Duoluv Unbreakable Bowls Are the Answer to Outdoor Eating

This holds true when picnicking, camping, cruising, and road tripping—all times I’ve brought along the Duoluv bowl set. Although these bowls can be used at home (and I sometimes fill them with a breakfast hash for a lazy, sunny morning on the deck), I mostly take them with me for outdoor meals in other locales.

I detest single-use plastics, and “commercially compostable” means “trash” where I live because we lack processing facilities, so I pack reusable, lightweight place settings whenever we’re heading to a lakeside potluck or a multi-day music festival. It has become a habit to remember my travel coffee mug and reusable water bottle when I leave the house. I also keep a collapsible silicone cup, set of bamboo utensils, and reusable to-go box in my car so that I can skip the plastic utensils if I grab takeaway and pack my own leftovers after dining out.

Such habits can get expensive if you need to outfit a large family, which makes the Duoluv bowls appealing. At less than $3 per bowl, one or more four-piece sets won’t blow a budget. These bowls mainly consist of wheat straw fiber, a natural organic material, but have a thermoplastic mixed in to make them strong and long-lasting. By contrast, pure wheat straw dinnerware is more environmentally friendly than plastic-coated versions, but still only lasts for one meal. Among these choices, I’ll accept the compromise of Duoluv’s mixed materials over a single-use, plastic-free bowl or a 100 percent plastic one that will take generations to decompose.

Beyond their environmental credentials, I like the Duoluv bowls for their shape and size. Each bowl holds 24 ounces, which is larger than most bowls marked for cereal. For breakfast, I can scoop in some homemade granola, top it with fresh blueberries, and comfortably hold the bowl in one hand while eating with the other, even when sitting in the cockpit of a sailboat swinging on her anchor. A hearty lunch of potato salad fits neatly in a bowl with room to spare for slices of hard-boiled egg. For a road trip snack, I can stack carrot sticks and pepper strips next to a scoop of hummus without the dippers toppling out of the bowl.

These bowls handle hot food, too. I can safely hold a bowl of steaming curry and rice while sitting around a campfire. The bowl’s exterior stays cool enough that I can carry clam chowder from cooker to trestle table at a shoreside feast. It’s even heatproof enough to be microwave- and dishwasher-safe.

The wide, flat bottom helps these bowls nest well for storage, a key feature when packing a picnic kit or camp kitchen. For our household of two, I’ve tucked a pair of bowls neatly into a picnic basket for sunset dinners on the lakeshore and a second pair into the 3-gallon plastic bin that serves as my kitchen for multi-day sailing trips. It’s the perfect combination in my world: small enough to fit in a tight storage space and large enough that I only have to wash one bowl per person after a meal.

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Julie Laing has been a writer and editor for more than 25 years and is the author of the weekly newspaper column and food blog, Twice as Tasty. Every kitchen tool and gadget must earn its place in her 500-square-foot home (or 25-foot sailboat) as she bakes, preserves, ferments, grills, and eats well year-round. Julie published her first cookbook, "The Complete Guide to Pickling," in 2020.