Been awhile since this topic was addressed. 

What do you prefer to cook over: a fire or a stove?  Assume there is no fire ban in effect, of course.  Feel free to comment below and make your case for why your preferred method/system is the best.

I've been using a Century propane 2 burner stove for some time .  The stove weights 8 lbs and for a 5 day trip we bring 4 cylinders which get divided between our packs.  So much easier to cook due to better heat control and no black pots at the end of the trip.

We used to cook on the fire all of the time, but we used to break camp and move every day, paddle a lot farther, portage a lot longer, and do everything a lot more energetically than we do now.   

There are only two of us.  One small stove is fine for our simple meals, and it is a great convenience.  If clean firewood is readily available (read that:  no pine), we will cook on the fire.  And if we feel like bothering.  But now, if we don't feel like bothering, we use the stove.  In the morning I like to get up really early and have a quick cup of coffee even before the fire is getting going anyway.

We will often build a pine fire, even with just twigs and the little stuff that accumulates around the campsite, for our morning warm-up fire, or our evening campfire to sit around and enjoy.  Toast a few marshmallows. 

I think we probably are in the 50-50 group, but more and more we are tending to do our cooking on the stove and save the fire for atmosphere.

I don't remember the big suitcase Coleman stove fondly.  Can't tell you what our little tiny stove now is called, but it is small and lightweight, you don't have to use a match to light it, and I like it a lot.  When I bake on it I use a diffuser and my small Jello-mold oven, and create some tasty treats.

Defnitely use both.  I have found that for us, typically a larger size group of 6+ people on a 8-10 day trip, fire cooking is usually preferable for the cooked meals, as the fuel required for the large one-pot meals begins to be absurd.  In one fire-ban trip with 9 people for 10 days, we burned through 2 gallons using 2 MSR Dragonfly stoves, which are pretty efficient for the task.  Much of the fuel was used on the fish fry meals and baking, but it just takes a long time to boil water for that many people (just for meals and hot drinks, not for purifying drinking water).  Plus, you have the helping hands so firewood collection, fire building/maintaining, cooking and cleaning can all be separate tasks.  However, I still prefer to bake on a stove.

For smaller crews, the convenience of a stove often wins, especially if a fire is not desired.

I'm hoping that everyone knows to apply soap to the outside of pots prior to cooking over a fire.  Do it once at the start of a trip and it forms a good black coating.  At the end of the trip, you can wash off pretty easily.

Mix. More stove/ simpler meals when solo.  More fire cooking with canoe buddy (who loves to cook and usually takes on most of it): light aluminum dutch-oven for biscuits and cornbread; light clamping grill for fish.  Have yet to find the fuel stove with good flame adjustment.  I use mainly white gas and an MSR, right now, and it seems to have two adjustments: hell for leather, or off.  Have had it apart and cleaned, but can't find any other adjustment.