5 Ways to Cook Outdoors

Here are five easy ways – solar ovens, rocket stoves, bread ovens, grills, and Dutch ovens – to prepare nutritious meals for your family, even in a power outage. Be prepared for any emergency when you set up systems to cook outdoors.

As the summer approaches, many of us move more and more of our cooking outdoors. Beyond the benefits of keeping heat out of the kitchen, establishing outdoor cooking systems also makes you more prepared. If your electric oven or electric-ignited gas stove loses power in a storm, you have backup cooking systems already in place to make warm, nourishing meals for your family. Below are five ways to cook outdoors without electricity.

Five Ways to Cook Outdoors

Solar Ovens

Solar ovens are fantastic tools for baking and cooking without any electricity. By utilizing reflective panels to harness the sun’s rays, solar ovens allow you to bake, roast, dehydrate and heat with great ease.

When cooking and baking in a Sun Oven brand solar oven, you can successfully bake countless dishes such as frittatas, roasted root vegetables, lasagna, braised rabbit, rice, blueberry muffins, bread, cookies, and cheesecake. You can also used a Sun Oven to dehydrate zucchini chips and sun-dried tomatoes and to cook down tomato sauce into paste and applesauce into butter. Essentially, any food that you can cook in a home oven, you can cook outdoors in your solar oven.

Rocket Stoves

Another fuel efficient way to cook without electricity is with rocket stoves.

Rocket stoves are hot burning stoves that use small sticks as fuel. The wood is burned in a small combustion chamber below a vertical chimney, and the design promotes near complete combustion.

Homestead Honey uses a StoveTec rocket stove in her outdoor kitchen. You can also make your own rocket stove with a few discarded cans! Rocket stoves are best for boiling and hot frying. In an emergency situation, you could utilize your rocket stove to boil water and cook hot and nourishing meals quickly.

Campfires and Dutch Ovens

Cooking over an open fire or baking in a Dutch oven is a marvelous way to cook, even when you’re not camping! Cook over an open fire in two ways: with a live, roaring fire (this works best for boiling large quantities of water like canning or for boiling down sap when making syrup) or over coals.

With either method, it works best to establish a three or four stone base, on which to put your pot or cast iron skillet. Coals can also be placed on a Dutch Oven for baking.

Outdoor Bread & Pizza Oven

One of Homestead Honey’s favorite homestead projects has been building an outdoor pizza oven. A outdoor oven is heated by building a fire in the hearth. Then either sweep the coals out or move the fire to the side or rear of the oven for live-fire cooking.

It’s best to prepare a number of other dishes to make full use of the heat of the oven. When the bread comes out of the oven, a meat roast or a tray of root vegetables goes in, followed by cookies or muffins and then, as the oven cools, a slow-cooked stew or soup. Then with just one firing, you are able to make enough food for several days. This makes the outdoor oven a very efficient way to cook outdoors.

Grills

An outdoor grill is another great cooking tool. Best of all, most people either have one or can purchase one very inexpensively via Craigslist or yard sales. Heat your grill with charcoal briquets or choose to use wood if you prefer the flavor that wood smoke imparts.

Beyond grilling meat for a barbecue, grills can be used for smoking and even for baking. Try baking this delicious rhubarb crisp on the grill for a summer favorite!

You can create outdoor cooking systems that will serve you well in the event of a power outage. You may find that you enjoy cooking outdoors so much that you set up an outdoor kitchen for the entire summer! Enjoy the freedom and ease that comes from knowing that you are able to provide healthy meals for your family outdoors.

Thanks for sharing!