12 Ways to Cook Without Electricity

hey folks this is Jr with DIY prepper welcome to the channel and today we're going to be talking about several ways that you can cook off grid and I think this is an area that a lot of folks Overlook but it's incredibly important because in addition to being able to cook food to make it safe to eat and also make it taste a lot better it's going to allow you to do other things like boil water as well so we're going to take a look at each one of these methods go over strengths and weaknesses and then also talk about some safety things and situations where you may prefer one method of cooking over another and one method that a lot of people start with is just regular camp stoves they're easy and convenient to use and this one it's a butane stove there are several models of these that are safe to use indoors you'll also be able to cook anything on them that you would on a regular stovetop and you can normally find butane stoves for somewhere between 25 on the low end and around fifty dollars once they start to get more expensive the biggest downside to using butane is that it won't vaporize at temperatures of 31 degrees Fahrenheit or lower so it's not well suited for colder environments but probably the most popular kinds of camp stoves are going to be those that run on propane and what's nice about these is that usually they'll either run on those small one pound bottles or you can get an adapter hose and hook them up to a 20 pound tank Which is far more economical also propane as a fuel it's not temperature sensitive so unlike butane you can use this in lower temperatures or you can use it in the middle of summer it's not really going to Care all that much it's going to work fine also stoves like this if you take care of them they can last pretty much forever propane stoves are pretty durable now when it comes to selecting a stove you can either get one like this which folds up it's nice because it's compact you can store it pretty much anywhere if you're concerned about wind you can get a stove like this which is going to do a much better job of protecting that flame from getting blown out now some downsides to propane stoves is that a lot of people don't consider them as safe to use indoors as some butane stoves and also they can and be a little bit more expensive like a lot of stoves that run on propane usually cost somewhere between 80 and 120 dollars just depending on what you get another really good way to cook off grid is an alcohol burner and one thing that these really excel at is just Heating and boiling small amounts of water so if you're doing something like trying to prepare a mountain house meal something like this is going to be able to help you out with that you'll also be able to do other things like heat cans of soup or chili and they're very portable you should have no problem just slipping them down into a backpack or a bug out bag and take them with you pretty much anywhere you need to go they're also safe to use indoors which is another important consideration because it might not be safe to cook outside maybe there's a weather event going on or maybe there's a security concern that you don't want people knowing that you have food another good thing about stoves like these is that they can use a variety of fuel sources here you see I just have some isopropyl alcohol I have some denatured alcohol which you can find like in the paint and solvent section like at hardware stores Walmart places like that but it also run on other things like yellow heat which is a fuel additive and then even Everclear Sterno and other kinds of Canned Heat are similar because they're alcohol-based but these don't get quite as hot as a good like Spirit burner will and you can even make an alcohol stove yourself this is one that I made out of a couple of Coke cans during the 2021 Texas ice storm I'll be sure to put a link in the description below showing how to make one of these but when using an alcohol stove you're going to need a way to set a pot or something else on top of it if you have something like a canteen or a bottle cook set then you can just take the stove set it on top of your alcohol stove and then set your cup on top and that's going to work pretty well another option are folding stoves this one is the one by coughlin's it works but the paint on it really releases some pretty gross fumes because this thing it can get super hot I think this was more designed for things like Sterno and other kinds of Canned Heat but one of the biggest downsides to using an alcohol stove is that it has a limited fuel capacity and that's really going to limit what you can cook with it because if you try to boil a large pot of water and this runs out of fuel before it starts boiling you're going to have to wait for this to cool down before you can add more fuel to it if you don't then it's a fire hazard and you know it's important to understand that anything that produces an open flame including the cooking methods that we just got done talking about can also produce carbon monoxide which is an odorless and invisible gas which can be deadly so because of this you always need to be sure to have good ventilation when you're cooking indoors and also have a carbon monoxide detector with fresh batteries in it and have other things like smoke detectors fire extinguishers and never leave anything with an open flame whether it's something like a cook stove a heater or even things like candles or oil lamps never leave those unattended because they could start a fire and if you're you're away from it then it could get out of hand to the point where there's nothing you can do when it comes to cooking with natural materials probably one of the best options is a good rocket stove stoves like this they can run on junk wood that's sticks and twigs and pine cones that just fell in your backyard and once you get the fire established they don't produce hardly any smoke they also tend to have simple designs this one's actually one of the more complex and the moving Parts on it are just doors some don't have any at all but since they're so simple there's not as much that can go wrong with them another good thing about stoves like this is it's very easy to add fuel to them that's going to allow you to perform longer cooking operations so if you have like a big pot of water sitting on top of here as long as you have sticks that you can feed into this door it's going to stay running a stove like this is also going to be pretty lightweight not all that bulky so you can move it around if you need to something like this if you can carry around a five gallon bucket full of rice you you're not going to have any problem moving this the biggest downside to using a rocket stove is that they have to be used Outdoors but also when you're getting them started they are going to smoke a little bit so that's something that's important to understand the Kelly kettle's similar to a rocket stove but it's been specifically designed to boil water it has a hollow chimney and the middle and holds water inside of a double walled chamber this allows the Kelly Kettle to boil water very quickly you can either get the kettle by itself or as part of a cook set that includes a grill grate plates a pot cups and some other accessories like a hobo stove probably the biggest downside of the Kelly Kettle is that it's not going to be able to handle larger cooking tasks as well as something like a full-size rocket stove would biggest reason for that is that it's not going to hold as much fuel you can put some pretty big pieces of wood inside of a rocket stove this one you're going to be relying on smaller sticks Twigs things like that so if you're wanting to cook for a long period of time you're going to be adding fuel to this constantly and also the hobo stove that you can get with this it will hold a skillet it will hold some larger pieces of cookware but if you're wanting something really big like a big pot or a big Dutch oven that's really not the best thing for it although if you needed it to you could still probably get it to work the BioLite camp stove is another way that you can cook off grid and it's actually kind of neat as you'll notice it's smaller than a lot of the other methods so it's going to be more portable and it has a fan right here that will help air circulate inside of the burn chamber and it can help get that flame very hot you'll see this piece right here as the fire burns that'll heat up and then the stove will convert that heat into electrical energy and store it in a battery so in addition to keeping the fan running that's also going to allow you to do other things like charge a cell phone or even power this light probably the biggest downside to this stove is that it relies on electronic components to operate if this part of the stove goes dead then the rest of it's not going to work as well another thing about the this is that BioLite they produce like a kettle and then a grill top that you can add to this and if you want to get the most out of the stove you really do need to spend the extra money and get those accessories because if you don't have them let's say you're cooking something with a skillet on top of this every time that you need to add fuel then you're going to have to remove the skillet and add more whereas with those other accessories you can just dump fuel in them without having to take them off another way that you can cook after it is to use a larger solar generator to power things like microwaves or crock pots and to do this you're going to need something at least with a one kilowatt hour preferably larger capacity and also something with an inverter that can handle higher wattages usually at least a thousand Watts preferably more my microwave for example pulls between 11 and 1200 watts the good thing about this is that it's going to allow you to cook totally indoors you don't really have to worry about fee fumes or carbon monoxide from like you know fuel burning or anything like that now the big downside to that is of course getting something that can actually power those appliances and do so for a long enough period of time to actually get the job done they're going to be pretty expensive you're looking for at least a thousand dollars before you even buy a set of solar panels then also another downside is that if you have something like that and you use it for cooking then that's going to be a lot of energy that you cannot use for other tasks so that's gonna just gonna kind of have to be a give or take kind of thing then also solar panels need to be set up outside to gather the most energy possible and that in itself can be a security concern if other people see them solar cooking options like the all-season solar cooker in the Sun Oven are also good options probably the biggest thing they have going for them is that you don't have to use things like sticks and twigs or propane and butane to keep them running if you have sunlight then you're good to go a lot of these they also tend to be pretty portable so you could take them with you if you needed to bug out and you can also move them around your property to the best place possible without too much fuss then another good thing is that you can actually use these to bake with most of the cooking methods that we've talked about so far are kind of a direct heat kind of thing where you have a flame and you set a pot or a skillet on top and it heats up that way but since there's kind of heat coming from different areas that's going to be more conducive for doing things like baking bread the big downside to a solar cooker of course is that if you don't have sunlight then it's not going to work at all another downside to using solar cookers is that you're going to have to practice a little bit before you get really good at it it's not going to be just plug and play like something like a butane stove will be and you can also use more traditional cooking methods things like charcoal grills those are going to make some really good tasting food and people already know how to use them but charcoal grills and particular do have some pretty significant downsides the biggest one is that it produces a lot of smoke and it produces some very strong distinctive odors so if we're in a long-term situation where people are already starting to go hungry that's not something that you want to use because just by starting the charcoal it's going to send up a smoke signal and also people know what that is when they smell it maybe consider using your charcoal grill towards the beginning of a situation or before it even gets started if you live in a coastal area you're probably familiar with the concept of a hurricane party where the storms coming in and everybody goes ahead and grills up the meat that they have so it doesn't go bad that's the kind of situation where I would feel okay using a charcoal grill in so I think that gas grills are probably going to be better at least from a preparedness standpoint even though I really prefer to grill with charcoal during normal times propane isn't going to produce the amount of smoke or odor that charcoal will just by itself of course if you're cooking something then the smell from that food can still care and that's true of any cooking method but if you're just using propane to do something like boil water you might be able to get away with that and also propane as a fuel it stores forever as long as the tank is in good condition the fuel inside is going to be perfectly fine probably the biggest downside to gas grills is that most of them tend to be rather large and bulky so if you needed to get out of Dodge with them that's probably something that you'd have to leave behind if you already have one installed in your home then wood burning fireplaces are another good way to cook they use natural materials that if you live somewhere like what I do with a bunch of trees you'll never run out provided that you have the tools and you're in good enough shape to go out and get them so that you could continue to feed that fire now some downsides to using a wood burning fireplace are first of all you probably want to set up your fireplace ahead of time to make it as useful for cooking as possible so installing something like a crane in it that you can use to hold a dutch oven over the fire and getting other cooking accessories that you could use to cook other things would probably be a good idea then also probably the big one like some other ones is that that smoke coming out of your chimney could be a very big indication of other people even if you're far far away in the middle of nowhere that there's something going on at your house and if you live in a more populated area in addition to that visible smoke signal you're also going to have to worry about people smelling what's coming out of that chimney wood stoves are going to have many of the same pros and cons as a wood burning fireplace and that they're good because they use readily available natural materials but you have to be careful using them because of the smoke and the odors that they produce and while it's important to have a good well-rounded tool set of different ways you can cook off-grid you probably don't actually need all of them if I could only have one I would probably choose a rocket stove because it uses natural materials that are very abundant in my area so I'd never have to worry about running out of fuel and I can also cook both big things and little things on it and if I needed to bug out it wouldn't be that hard to load up in the car and take with me another thing I would want to have is an alcohol stove they're not very expensive usually those are around 20 or 25 dollars so it's not going to break the bank to add that to your preps then also they're portable and being safe to use both indoors and out I think gives them a lot of utility then I'd also want to have a butane or propane camp stove just because they're so easy to use if you live in an area that never gets really all that cold and butane will probably be fine but the propane camp stoves they're very tough and that feels not sensitive to lower temperatures I also think it's a good idea to have a solar cooker because it'll allow you to save your other resources for when you actually need them so if there's plenty of sunlight there's really no need to go gather up a bunch of sticks or burn through some of like your butane or propane just use the Sun and solar cookers also give you an easier way to bake than some of those other options wood stoves would be another good one but those are probably going to need to be built into your house of course you can get a small camping one and then rig summing up but you have to be very careful with how you do that to make sure that you don't burn the place down if you want to learn more about off-grid cookware that you could use in a long-term disaster situation then check this video out thank you all for stopping by y'all have a good

Channel: DIY Prepper TV

Views: 177,850

Keywords: Prepper, Prepping, DIY Prepper

Id: yN36LgVqVHA

Length: 15min 37sec (937 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 13 2022