How to Cook when the Power is Out

Thanks for joining the Prepared Bloggers as we work our way through 30 Days of Preparedness. September is National Preparedness Month so you will find everything you need to get your preparedness knowledge and skills into shape.

Take one post each day, learn as much as you can about the topic and make it a part of your preparedness plan.

I am going to share How to Cook without Power.

You will want back ups for your back ups when it comes to cooking in an emergency. Well, that is the case with any preps.

With these forms of cooking without power, make sure you have these supplies in your preps:

Matches
You can get these at the dollar store
Read how we waterproofed our own.

Propane
We have both the small bottles and large bbq size.

Charcoal
We wait until the end of summer and can sometimes find charcoal on clearance.
Costco’s price isn’t bad. We store them in the garage and haven’t had any problems.

Wood
We go up into the hills for our firewood. We also have 5 acres of wooded property so this won’t be an issue for us.

Now how to cook. These are my chosen methods.

Wood
We could use the top of the wood stove to make soup if we needed to.
This goes without saying, but if you are using wood, do it outside for obvious reasons.
You can make a small fire pit and camp in the backyard. This would be a good time to use that cast iron set you got on Amazon for around $60.

Propane
Your grill or a camp stove.
We don’t have a propane grill anymore, but we do have multiple camp stoves. We also have this dandy 3 burner Camp Chef stove. I canned pickles on it, outside, and it was wonderful! I see us using this a lot if we lose power for an extended period of time.

Charcoal
We use our charcoal grill often.
I love this handy gadget to help get the coals going. You can use a Volcano Stove with briquets as well.

Solar
Sun Oven is my go to for solar cooking.
Grey Wolf Survival is much better at teaching than I am. Go read his post on the Sun Oven. Are We Crazy or What shares how she cooked her corn on the cob and how she made Mexican Casserole.

This Pocket Rocket Stove was recommended by my oldest son. He uses it on his backpacking trips and when he is on fire. Portable and light, unlike everything else in this post. So, great for your BOB.

Have I missed anything? What would you add?

*UPDATED*

The Wonder Oven featured by My Food Storage Cookbook.
A “Wonder Oven is a heat retention cooker whose underlying mechanism lies in it’s two “bean bag” type pillows (filled with styrofoam beads) to hold whatever temperature steady for many hours.”

The insulating properties of the Wonder Oven means it can keep food at a high cooking temperature for hours, or inversely keeps cold foods cold and frozen foods frozen. This means that you use a fraction of the energy/fuel that you normally would’ve needed to cook or possibly save frozen items from being wasted in a power outage!

Thanks for joining the Prepared Bloggers as we work our way through 30 Days of Preparedness. September is National Preparedness Month so you will find everything you need to get your preparedness knowledge and skills into shape.

Take one post each day, learn as much as you can about the topic and make it a part of your preparedness plan.

Day 1 – Ready, Set, Get Prepared! Welcome to 30 Days of Preparedness from PreparednessMama
Day 2 – The Family Meeting Place and Escape from Laughingbear Adventures
Day 3 – I’m Safe! How to Communicate with Family in an Emergency from PreparednessMama
Day 4 – Does Your Family Have a Fire Escape Plan? from Home Ready Home
Day 5 – Preparedness For Pets from The Busy B Homemaker
Day 6 – The Escape Exercise from Laughingbear Adventures
Day 7 – It all Falls Apart Without Mental Preparedness from PreparednessMama
Day 8 – It’s a Matter of Emergency Kits from A Matter of Preparedness
Day 9 – Nine Great Emergency Light Sources Other Than Flashlights from Food Storage & Survival
Day 10 – Cooking Without Power from Mama Kautz
Day 11 – The Importance of a Shelter & Staying Warm and Dry from Trayer Wilderness
Day 12 – The Importance of Having The Right Tools In Your Pack from Trayer Wilderness
Day 13 – Practice Living Without Electricity from Food Storage Made Easy
Day 14 – How We Choose The Right Gear – (including the MultiFlame Tool) from Trayer Wilderness
Day 15 – Water Storage & Purification from The Busy B Homemaker
Day 16 – Food and Water for a 72 Hour “Go Bag” from Homestead Dreamer
Day 17 – 8 Foods You Should Be Storing and How from Melissa K Norris
Day 18 – Planning Your Pantry from The Organic Prepper
Day 19 – Stocking Up on Non-Food Items from Living in Rural Iowa
Day 20 – Dutch Oven Cooking: Off-Grid Before Off-Grid Was Cool from The Backyard Pioneer
Day 21 – Pressure Canning the Harvest from Timber Creek Farm
Day 22 – Personal Protection & Awareness from Living in Rural Iowa
Day 23 – KISS First Aid from Herbal Prepper
Day 24 – Mommy, I have to go Potty! from Mom With a Prep
Day 25 – Fire Starting 101: The Why and How of Lighting a Fire for Survival from Food Storage & Survival
Day 26 – How to Filter and Purify Water from Prepared Housewives
Day 27 – How To Make A Shelter from Trayer Wilderness
Day 28 – Put Your Preps to the Test with 24 Hours Unplugged from The Organic Prepper
Day 29 – What Is Char and Why You Should Have It To Start A Fire from Trayer Wilderness
Day 30 – How To Utilize Bushcraft Skills and Forage From The Wild from Trayer Wilderness