Denatured alcohol is the best. Take a cat food can and poke small holes around the top with an ice pick. Make a stand for your pot out of wire mesh and use tinfoil as a windscreen. One oz of DA will boil two cups of water. Use a small cough syrup measuring cup to measure the DA. It’s cheaper and burns hotter and more consistant than the gel. Only put in the amount of DA you need and just let it burn dry.
I made some alcohol stoves out of beer cans. Works great with DA in it. 1oz. will do a lot.
I have used DA with a crushed coke can and cooked food while backpacking. I just wanted to make a positive post about someone trying to prep.
We all started somewhere and many times found better ways of doing it. But to get good at it, you must first start as the poster of this thread did.