Cooking Without Power: Stoves, Fuel and How Much to Store

Propane holds about 21,600 BTU per pound, which is why Coleman's 22,000 BTU two burner stove empties a 1 lb cylinder in about an hour with both burners on high. One burner on high uses about half a pound an hour.

Say your household cooks on one burner for an hour a day, which covers boiling water for two meals and a pot of rice or beans. That is about half a pound of propane a day: 7 lb for two weeks, about 15 lb for a month and about 45 lb for three months. That is a little over two 20 lb tanks for three months. Double it if you boil all your drinking water or cook dry beans from scratch every day.

Propane does not go bad in a sound tank, which makes it the best fuel to store. Store tanks outdoors, upright, away from the house and never in a basement or garage. Butane is handy and cheap, but Gas One rates its 8 oz cans at only 2 to 4 hours each, and butane struggles below freezing, so it is a summer and backup fuel. Gasoline for a generator goes stale in months even with stabilizer, so it is the worst fuel for a long crisis.

Most cooking fuel goes to heating water. Use a lid on every pot, which can cut fuel use sharply. Soak beans overnight to shorten cooking. Bring a pot to a boil, then wrap it in towels or a sleeping bag in an insulated box and let it finish cooking on retained heat, an old method called a haybox or thermal cooker. Rice and oats cook well this way with a few minutes of flame.

Plan meals around the fuel you have. Freeze-dried meals need only boiling water. Canned food needs nothing. Save long cooking like dried beans for days when you have wood or sun.

A rocket stove burns small sticks very efficiently, so yard trimmings, fallen branches and scrap lumber become cooking fuel. Keep the wood dry under cover, and never burn treated or painted wood. Like every flame, it goes outside.

A solar cooker uses no fuel at all. On a clear day a reflector cooker can bake, simmer and pasteurize water, though slowly, and it does nothing at night or under cloud. It is a fuel saver, not your only stove.

If you have a power station, an electric kettle at 1,500 W draws about 250 Wh to boil for 10 minutes, a real bite out of a 1 kWh battery. Small induction burners and kettles are fine on a large solar setup, but on a small battery, cook with fuel and save the battery for the fridge and lights.