The Preppers Cookbook: Essential Prepping Foods and Recipes to Deliciously Survive Any Disaster. Rockridge Press
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Prepping 101
• Chapter 2: Deciding How Much Food and Water You’ll Need
• Chapter 3: Water Storage and Purification
1
GETTING STARTED: FOOD PREPPING 101
As already discussed, you may not have access to modern amenities during an emergency, so you’re going to need food that’s been preserved in a manner that doesn’t depend on refrigeration or possibly even cooking. There are several different ways that you can do this, and this chapter previews some of the most popular and successful methods of food preparation and cooking featured throughout this book.
Alternative Cooking Methods
Many of the foods that you’re going to prepare are ready to eat, but if the emergency event extends beyond a day or two, you’ll get pretty tired of cold food. Also, if you’re a coffee drinker or a person who likes to wash in warm water, you’ll probably want to have a heat source handy that doesn’t require electricity. There are several options out there, and all of them have their ups and downs. It is best to have more than one cooking method available, just in case.
Open Wood Fires
Without a doubt, this is the most popular way to cook without power, especially if you need an alternative source of heat for more than a day or two. If you plan to cook over an open fire, you can either use a campfire-type pit or you can build a fire pit that already has racks, a flue, and whatever other accessories you’d like to build into it.
If you decide to cook with wood, you’ll need to have a plentiful stock of dried wood and a way to light it. Wet wood won’t burn and it will create an excessive amount of smoke that can affect the flavor of your food. Also, you can only use it outside, so plan to cook in all weather conditions if this is one of your methods.
Tools that you’ll need:
Wood
Rocks
Rack, tripod, or special cooking rack with legs
Iron skillets, a Dutch oven, iron or copper kettles, or any combination of these
Wooden or metal spoons and spatulas with longer handles
Pot holders or towels to move your cookware
Cast iron or other metal fire poker or wooden stick
Barbecue Grill
You can always use your barbecue grill to cook with. Stock up on charcoal or fuel, and as with an open fire, be prepared to cook in inclement weather. The downside here is that fuel supplies are limited to what you store, although you can always burn wood in it if you run out of charcoal or propane. If you opt to do this, though, make sure you remove the fuel tanks completely prior to building a wood or charcoal fire in your gas grill.
Supplies that you’ll need:
Fire starter if you’re using charcoal or wood
Fuel
Barbecue utensils
Skillets, Dutch ovens, pots, or a combination of these to cook foods that you can’t prepare on the racks
Fireplace or Wood-Burning Stove
The advantages to using your fireplace or wood-burning cookstove as an alternative cooking method are many. The biggest two advantages probably are that you can cook inside in any weather and that as long as you have wood, you have a fuel source. However, if it’s hot outside, your house is going to become really hot from the residual heat. You’ll need the same equipment that you’d need for cooking on a campfire.
Camp Stove
The advantage to using a camp stove is that it’s portable. If you need to leave in a hurry, you have a heat source that you can toss in the car or strap to your bug-out bag without adding much weight. The downsides are that you need fuel for it and you can’t use it indoors. Expect to get about an hour of heat from a 16.4-ounce fuel bottle.
Solar Oven
A solar oven consists of solar panels and a black pot that holds your food. The solar panels trap the heat and direct it to the pot. It doesn’t require any fuel other than the sun, but if it’s a cold or overcast day, it won’t be effective enough to cook with.
Rocket Stove
A rocket stove is a small, single-burner stove that uses wood to efficiently trap heat in a high-temperature combustion chamber. The smaller ones are portable, but you’ll need wood to fuel them.
Volcano Stove
These are wonderful gadgets to keep in your emergency kit because they’re light, portable, self-contained, and extremely efficient. You can use wood, charcoal, or propane, and many of them already have racks on them. The concept is that the heat is funneled directly to the food instead of being lost to the environment.
Stove in a Can
These amazing little tools are lightweight and easy to throw into your bug-out bag or emergency kit. They’re simply little heat cells that you place in the bottom of a can to convert it into a stove.
Alternative Food Sources
There are several different sources from which you can gather foodstuffs for your emergency food supply, but the most important thing to remember is that you need to rotate your emergency food supply. The best way to do that is to use your emergency supply as part of your usual food stores. You shouldn’t be stocking your pantry with foods that you wouldn’t eat anyway; make your emergency supply a larger version of what you already buy, with perhaps just a little more emphasis on canned proteins such as tuna and chicken.
One thing that you’ll need to remember, however, is the idea that sugar and excess calories are always bad. In an emergency situation, you’re going to need calorie-dense foods in order to meet your energy requirements, because you may not be eating three to five low-calorie meals per day. You may need to get all of your energy from one or two food bars.
The Value of Condiments
Imagine how much easier it would be to live on canned chicken for a week if you had some mayonnaise, canned gravy, mustard, teriyaki sauce, and maybe some pickle relish. Condiments can make all of the difference in the world and they’re cheap. They will also be great barter items because everybody is going to be sick of eating plain meat and vegetables. Seasonings will also make your life easier and will be valuable, so don’t forget them when you’re building your stockpile.
Commercially Preserved Foods
The idea of starting your supply may seem daunting, but it’s actually quite easy. Just buy a little bit extra each time that you go to the store. It doesn’t even have to be much. Start with buying two cans of chicken broth or tuna instead of one. It’s that easy; but of course, if you can buy more, then your supply would build faster.
Be careful when you buy commercially canned or boxed foods because they’re often full of salt and preservatives. Also, remember that you can’t go by the serving size listed on the