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How are you going to cook when the grid goes down?
As most preppers are well aware, a well-stocked food supply is one of the most important preps you can have in your inventory. However, many preppers put far less importance on how they plan to cook that food in a grid-down situation. Many have the simple idea of firing up the outdoor grill and thinking that will be sufficient for however long they need. Unfortunately this isn’t the case, and in some serious off—grid situations, you could easily end up having more than enough food, but end up depleting your fuel to cook that food much more quickly than previously thought.
In this article we will discuss several ways of off-grid cooking, fuels and what you need to do to make sure that you not only have enough food to feed yourself and your family in an off-grid scenario, but that you have the knowledge and supplies stored to be able to cook that food indefinitely.
Cooking with Fire
Fire has been used to cook food since the dawn of time. When camping, a fire is the center of every properly set up campsite and serves several purposes including heat, cooking, and even trash disposal (depending on local regulations). There are several ways to use fire as a cooking method, many of which are preferable to the standard campfire, indoor fireplace or outdoor grill.
Outdoor campfire – Using an outdoor campfire to cook is fairly straight-forward, which is probably why it’s the oldest of the cooking methods. There are many methods of using campfires to cook including using a spit, tripods and Dutch ovens. There are definite pros and cons to using an open fire to cook with.
Pros
High heat – doesn’t take long to cook food or boil water
Fuel – Wood and tinder is readily available in most areas
Dual purpose – Fire can be used not only to cook but for heat as well
Cons
Inefficient – A decent sized fire will use a significant amount of wood. Much of the heat generated from a fire does not go into the cooking vessel or meat that it is cooking. Much of it is lost because it is not directed.
Outdoor use only – Unless you have a fireplace, you can’t build a fire indoors
Dangerous – Unless you’re using an established fire pit, starting a ground fire can be extremely dangerous.
Here’s a list of great videos about cooking over an open fire.
Campfire Cooking
Cooking a Meal over an Open Fire
Dutch oven Cooking 101
The Best Bushcraft Camp Fire Setup – Adjustable Spit
Cooking Rabbit on a Spit
Dutch oven Chicken
Camp Cooking Tripod
How to start a Campfire
Cooking with Fuel
Now that we’ve explored the more primitive ways of cooking, let’s move on to more modern technology, cooking with fuel. There are several options you can pick from when looking at fuel stoves and burners. Fuel cooking also has several advantages and disadvantages, which include:
Pros
More efficient – Using fuel as a heat source is more efficient that wood simply because you can control the amount of heat. The flame is also directed to the cooking surface which means you aren’t losing nearly as much energy when cooking with wood.
