When All Hell Breaks Loose (74 page)

The most common camping or backpacking stoves burn white gas or propane, although some burn alcohol (such as homemade stoves that can be created from an aluminum pop can) and even sticks and leaves. As described in the lighting chapter, white gas is more hazardous to store and not as neat as propane, as it can be easily spilled. Having a stove that runs on the same fuel as your alternative lighting options is a wise choice, be it white gas or propane canisters. Whatever fuel you choose, pack away extra for a rainy day in a safe location.

Even though newer camping and backpacking stoves have a warning on the package about using them indoors due to concerns about carbon monoxide poisoning, it's fine to have them in your kitchen to prepare food. If you live in a dollhouse covered with plastic wrap or your shelter or kitchen area is tight, crack a window when utilizing the stove to allow fresh air to enter the room and always use them on a stable, noncombustible surface. For God's sake, don't bring the stove into your home with the intention of using it to heat your house. Cooking, yes. Heating? Absolutely not!

Other Food Cooking Alternatives

Charcoal and Barbeque Grills

Kiss the cook! Dad will have a blast cooking up survival meals just like he does in the summertime with his famous hamburger cookouts. Most barbeque grills run on propane tanks and will last a surprising amount of time depending on what you cook. Many grills have a side burner perfect for heating up items in pots. I love my outdoor propane barbeque grill and use it mainly when I entertain company or for quickly cooking up rodents and rabbits without having to hassle with a fire pit.

Due to their shape and volume, spherical-shaped charcoal grills allow you to easily use almost anything that will burn as a fuel source long after the briquettes run out. They're basically a fire pit with wheels, ending the need for you to bend over your fire pit to cook your food or disinfect your water.
Caution!
Carbon monoxide fumes from charcoal briquettes have killed people who brought the grill inside for warmth during power outages, so use caution and common sense.
AT NO TIME should a charcoal briquette- fueled barbeque grill be brought into or near the house
. If necessary, reread about carbon monoxide poisoning on Chapter 12.

Mini-stoves with Fuel Tablets

Some cooking stoves are nothing more than a collapsible metal grate in which hexamine tablets are placed underneath to heat whatever. They're neat and will simmer water in your Sierra cup, but they could cause vexed family members to bludgeon you to death as they painfully wait for their tepid dinner, one cup at a time. They would be useful if you are forced to hit the road due to an evacuation.

Candles

Although slow and tedious, with patience, a simple candle flame can heat up many foods. Canned foods can be opened, the paper label peeled off if necessary, and the can set directly upon an improvised fireproof grate over a candle flame.

Woodstoves

Many woodstoves feature a flat area on top of the stove that's perfect as a cooking surface. The main drawback with using a woodstove to cook or heat food is that it's in your house. If your emergency happens in the middle of July, it's doubtful you'll fancy firing up the stove to heat the survival beans when it's 95 degrees F (35 degrees C) outside.

Fireplaces

Any Hollywood movie depicting medieval times has a shot of the family fireplace in which all meals are prepared and cooked. With a metal pot and grate, matches, firewood, and ingenuity, you'll quickly learn what works best if you choose to incorporate your home's fireplace as part of your kitchen cookery. Fire safety from neglected chimneys is of prime importance so reread the alternative heating section on Chapter 12.

Campfires

There are many, many variations of campfire lays in regard to how things are set up to cook food with fire. Radiant flame contains the most heat but the smoldering coals provide a more even heat without scorching. Until you get a cooking system down, your metal pot will drive you mad as it will either be too far from the heat source and will take forever to warm up or suffocate the fire of oxygen by being too close. Every year I watch my students from urban backgrounds attempt to cook their food over an open fire in the wilderness. It's comical and somewhat pathetic at first, but by dinner on the third night they're almost pros at getting the fire and pot to bend to their will for great results. If you're subjected to using an open campfire to cook your food, go slow, use common sense, and have patience with yourself and others. Things will only get better with practice. When building a fire outside, do it away from buildings and don't build it under a carport, as heat and sparks can easily start a house fire. Learn how to start a fire safely—don't use gasoline to get a wood or charcoal fire started.

Some camp cooking fires are built on the ground and others are raised up to eliminate bending over. Outdoor cooking options can be quite elaborate and include earth or rock ovens, pit baking, flat stone griddles, green stick grills, clay baking, and more. In each instance, their commonality is how to most effectively and efficiently get the heat to the food. The problem with an open fire, especially in the wind, is that only a small percentage of its heat reaches the container to cook the food. The rest is lost to the environment.

You can suspend a metal pot with a handle over fire or coals using sticks, dig a narrow trench that allows a fire underneath, or have the pot sit on rocks, among many other variations. Open fires have a way of trashing cook pots by turning them permanently black, so be warned. If you lack a noncombustible container or heavy-duty tinfoil, which is hard to imagine in an urban setting, food can be stone boiled in a variety of otherwise combustible containers. I routinely "stone boil" food such as clams, crayfish, beans, or corn in gourd pots using rocks that were heated in a fire. Indigenous peoples used tightly woven baskets, wooden containers, and animal parts to achieve the same means. Rocks gathered from low-lying areas, whether the stones were in water or not, should be heated up carefully, as the trapped water within the rock can rapidly expand and cause the rock to explode when heated.

Canned foods can be opened and put directly into a bed of coals or near the fire; occasionally stir the contents with a spoon or stick so it doesn't scorch. Food products such as ashcakes, described on Chapter 12, can be put directly onto the hot coals or skewered and suspended on sticks like you did with marshmallows and weenies when you were a kid. Whatever method you choose, there is no escaping the fact that the more you know about how fire works, the easier (and safer) it will be to cook your food using its power.

Be Fire Safe!

Make sure any fire is well contained. Strong winds can blow embers into dry grass or other fuels and have your neighborhood go up in smoke quickly. Many idiot campers put massive fuel on a tiny heat base and then fight over the sitting area that's not smoking like crazy. You don't need a huge white-man fire to cook your lentils. It wastes fuel, attracts attention, creates a terrible fire danger, and burns food and people, as it's too damn hot to get near to stir the beans.

I usually dig a rectangular trench about six inches deep to put my fires in and use the earth to build up a small embankment around the fire. This trench is dug in mineral earth, free from roots and other combustibles underground. Fire pits encircled with rocks turn into trash cans in the woods, but if you have to use rocks to contain your fire, do so. In an urban setting, bricks or concrete blocks work great. Some people use metal drums or charcoal grills to build their fires.

Be sure to properly extinguish any fire when you are through with it. All parts of the fire, including the black carbon, should be
cool to the touch
. Remember the fire triangle: heat, fuel, and oxygen. Remove any one of them and the fire goes out. The easiest way to put out your fire in low- or no-water situations is to burn very small fuelwood and let it burn out. In other words, think ahead about when you want the fire out and STOP ADDING FUEL!

The Dutch Oven

In the hands of experienced people, Dutch ovens are capable of cooking nearly anything, from stews to chocolate cakes. All they require is food, fuel, and someone who knows what they're doing. Many Dutch oven artists like the model with three or four metal legs and a lid with a rim around its circumference. These design features allow for the easy distribution of hot coals under and on top of the oven for heat to evenly penetrate and cook the meal inside.

Pressure Cookers

Pressure cookers make short work of hard-to-cook survival fare foods such as rice or beans, saving fuel, time, and water. When foods are stored for long periods of time, they will become slightly tougher and harder to cook, hence the virtues of the pressure cooker. There are many cheap ones on the market (some of which have exploded under the pressure!), and some of the best to be found are lingering on a back shelf at the thrift store. My grandmother could work magic with her pressure cooker and I fondly remember its "rattle and hiss" that inevitably meant something tasty would be on the table soon. Purchase a quality pressure cooker as you'll have it for life.

Solar Ovens

According to one source, the first formal solar cooker was developed in 1767 by Horace de Saussure, a Swiss naturalist. Since the sun has been drying people's food for thousands of years, my guess is that the sun was being used to cook food much earlier than this; we have yet to find the proof.

I absolutely adore my solar oven. I can cook almost anything and during the summer months my oven can get to temperatures of 375 degrees F (191 degrees C) in less than half an hour—all with the free power of the sun. How hot a solar cooker gets is primarily determined by the number and size of the reflectors used and, of course, the sun's intensity and its duration. High temperatures are not required for cooking and food will cook just fine as long as the oven reaches about 200 degrees F (90 degrees C). Foods containing water can't go above 212 degrees F (100 degrees C) at sea level anyway, unless a pressure cooker is used. High temperatures in cookbooks are for the sake of convenience and to achieve effects on food such as browning. Lower temperatures allow foods to cook slower, like in a crockpot, so people can do other things and come back to a hot meal. Higher oven temperatures cook food faster, in larger quantities, and give your oven a boost during partly cloudy or hazy days.