30 Days of Preparedness: 12 Ways to Cook Your Food When the Power Goes Out

do you have a plan for how you will cook in a power outage today we're going to share 12 of our favorite ways to cook when the power goes out [Music] hey provident preppers i'm kaileen and i'm jonathan and today we're doing this video as part of national preparedness month and also as part of the 30 days of preparedness collaboration being hosted this year by rogue preparedness let's all work to become a little bit more prepared in this video we're going to talk about my 12 favorite ways to cook when the grid goes down and you know we did this challenge a couple years ago where for the month of november we didn't use any natural gas or um electricity to cook our food and wow was that an experience in fact you might want to check out that playlist because every week we posted a video and told you what we learned during that process so before we go any further a note from the safety guy as we do this we need to make sure that we are doing it safely whatever method we choose it must be safe and we must have working carbon monoxide and fire detectors so make sure that this is safe and have a great time with it and when he talks about the carbon monoxide detectors we have this little portable one with a digital readout because the ones that you have installed in your home they will only alarm when it reaches a certain level but if you have one of these little ones that have the digital display on them you can know if there's any carbon monoxide at all and make a few different choices before it gets dangerous now now that we've taken care of safety we're going to talk just a little bit about fuel conservation right and some ways that you can conserve fuel because the less fuel that you use the less you have to store so we'll start with that and then move into 12. before we get into the cooking methods i want to say a word about conservation fuel conservation is so important because if you we've always got a limited supply of fuel right well okay except for with the sun oven but even then on a cloudy day you're not going to have fuel so we want to make sure that we stretch the fuel as far as we possibly can and that's when thermal cooking or retained heat cooking come into play and it's a very basic concept right you heat whatever it is that you want to cook up to boiling you get it hot all the way through it doesn't really work with roasts because you need the center of the roast to be hot or else it will cool all the other liquid but it totally would work with a stew or soup or beans or anything like that and so let's just listen to this method for just a second so this is a thermal cooker and what we do with this it's just a really nice stainless steel cooker i can use any fuel source that i need to to heat this up i can put it on my wood burning stove i can use a butane heater i can even heat this up using little tea lights and i want to bring it to a nice strong boil and then i'm going to put it in this thermos and what it does is this will help to retain the heat now quite frankly this will only last for about six hours and so what i do is i throw a blanket over it or towels because i want to increase that insulation so you can totally do this even with just a box or a laundry basket you just layer blankets or towels on the bottom you want about four inches of insulation on each side and then you put the hot whatever it is in the center and then you pile more blankets on side and around and you tuck them in you can do this inside of an ice chest just click the card in the corner and i'll take you to a video that we created or a post that teaches you the basic concepts but so what that does is it makes it so you only used 10 or 15 minutes of your fuel to heat something up and then for the other four hours that it needs to cook you it's going to cook all by itself without any additional heat one of the tricks is though it's going to take about four times as long for it to cook right so if it was going to take 30 minutes you heat it up to a boil it took you 15 minutes you put it in there it's going to take you about an hour more to be able to have it done which quite frankly if i don't have to use any more fuel i'm i'm totally happy with that but you're going to want to learn more about this so make sure that you go and check out that post because this is something that's really cool to kick this off we're going to start with my very favorite absolute favorite the sun oven the sun oven just cooks amazingly well and in our climate we can cook about 300 days a year maybe even more you don't have to have really high sun but your is driven off of the uv index so you do want to have some decent sun but you can do some amazing cooking with this and this the energy stores free on the sun there's no safety issues no cost issues once you buy the sun oven it just does a great job so we just put in some rice and vegetables the only real downside to the sun oven is you do have to have some other backup method because you will have some days when it's just not going to work when it's rainy super cloudy winter storm whatever you do have to have another backup method our number two way to cook during a powder outage is actually using a propane stove propane is a wonderful storage fuel it will store forever it's only limited by the container that it's in you do have to be careful with it and store it away from your home right but it's it's a really good storage fuel and you can use all kinds of different things these usually stay on my back patio all summer and fall and the reason why is because i do all of my canning on this so that i don't have the heat in the house and it's right outside of my stove or my kitchen so it makes it super easy to bring something out and cook here and then this one has our barbecue but it also has a burner right here on the side and that's also a really good option and that might be something that you already have now one of the other things that we have that i think is really cool is an oven a propane oven with a little stove on top of it that we have used before and we'll use that in our garage when the when the weather is really bad when it's snowy or windy but we always open the garage door so that we can ventilate because these are outside devices you do not want to use them inside your home they're not rated for indoor use and it can be dangerous but there are different options these if out here on this patio it's shaded so if i've got a little bit of rain i'm fine but if i have wind it'll totally blow the wind or the the flame out so i do have to to compensate for that so um also camping there's all kinds of different camping styles just make sure that whatever you use you're using it outside unless your device is rated for indoor use there are propane devices that are rated for indoor use but be very very careful these are not and these can't be used indoors the next thing we want to talk about is the kelly kettle and this is one of our favorites because it's so compact and yet it can do quite a bit of work for you this is the fire fire pan right here and then you have the ability to either cook on here with this with a pan on top or this kettle sits right on here and creates really a rocket stove and this you can just continue to feed there's a little hole here that you can continue to feed sticks in you can boil water very quickly with this which is often very important maybe you're making a meal with freeze-dried food or you just seem need some hot water in a hurry this takes very little fuel and it heats that water very very quickly great cooking tool number four are rocket stoves now i'm inside the house right now but these are not to be used inside the house so okay the kelly kettle is a good example of a rocket stove the one that we just did where you're putting the fuel in the bottom and there's it has a chimney effect which makes that fire burn hotter and cleaner and so you're able to use less fuel to be able to heat your food this is a little teeny tiny rocket stove here you so you're putting the pot hold on okay i'm back so you're putting the pot on the top right and you're feeding the fuel in the bottom and so it's really easy to use debris and little pine cones or sticks or twigs or things like that to fuel your fire now there's a whole bunch of different kinds of this um there are some that are in an ammo can that come ready to to use as a rocket stove um i have a friend who built one out of these blocks that you can see and um like we have we did a contest that video was kind of fun it was a challenge somebody challenged us to use the least amount of fuel possible to cook a meal and so what we had done is we took a rocket stove that had you could also use charcoal briquettes and in any of the rocket stoves you usually can do that too well not all of them but some of them and we used a pressure cooker and just made an entire meal out of twigs from our garden so that would be kind of a cool video to watch we've also got this giant bear river rocket stove where it's got this um huge griddle on the top and this amazing oven and like we cooked our thanksgiving dinner there for a whole bunch of people in that barry river rocket stove and it was really cool but we actually purchased it with our neighborhood in mind as long as we heat it up right then our neighbors can come bring their meals and put on it and heat up their meals when there's a problem so that was one of our ways of kind of contributing to our community so number five is dutch oven cooking if you're already a fan know that this is a wonderful emergency preparedness method for cooking if you haven't explored this maybe it's time that you did i'm here with my granddaughters and we're just waiting for this cobbler to come out of the dutch oven you can use a dutch oven for all kinds of things breads main dishes desserts all kinds of things it does a great job and it's very effective these charcoals we get them started in the charcoal chimney here these particular charcoals we put in a bucket 17 years ago and they are still like the day they were new so they store very safely and very easily great fuel great method and number six for outdoor cooking is actually just over an open fire now this is a portable fire pit it was an inexpensive one and so it's a little bit on the rickety side huh yeah there and so theoretically you should be able to take it all kinds of different places this is kind of cool because if you're having a regular fire in it it keeps the embers from going away but it's got these racks right and so you could well you could do charcoal in it but you could cook over an open fire just on something like this now if you build something that's really cool in your backyard and have it all set up so that you can cook on it all the time that would be so much fun but just an open fire even if that means that you just make a little fire pit right and have a fire in it make sure that it's safe that it's not going to get out of control it's kind of stinky and it's hard to regulate the temperature sometimes but it's absolutely a viable option now all of the other methods that we have talked about are outdoor cooking right there's a huge difference between indoor cooking and outdoor cooking and that difference could mean life and death to you so just because somebody says you can cook with something indoors doesn't mean you can you've got to be safe we highly recommend you always have one of these carbon monoxide detectors this one has a digital readout so if there's any carbon monoxide being produced it will start to read out like um so sometimes we'll use it in our garage and you can tell when the car starts in the garage the reading will go up um and then it'll go down when it's when it's all out of there so um just be super careful i just always have it out battery operated it's better safe than sorry so um and it's never ever gone out with this safe heat this is safe heat so um it is in just in this little can it comes in flats of 12 and i usually buy mine at sam's club you can buy it online or at restaurant places but usually i found that the cheapest place is sam club this is not quite the same as sternosterno does make it but there are differences this one is rated for indoor use and most sterno is not so be really careful but do you see this flame on here you can barely see it because it burns so cleanly this is a folding camp stove and with these i do recommend you get the sterno brand because there are off brands but the sterno brand is much sturdier right and you just put it in there and it'll cook your food now it is not going to cook as hot as propane or butane or some of those other fuels it's going to be a slower process and so um you know click the card in the corner and it'll take you to a post that we did we've got some videos on this that really go into more detail but the thing that i really like about this is that like this can right here it's been in my storage for over 12 years right and it's in a little flat it's safe for me to store limited quantities inside my house the same as being able to store like alcohol right and yet it's so quick and so easy now when i'm done all i do with this is i take this lid and i smother the flame then you allow it to cool completely if it does not cool completely and you screw that on tight it creates a vacuum and like you won't be able to get it off again well john can get it off i can't so i let it cool completely and then i put the lid on and you can use it again so in that one flat of 12 cans at six um each i've got 72 hours of burn time that's a lot of inside cooking fuel in a very small space number seven is actually just a little alcohol burner now they come in different shapes and sizes and they are designed to burn alcohol um it's actually not the alcohol that burns it's the fumes and so if you look here you dump the alcohol in the center and all around these edges you'll see these little holes and when you light it the fumes burn right and just like with a safe heat when you're done you can extinguish it with a lid and put it away but it will fit in these little sterno containers right and here is a smaller version i bought these just on amazon right this one was a military surplus wow it's nice and sturdy i wasn't able to find any of those anywhere for sale but i did find some of these the reason why in a way this is better than safe heat okay they have their pros and cons so safe heat it's like all in that can i never have to touch it i just pull it out the fuel is there it's so clean it's so safe but with this i do need to store the fuel and then i need to dump it in right but you can actually make your own alcohol right and so in a long-term event something like this my safe heat's going to run out but i can find ways to make alcohol or to get alcohol it needs to be a really high proof the higher the proof the cleaner it will burn because okay let's face it water doesn't burn well but this is kind of a really good option for indoor cooking because alcohol burns very cleanly well clean alcohol burns very cleanly number nine are tea lights believe it or not this little tiny candle can cook your food like it's seriously amazing um no it's slow it's gonna take a long time if you're using a butane stove you're gonna get that water boiled in a matter of a few minutes with this it might not actually ever boil like a rolling boil but it'll heat up but it's going to take it a little while right the more of these you use at once the faster it will cook but these are safe to store like incredibly safe to store this bucket is actually a bucket it has 600 tea lights in it and it has two butane lighters because i wanted it to be complete right make sure that i have the means to light them but we went out and we bought these at the end of the season the holiday season when they were closing all their tea lights out like walmart had them for a dollar for a big package that's the time to stock up but i would encourage you to stock up on um the ones unscented because using any scented ones it really it's just too strong when you're trying to cook and if that's your only fuel that's all you've got so i i would much much prefer unscented life lessons learned um now one of our viewers she's so cool so she sent me pictures of how she used a pot to create an oven using tea lights and she was able to break bread with it another viewer told me about how it was either her mother or her grandmother would put a baking sheet in the bottom of the oven light some tea lights on it put another baking sheet right on top the next rack right so that they're fairly close together and she could cook bacon on it in the oven now you have to leave the door open right because these have to have oxygen to burn and any flame that doesn't have enough oxygen can create carbon monoxide normally these aren't going to produce carbon monoxide but they need to enough oxygen so make sure you leave the oven door open a little bit but that is fantastic we've done all kinds of things like chocolate fondue with these just know that it's going to take a little bit longer and it does provide a little bit of warmth you can do little heaters we did a whole post on these so click the card in the corner and learn everything you ever wanted to know about tea lights and more number 10 of our grid down cooking are butane stoves now this is really interesting because there's a lot of reasons why i'm not a fan of it and let me tell you why first it has these little cartridges right which make it super convenient to use but they're like little bombs and so storage is an issue right butane will store forever but the canisters will degrade and if they leak there's problems and it's just hard to find a really good place to store them however oh and the other thing is some of them are rated for indoor use and some aren't this one is actually one that we had purchased at sam's club and i went to get another one the other day and they don't have them right now so i don't know if they'll get them back or not but this is rated for indoor use in a well ventilated area it's meant to be used by caterers or at expos things like that where you're in large spaces to heat food and so this i definitely i'd still make sure you're in a well-ventilated area but it's designed to be used inside a lot of them are designed to be used when you're camping when you're out in the open so make sure if you're using a butane stove you know which it is part of the problem with these guys is that when you insert this canister that's the time it'll leak and butane is a lot like propane where it's heavier than air and it will just settle right and wait for an ignition source until it explodes okay now having that said and saying theoretically this isn't my best option when we did our 30 days grid down cooking and i couldn't use any electricity or natural gas for 30 days that was so hard but it taught me a lot and one of the things is that all these alternative methods take so long right it just takes a really long time except this i don't have to manage this fire it's hot it's fast um when i want to cook something i just put it on and it heats it up really quickly and in that respect i'm a huge fan of the butane stoves you cannot store enough fuel safely to last for a longer term event absolutely if you're talking about three four day power outage maybe a week you could store enough fuel um relatively safely but there's no way you could store it for a year and that's one of the reasons why you need to have other forms because some of the fuels are much safer to store for instance um charcoal or firewood those are super safe to store and they'll store for a really long time but i think it's good to have a mixture in our storage right and to have different options because this absolutely was my favorite during that power outage or during that self-imposed power outage number 11 is a wood burning cook stove a wood watering stove is great because it heats your home as well as can cook your food which means it's only good in the winter time right it has to be cold or it'll just make it absolutely miserable but what a great way to be able to heat your home and cook food i have done everything on this this one actually has an oven so we can cook in it you put the wood over here and it has a water jacket so that i can pour water in it and have hot water all the time this is just a little warming oven on the top to keep food warm but this is a great option it's kind of an expensive option and you have to be able to live in an area where this is legal and this is okay but think about a wood-burning cook stove it might be really good especially for in a long-term event number 12 is a masonry heater this is our tempcast masonry heater and we just installed it last year we are super excited um it is actually in a building that we have that is meant to be a family gathering place because our house is small and we don't have enough room for all 11 kids um to come and have dinner together anymore so we built a little out building in our yard and we installed this and it's super super cool so this is made by temp cast i will leave a link so that you can see more details about it but it's really cool because you make a fire in here once or twice a day and it will heat it heats up all the masonry and it continues to heat the room even when there's no fire going and we designed this so that the heat goes up here down and it goes out these benches and so it it warms the benches right using just all of that exhaust heat so it's pretty cool but back to cooking the reason why the temp cast masonry heater is so cool for me for cooking is because you see this really cool oven here this you make the fire and as soon as it starts to die out then this is about the temperature of a pizza oven and then it cools down a little bit and it's 350 to 400 degrees that you would bake bread or all kinds of different things and then as it cools a little bit more it becomes the temperature of a slow cooker so you could put food in there that you would normally be using in a crock pot you can just put it in there and and let it slow cook and so i am super grateful this is this is an amazing tool but it's not for everybody because everybody doesn't have the space or the financial resources to create something like this and temcast they have a do-it-yourself kit like you can buy just the center of it the core and do it yourself and save a lot of money but for those of you who do have the resources to be able to do something like this this is a great long-term solution now i'm not showing you cooking something in it right now because it's september and it's still way too warm where we live to have a fire and so you know this is great for the winter not so great for the summertime in fact not good at all for the summer time so when we're selecting the way that you cook right what your options are there's no one perfect option you need indoor you need outdoor and you need things like this that work great in the wintertime but not so good in the summer time 12 different ways to cook your food might seem like a lot but we have in no way touched on all of the different ways that you can cook your food so don't think that it's an exclusive list there are so many different ways and you've just got to choose the ones that are best for you we encourage you to have a way to cook indoors and a way to cook outdoors and then the rest of it's up to you and make sure that you're looking out for safety yes and now for the question of the day how are you gonna cook your food when the power's down comment below and thanks for being part of the solution

Channel: The Provident Prepper

Views: 141,562

Keywords: Emergency cooking, grid down cooking, power outage cooking, no power cooking, 30 days of preparedness

Id: LNMZYJUCQVo

Length: 26min 17sec (1577 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 05 2022