There are hundreds of ways to cook outdoors in a survival situation without fuel. There are only a few solar furnaces, clay ovens and open fire cooking; there are several more. Yet, what happens when there is a grid down and you have to live indoors? Anything from a hurricane or intense cold snap to a long-term disaster such as a pandemic or nuclear waste situation will cause you to cook indoors.
Most cooked foods, such as white rice and beans, require cooking for long-term storage. How do you feed your family while maintaining them safe indoors at the same time?
Related: 7 Primitive Cooking Methods You Still Need to Know Today
Propane Stove
Electric cookers are more popular these days, and in many apartment complexes, propane stoves are even prohibited. But if you happen to have a propane stove, you don’t need electricity for cooking.And propane stoves can be lit with an electronic igniter built in with a match or your trusty Zippo .
Many propane stoves in the home have a fume hood that helps to dissipate poisonous fumes or gases that are emitted during cooking. Lots of families don’t bother using them. Growing up, ours never worked, and of course our house was well ventilated enough that it barely mattered. In a major crisis, hoods certainly won’t be working anyway with a powered extractor fan.
Keep in mind that any cooker that burns fuel needs a good supply of air. The fuel will not burn properly if there is not enough oxygen in the air, and that releases deadly carbon monoxide gas. Always use stoves in an area where the ventilation is good. This can be a problem if there is a chance of failure, so when you’re planning fallout rooms or shelters make sure there’s a nice, properly filtered intake of air in a position that will allow you to cook safely.
Wood Stove or Fireplace
We often ignore that electricity is a relatively new development, and that our ancestors have cooked for centuries in fireplaces and on wood stoves. It’s just that, a Dutch oven – is just an oven. It can be used on a wood stove to bake cookies, trapping the heat within the cast iron and making an oven from just about any source of heat.
Although most people no longer have the equipment at hand to boil a stew hanging over their fireplace, turning a wire coat hanger into a skewer and cooking basic food over the flames is easy enough. If you have an old fireplace with a spit, grill or swing trivet-like cooking hardware, overhaul it and get it in working order. If you don’t have these things, look at installing them.
Wrapping food to the fireplace or wood stove in aluminum foil is also a good option.
Alcohol Stoves
Small camp stoves burning denatured alcohol can be used indoors. The denatured alcohol used in these stoves is clean burning and should be safe for indoor use. You can make your own stove out of a can of soda and a little imagination, or they are readily available from vendors of camp stoves.
Canned Heat (Sterno)
“Canned heat,” often used to heat food indoors on buffet tables, is sold under the brand name Sterno. Sterno cans contain an alcohol-based fuel which burns cleanly, and individual canisters can burn for up to two hours for continuous heating.
Because they are designed to burn mostly unattended for the whole duration of an event, they are a good option to simmer a small pot of stew or beans slowly.
Keep in mind that every canister is small, and can heat only a small pot. Use 4 or 5 of the heat cans if you have a bigger pot to get it up to temperature and leave the lid on to maintain heat.
The key benefits of canned heat are that it is made primarily for use indoors for heating and cooking food. They can be used safely just about anywhere, provided you have a solid surface which is not going to tip over.
They’re easy to store, compact and a perfect all-around indoor cooking solution.
Candles
Cooking over a candle is not that different from cooking over a dry heat canister with Sterno. What you need is the capacity to suspend the food above the source of heat. If you are trying to boil water, larger candles with multiple wicks may be a safer option.
Choose a candle, like all-natural beeswax candles, that burns relatively cleanly. Remove scented candles, which are highly plastic or colored. In addition to the wax fuel, the more “stuff” that is in a candle, the worse it will be for indoor air pollution while cooking in an emergency.
Hand Warmers
Inside MRE’s is a chemical heat packet that can be used to heat food. For example, an MRE may include a vacuum-sealed shelf-stable chicken breast and a heating pouch that uses a chemical reaction to warm the food. It works like snap-activated hand-hot packets.
While I wouldn’t feel safe to put warmer hand packets directly into my food, I’d wrap a can of spaghetti-O’s in hand warmers and have a reasonably hot meal in minutes.
Flame-less Stoves
One manufacturer, called Magic Cook, makes a flameless stove which uses a chemical reaction based on water to generate heat for cooking foods. To warm food, simply add water to the heat pack to produce continuous heat for 15 to 20 minutes. A major benefit of chemical stoves like this is that they do not emit carbon monoxide-but certain kinds do emit flammable hydrogen, so be cautious.
Once you have done cooking, the water has been absorbed by the heat pack and the reaction is complete. The heat pack can be disposed of in a normal household trash can.
It is handy to have this sort of flameless stove on hand for a few uses when the power is out, but since it needs costly specialized heat packs, it is not a good long-term option. That said, most emergencies are day-to-day emergencies, where a day or less of power is out.
Related: Easy Way to Prep For a Power Outage
Car Lighter Stoves
So while you may not have electricity in your house, your car has juice-filled battery. There’s one manufacturer that makes a small heating device that plugs into a car lighter cigarette. Bear in mind that this easily drains your car battery, so you shouldn’t turn on the engine when it’s in the garage.
Car lighter stoves are only used when you can actually power the engine. When you’re on the road during an emergency and for some reason need an “indoor” way to cook inside your vehicle, this is a good option.
