Cooking Equipment

If your home cooking appliances require electricity to operate, you will need to consider some alternative methods to cook your food or to boil water for purification.  You should also consider what will happen if you are forced to leave your home and potentially fend for yourself for a while.  Evacuation shelters may not always be available and when they are, they may not be your best option.  Having the ability to be self-sufficient is always preferable to being faced with a desperate situation with no means to survive.

Having ample food stored is great but, you will need to cook your food.  Even if you have stored foods that do not require cooking, having a hot meal or cup of hot coffee is a real morale booster.

If your home is equipped with an electric stove, you will probably not be able to use it with generator power without investing in a very large generator that consumes so much fuel that it is impartial for long-term disaster preparedness. And, if your cooking appliances are hooked to a natural gas system, you may be surprised when that service stops as well.  It is not uncommon for natural gas to continue to flow during short power outages but, the system requires power at its source to continue to flow and, when backup generators run out of fuel the natural gas stops.  Added to this is the fact that natural gas infrastructures are susceptible to damage from earthquakes and many other potential hazards.

Since it is not possible to predict the exact impact of a disaster, you should be prepared for several contingencies. If it’s a grid down scenario, you will want to have some alternative cooking methods for your home but, if you have to leave, you will need a more portable cook stove.  You will also want to address if you intend to cook outdoors during an emergency of if cooking indoors is a necessity.

Fuel

When developing your emergency cooking strategies, you should carefully consider the type of fuel you will need and plan to store adequate amounts.  Further, you should also consider the type of fuel you will be using for other emergency contingencies and make an effort to use devices that use a like fuel source to cut down on the need to store too many different types of fuel.

Portable Cook Stoves

Every prepper should have a portable cook stove.  Some of these options are small enough to go in your bug out bag and can even burn wood but you should consider a larger stove for situations that require you to camp out or even to use at home in an emergency.  Be couscous to use only indoor safe stoves if you do not intend to cook outside.

Outdoor Cooking

If you have a gas barbeque with a burner, you are in a good position to easily do your emergency cooking outside as long as conditions allow it.  If not, this may be a very good option to help satisfy your emergency cooking needs.  There are also some freestanding, multiple burner, stoves that can you allow you to do your outdoor cooking as well as to use during your canning procedures. 

Indoor Cooking

Not all cook stoves are suitable for indoor use because of the production of carbon monoxide.  Be sure to install a carbon monoxide alarm in your home.  If you are forced to use a portable cook stove indoors, be sure to provide adequate ventilation.  This means opening windows if necessary.  If you have a stove vented hood already installed in your home, you should place your portable stove on top of your current stove to allow carbon monoxide to rise and escape through the hood. The best option is to use a stove that is safe for indoor use.  Check the stove specifications and UL certification to determine if it is rated safe for indoor use.  The bottom line is that using camping stoves indoors is a risk so be aware of the risks and always provide adequate ventilation.  

If you want to go the extra mile, you can install a complete outdoor kitchen that you can use for entertaining in normal times or press into service as your home emergency cooking solution.

Wood Stoves

If you have a wood stove in your home for heat, you can certainly do some limited cooking on it.  If you are thinking about installing a wood stove for emergency heat, consider installing a wood cook stove that will provide heat as well as the ability to safely cook indoors.

Camp Cooking

Let us not forget about cooking over an open fire.  For those who are just starting out with prepping, this is a low-cost option to meeting the emergency cooking requirement.  Building a small firepit in the back yard and having a grill and camp cooking utensils can become an asset during an emergency.  You can also take your camp cooking utensils with you if you are forced to evacuate or maybe if you just want to go camping.