Best portable cooking setup?
 

I'm considering how I would cook, if there were no electricity or natural gas, i.e., no capability to use our indoor cooking appliances or range. Given that dried beans, rice, etc., need to boil for a long time, I'm looking for a setup that would allow a large pot to be suspended over a fire for an extended period.

To date, I haven't really found this equipment yet; e.g., my research has revealed plenty of lightweight camping setups that require small fuel canisters, but no sturdy, stable structure that would hold a large pot, and would allow a good-sized fire to be built underneath it.

Any suggestions? What does everyone here have as their backup cooking equipment plan?

Re: Best portable cooking setup?
 

Our house is totally electric. It has electric baseboard heat, an electric water heater, electric stove & cooktop. Luckily, we do have city water, and are not on a well which would be dependent on electricity. When we lost power for 10 days during Ike, I waited an hour or so to see if it would come back on (while listening to the local sheriff�s dept broadcasts on our scanner), then started dragging out the generator & hooking up the extension cords.

Food is near & dear to my heart, so being able to cook meals during an �event� was also something for which I�ve tried to prepare over the past few years. We cooked most of our meals on either the wok burner, or the camp stove.

I also had a Swedish alcohol stove that I used from time to time inside the house for heating up soup.

Swedish mil-surplus alcohol stove (great for heating a couple cups of water or soup) - get from eBay or Sportsman's Guide. Get denatured alcohol at the local Lowes or Home Depot.

Get a used Coleman 2 burner camp stove. I paid less than $20 for ours, and bought a couple years ago to have here "just in case." Ours is a model 425E, made in the early 1970s. It will run on unleaded gasoline, or Coleman fuel. If you use gasoline, it's best to have a spare Coleman "generator" (fuel vaporizing tube) on hand, since gas tends to gunk things up much faster than
Coleman fuel. You can even get a folding camp oven to use on your 2 burner Coleman stove. Yes, I have one, and it made yummy cheese biscuits during the power outage.

Dutch ovens are great for baking nice crusty bread inside my oven, but I've not tried ours yet over a camp fire. It should be handy, but may not be quite as convenient as some other methods at home.

We used a high power outdoor propane wok burner (Big Kahuna model) to cook many of our meals, and also heat water (2 gal at a time) for bathing. If you get one of these, have a spare propane bottle. We used less than a single bottle during our 10 day outage, but better safe than sorry.

We also made good use of our pressure cooker (Fagor Duo model). If fuel is in tight supply, pressure cookers allow you to cook food in much less time, using much less fuel. This is very handy with non-presoaked beans or barley, which would normally take quite a while in a normal stove-top cooking pot. Something else I�m looking at getting for �just in case� (OK, because I want one!) is a Thermal Cooker. A good example of a high quality model (from what I�ve read) is:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...\:B:SS:US:1123

These are almost like a cooking pot inside a big honkin� Thermos bottle. They are said to be excellent for cooking soups & stews. You bring the contents of the inner pot to a boil for a short while, and then seal it inside the outer vacuum insulated container. After a few hours, your meal is ready, still extremely hot.

If you're looking to cook in a Dutch oven or big pot over a campfire, you'll need a tripod of some sort. You could always rig one out of branches & a length of wire or chain, or you could build one out of electrical conduit & some minor hardware. For a neat idea, see:

http://www.deltablues.net/tripod.html

Re: Best portable cooking setup?
 

Levels of backup cooking methods should be planned depending on the situation. Having plenty of food stored is great, but you need a way to prepare it. Also need to have food stored that can be consumed without cooking. That is as important as having levels of cooking methods.

For typical power outages, fall back on the as grill w/ side burner. I�ve run it in the garage in winter weather. We keep six full propane tanks on hand. The RV also has a three burner stovetop and gas oven that we�ve used during outages. No grill? Would suggest getting one, or at least a propane cooker with two burners that runs on a 20 pound tank like this.
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=35559

Fire cooking is just plain fun. I do that in the summer just for the hell of it. Plan on having AT LEAST two cast iron skillets and one Dutch oven with a lid. Buy and store plenty of aluminum foil. That link above on making a portable campfire tripod rocks.

The tripod puts the most heat on the largest pot, and frees up space around the fire for other food cooking.

All those cans of stored food can go right in there. I like to double up foil and punch small holes for a lid - that way checking/stirring the food is easy and no finger cuts. Outdoor fire cooking can attract unwanted attention so this solution depends on the situation.

Third in the lineup is wood stove top cooking. Same cookware as open fire just not as fun. Easier to boil water. Also lower profile if the SHTF or you can�t leave the protection of the house for whatever reason.

Then we�d fall back on the Weber Q that uses the one pound tanks. Would put this right on top of the stove to vent. Need to make a propane bottle filler that allows to you fill the one pounders from the large tanks. You can get between 11-15 refills out of a 20 pound propane tank. Here�s a link for that
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=45989

The small single burner butane backpack stove burns super hot - great for heating water. Portable, yes. Not able to feed a family and expensive to run.

After that comes the stored canisters of gel fuel or sterno. These will warm canned food and boil a few cups of water in ten minutes but won�t cook raw food.

Having these methods planned also gives you flexibility. One to boil water, the other to cook meat or heat canned food.

Re: Best portable cooking setup?
 

Simple is as simple does. As a small boy,

I went along with extended Paeontological expeditions,

Which is to say several months

Into areas that, beyond being way the hell of of any road,

Were damn near off the map.

Anyway, that's another story.

What we used were simple grates welded up

Out of 1/2" mild steel rod, about 3' x 4'.

SOP was to dig a fire pit about a 18' deep,

Get a good fire going, then place grate over the pit.

The fire pit was longer than the 3' ends of the grate

By about a foot, so you could feed wood into it.

Two pits fed about 25 people comfortably.


scyth

Re: Best portable cooking setup?
 

We use a Coleman propane two burner camp stove. I keep a bunch of the 1lb bottles for it, and use that if the power ( our current stove is electric, going to propane on re-model) seems like just a short outage like a few hours......for longer term events, like storms, I have an adapter hose that hooks to a 20lb bottle directly to the stove.

Also have a two burner "base camp" propane stove, similar to the Harbor Freight one above ( mine came from Northern Tool ) that we often use in the garage with summer canning.....two large pressure cookers will fit on it easy.

I have a wood cook stove (Pioneer Maid from Lehman's of Ohio ) in storage waiting also for my kitchen re-model this summer that will move into the house "auxiliary" or "summer" kitchen I'm building on the back of the garage. That way we can cook with wood like they did in the old days, and keep the heat during the summer out of the house.

Keelhaul:

Google "Cowboy Cooking Equipment"

You'll find the stuff you're looking for.....

http://www.brainerd.net/~sport/FIRE1.jpg

http://www.three-peaks.net/cooking.htm#Equipment