Lessons From Power Outage Cooking

During the recent blizzards here in the Mid-Atlantic, I learned some interesting things about cooking without electricity. Maybe my experiences can help you prepare for a future emergency in your life.

The first thing you need to know is that when the weather or other emergency arrives, it’s too late to prepare.

After potable water, batteries, battery operated radio, lanterns and protection from the elements, feeding yourself is kind of important.

If the weather emergency, such as a blizzard, limits your ability to leave the house, then cooking at home is your only option. With a warm weather disaster, you can always grill outside, however you will suffer some food loss due to spoilage. Managing portion size limits the problem of leftovers and additional spoilage. Winter weather emergencies minimize the worry of food spoilage – stow it in the snow – but force you to cook inside.

While some problems presented by a power outage seem obvious, others aren’t.

Obvious Observance #1 – No power means no cooking on an electric or induction cooktop. If you have gas as the stove energy source, you can light the burners with a match and cook as normal. If you do have an electric cooktop it might be wise to buy a Max Burton Butane burner. The Burton stove can be used indoors which is key to staying warm.

Obvious Observance #2 – No power, no microwave, no reheating.

A wok with a bamboo steamer works wonders and can be used to both cook and reheat.

Obvious Observance #3 – No lights means very poor visibility. Cooking by lantern is challenging and prepping food by lantern or candle light can be unsafe. We tried to prepare the more involved recipes for lunch when there was plenty of light and left reheated style cooking for dinner.

Obvious Observance #4 – No power means no burr grinder and possibly no coffee of any kind!! Trust me, a winter power outage is cold business and hot coffee or tea in the morning is vital. I had plenty of whole bean coffee but no way to grind it. My neighbor Bob used a hammer to “grind” the beans. You could use a heavy skillet for this task as well. We were saved by having a couple of cans of Illy medium grind coffee in the pantry…simple providence. Personally, I am going to buy a manual grinder for future power losses. The manual grinders are adjustable conical burr grinders powered by a hand crank.

Peugeot Hand Crank Coffee Mill

Alessi Coffee Grinder

Two other well made, very popular manual grinders are the Zassenhaus and Camano.

As noted above, you could also keep canned coffee or even Starbucks’ instant coffee Via in the pantry for emergencies. Drinking hot beverages helped immensely and in an emergency coffee snobs can’t be so choosy.

To make any type of coffee or tea you will need a non-electric kettle to boil the water. Hopefully you will only need the kettle for your coffee and tea but it might be handy to generate hot water for washing, depending on the type water heater you own.

And of course, you need a nice Bodum Coffee Press in which you can brew coffee or tea.

Obvious Observance #5 – Having canned goods and non-perishable foods stocked in your pantry help a great deal, as does a manual can or bottle opener. Keep in mind that public services like trash removal may not happen. This means you need to have a system to keep perishable waste away from your living area – remember your garbage disposal doesn’t work either. A drain screen keeps food from clogging the drain.

Summary
It definitely pays to think about how to survive BEFORE a crisis occurs and keep in mind all of these tools can be used even when we have electricity – the Max Burton stove, for example, could be used at parties or outdoors in the summer. It could be argued that becoming less dependent on electric appliances helps lower our daily power needs reducing our carbon footprint.

Be a good little scout and be prepared.

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