Yesterday I posted an article titled "Cooking during a prolonged emergency". It attracted a number of comments that I thought were very useful. Click on that link to read them all. I'd like to highlight a couple of them here, and respond to them.
Carteach recommended pressure cookers as a useful tool. Yes, they are! They can convert tough, almost unusable meat and very fibrous vegetables into tender melt-in-your-mouth goodness better than almost anything. One potential difficulty is that your heat source for cooking may not be big enough or hot enough to get them to the high temperature they need. You'll have to figure that out for yourself. Also, if they're a larger model, they may not come up to temperature as quickly as you'd like, due to the sheer thermal inertia of their contents. Smaller pressure cookers avoid this problem to a great extent. (Michael warned that we should check the pressure gauge, and he's right. Overpressure can convert a pressure cooker into a pressure bomb. Not a good idea!)
Michael and an anonymous commenter both recommended strawbox, haybox or "Wonder Bag" cooking. I did this for years in the Third World, and found it a very useful technique. Basically, one heats one's food to cooking temperature, then transfers the saucepan or other cookware to a box or bag insulated with hay, straw, packing peanuts or a similar material. The insulation slows down the cooling process, allowing the food to cook fully in its own residual heat. It takes longer than conventional cooking, but achieves the same result. When fuel is scarce, this is a very valuable approach; and making your own haybox or "wonder bag" is very simple and low-cost. Recommended.
The same approach can be had in a higher-tech version by using a so-called "thermal cooker". One pre-heats the food in a conventional pot or pan, then transfers it to the thermal cooker to continue simmering in its own heat while one does other things. Some years ago I purchased two thermal cookers by Tayama, their 5-liter (about 5.3-quart) and 7-quart models. I find that for rice, stews, soups, etc., they do a great job. They aren't the only option, of course - see the first link in this paragraph for competing products. As we discussed recently, in an emergency situation, our time and energy are going to be in great demand for a lot of other tasks besides cooking; so thermal cookers (and haybox cooking in general) can free us for those things. Thermal cookers are also easier to use on the move than a haybox, in that you can carry them in a vehicle (or, for smaller models, even a backpack) while the food inside is still cooking (provided, of course, that the lids seal properly!). That may come in handy sometimes.
A couple of commenters recommended solar cooking. This can be a viable proposition, but it depends on the amount of sunlight you have available, and also to a certain extent on ambient temperature. If cloud cover is frequent in your area, solar cooking may or may not be possible, and certainly won't be dependable at a given time every day. Also, if it's the middle of winter and the air temperature where you're at is near or even below freezing, it's going to take a lot more heat to bring your food up to cooking point. That may or may not happen, depending on the size and efficiency of your solar reflector/accumulator. I've never relied on solar cooking, and for those reasons I'm reluctant to do so. However, your mileage may vary. (Also, this is a technique to use at a base camp or at home - it's not very portable, and can't be used to quickly prepare a meal while you're on the move.)
Larry Lambert and Old NFO mentioned that water is likely to be a real problem. Yes, it is, far more so than cooking. We covered that in some depth a few weeks ago, and also in an earlier article. Follow those links to read more about the issue.
Finally, a tip for whatever type of stove you use. It's very helpful to be able to elevate it (or, rather, the pots and pans on it) to normal cooking height (i.e. at the same height as a typical stove top). This saves your back from a great deal of repetitive bending over and straightening up, and is just plain convenient when handling cookware or stirring food. I recommend making or buying a heat-proof surface at the right height to support your chosen cooking method. This can be quite easily done: for example, in the cinder block rocket stove illustrated in our previous article, one can simply put a few more cinder blocks underneath it to form a raised base, or use cinder blocks to form a base for a more conventional stove or fireplace.
(Hint: using one of those folding plastic tables as a base is not a good idea. The plastic may buckle and melt under the heat of the stove set on it. How do I know this? Trust me. I know this. Also, don't think you can set a metal plate of some kind on top of the plastic table and rely on that to protect it. You see, metal conducts heat, particularly from some types of rocket stoves. How do I know this? Sigh . . . )
Thanks to everyone who contributed comments and insights. That's how we all learn to deal with such circumstances.
Peter
7 comments:
A note on pressure cookers from a long time canner. The pressure gauges are not reliable over the long term, for canning it is recommended they be checked every year and discarded if out of calibration. There is a simple answer to this problem,most name brands have a calibrated weight set that replaces the gauge and never goes out of whack.
For hard times with expensive fuel, the thinner walled ones heat up much faster. Presto as compared to All American for example.
Small pressure cookers are very popular in countries like India and can be bought fairly cheaply as imports. Be sure to get plenty of the sealing rings as they don't last a long time.
I think some serious consideration should be made in having two (2) types of stoves to cook on if using wood is involved. One design to remain fixed in place (more ease in cooking food), the other a take-down design which can be moved from camp to camp. Because eventually, fuel gathering will become harder and harder due to distance fuel is transported to your camp. Moving the camp to new location having fresh resources would be much easier than moving fuel from a long distance. The 2nd stove (take-down) then becomes the primary cooking instrument.
One tip gathered from TV show ALONE. As efforts to find food became more harder, the cooking fire was more for heat, water purification and company after dark. So a flat shallow skillet that has a broad heating surface would be very quick to accomplish the task.
Too - a consideration for ashtmatics. Sleeping in a shelter heated by burning wood might cause some extra irritation to your lungs. Staying in a shelter that is smoke filled will do that to a person.
Thank you for writing on this topic - some serious discussion is needed.
RE: raised cooking surface. I would not use any sort of plastic table - I've not seen any that are not way too flimsy, and it's an extremely poor idea to place something valuable (your food) or too hot to hold (a stove or cooking pot) on any surface that might give way under stress. - but if one uses pavers and bricks to build up the working height it is possible to use a sturdy, but combustible, surface.
Bottom layer is a paver - I use a 24" X 24" 1.5" thick concrete paver placed on a wood table - with some bricks on it, then another 24" square paver. Bricks are 8" long so two on each outside L and R edge leaves an inch or so between the end of each brick and the "top and bottom" edges of the paver with about 6" in between the bricks. 3 rows placed the same way with one in the middle of the paver - and put all the bricks lengthwise on their widest side, NOT on their narrowest edge - supports the upper paver on both sides and in the middle and provides air space between the pavers for cooling. There will be some radiated heat as the top paver heats up from the stove, so if it's too much, use 6 more bricks and a third paver. I've done exactly this with a charcoal-burning cast iron Lodge Sportsman's Grill on a Black & Decker Workmate for years.
Incidentally, RE: the concrete block rocket stove in yesterday's video - the paver-and-brick thing works as a "middle layer" but is not solid enough to reliably support the top concrete block. One bump and a paver edge slips off the bottom block and the top one - which has your food on it in a "too hot to grab" pot - falls over. Much better to carefully use a hammer and chisel to put a hole in the end face of the middle block. FYI, an old, rusty (and otherwise useless) carpenter's hand saw can saw cinder blocks to make a neater hole in the end. Pro Tip: don't cut out the full width of the block, leave 3/4" on the corners, it will make the cut block stronger and won't affect the efficiency of the fire.
And, FYI, those are not "concrete" blocks, they're "cinder blocks" made from coarse concrete particles and a cementous binder under tons of compressive pressure They will work for a while but the heat of a fire will weaken them, and weaken them very severely, over a month of so of daily use, so have plenty of spare blocks.
Spend a few dollars more to purchase a basket less pressure canner. Lid and pot machined to very tight tolerances. No gasket needed so a point of failure is eliminated.
You mention the smell of cooking foods.
Basic carbs: Rice, potatoes, corn-grits and so on do not produce nearly the aroma profile of bacon, frying chicken, grilled steaks and so on.
Just a thought. A bit of meat for flavor is fine. Meat as a food-group might not be a great thing in austere times.
I use the propane grill as a nice metal base to use my Kelly Kettle on, so I can boil water on twigs and small wood very conveniently. It can also support the ~15 Webber charcoal grill using wood, charcoal, coal, or any other small flammables at an easy height. Speaking of the KK, it works very well for boiling water, and meh for general cooking, though I can fry a couple of eggs while the coffee water comes up to a boil. Worth having, not sure if I'd want it to be my primary/only.
If I have to use a plastic table for anything hot, I raise it up with metal cookie-sheets turned over. We have many of them, so depending on the details, if I -must- use a plastic table, I can cross-stack three on each side of something (or a bunch straight up) to get clearance from the plastic.\
An old Coleman white-gas stove can also burn old diesel or gas-diesel mix if you wrap some copper wiring around the vaporization tube to aid in heat transfer.
You always want multiple ways to heat water or cook; the more, and the more fuel efficiently they work, the more options you have, and in a short-term problem the more you can help out a neighbor. 3 is two, 2 is one....
Stainless steel tongs, and skewers, are great to manipulate firewood in a small cookfire.
Practice, practice, practice. You don't want the first time you cook a steak over a wood fire to be in a power outage.
I've returned to a region I lived in in the 1990s, in the interregnum there was a historic ice-storm that left people in my area with no electricity and dwindling everything else for weeks.
Part of my initial strategy was "hey, there's that giant propane tank that should last at least a month for cooking"; but then:
• "oh, i've got piezo ignition, not a pilot!" It turns out the stove is a brick when unplugged. The flame-sense is electronic, so the gas gets shut off when flame OR electricity disappears. Should run on a battery-UPS, but:
• from the JoelsGulch blog I learned that the modern oven takes quite a bit of current to run the ignition glow thingie for the entire time the oven is running "new ovens light their burners with big power-hungry heating elements which were emphatically not designed for use with a tiny bank of lead-acid batteries" says Joel.
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