess food particles first. 

Overall, this a simple and extremely useful tool that is indispensable for camp kitchen clean up.

This makes cleaning dishes a breeze.

My compact scrapper came in the Crossover Kitchen, and it's easily the handiest thing I've had in the backcountry.

I really hate doing dishes. And in the backcountry this is multiplied. It's annoying, they are never really clean, and it's just so tough to get it as clean as you would in a kitchen.

With the scraper you a clear away nearly all the residue left over from whatever it was in the pot; sauce, oils, general gunk. If the soft sized doesn't allow you to get nearly everything out, the hard edge aggressively scratches away at what little is left. I do like the brillo pad as well that came with the Crossover kit, but I find it rarely is needed.

Sometimes there is a tiny bit of oil left but a dash of CampSuds normally clears that right up. 

Cleaning is so much easier now.

I gave this 5 stars because it works great AND it even fits inside the Mini 28-T (the Trangia 28-T cook set).

If you're looking for a super mini-sized scraper then this fits the bill perfectly! I bought this to go inside of my Mini T (the Trangia 28-T cookset). Fits like a glove and gets the job done!

When I first bought this scraper I used it a lot...learning curve using the simmer ring on the Mini-T. Now that I have the simmer ring down, I use it for easy clean ups.

It is very well made, holds up well, and is worth the money!