Emergency Cooking Equipment

So you’ve got your year of food storage, but if the power goes out, how are you going to cook all that food? Hopefully you’ve got an emergency cooking plan. Here are some thoughts on emergency cooking.

If you have no power, you will not be able to rely upon those handy electrical appliances such as can openers, blenders, food processors, and the like. Be sure to have manual equivalents, including a bottle opener.

Make sure to have tin foil on hand. It is great for wrapping food in and putting it on a campfire or a grill. It will not only protect the food but will help it cook quicker and more efficiently. That means you need less fuel to cook with and in an emergency situation you want to conserve as much fuel as possible to make it last as long as possible. Growing up I ate “tin foil dinners” on pretty much every campout.

Here is another great idea. Make sure that you get a bunch of plastic oven-proof cooking bags. You can use these to conserve water. You can put the food you want to warm in one of the cooking bags, then put the bag in a pot of boiling water. By doing this you keep the water clean and can re-use it, plus you don’t have a dirty pan you need to clean with water, especially if water is scarce.

You might want to keep on hand a set of old pots and pans for short-term emergency cooking situations so that you don’t ruin you good pots and pans cooking over a fire, etc. If it’s a long term end of the world situation, you probably won’t care about your pots and pans.

I would suggest getting some cast iron pans, a skillet, and dutch ovens. Cast iron is an excellent conductor of heat so your cooking will be more efficient. Remember more efficient cooking means using less fuel, and in an emergency situation, conserving fuel could mean the difference between life or death. Cast iron cookware heats evenly and consistently, it is inexpensive and will last a lifetime (actually several lifetimes) with proper care.

Cooking with cast iron is an old-fashioned way to cook fat free. When well seasoned, a cast iron pan will be stick resistant and require no additional oil. It can go on top of a stove, in the oven, on a grill, in the fire, wherever. Cast iron won't warp, and cleanup is a piece of cake. A well-seasoned cast iron pan will only get better with age, and will last pretty much forever.

Now that we’ve discussed what you can cook with, we should probably discuss what to cook on. The biggest thing to consider here is fuel. If you’re going to cook, you’re going to need a fuel source to produce the heat. You’re going to want to consider the space to store the fuel, as well as the safety in doing so.

The following is a list of options for cooking and the fuel needed.

• Wood Fire - Wood 
• Wood Stove - Wood 
• Gas Barbecue Grill - Propane 
• Charcoal Barbecue Grill - Charcoal 
• Camp Stove - Propane or White Gas (Coleman fuel) 
• Sterno Stove - Sterno 
• Kerosene Cooker - Kerosene 
• Solar Cooker - Sun