Practical Off-Grid Cooking For Blackouts And Storms

Apple Podcast Link https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-common-sense-practical-prepper/id1644780654 Please leave a review, thanks!

A hot meal can flip the mood of a hard day, especially when the lights are out and the weather is ugly. We’re diving into seven reliable ways to cook without electricity—what to use, when to use it, and how to stay safe while keeping a low profile. From the classic Coleman two-burner and simple butane stoves to propane grills, charcoal, and ultra-efficient rocket stoves, we break down the tradeoffs, fuel needs, and best use cases so you can make dinner happen under pressure.

We also explore a quiet, low-signature option many folks overlook: thermal cooking with a heated stone “rock pot.” It’s slow, discreet, and fuel-stingy—perfect when you want to avoid broadcasting your supplies. You’ll hear practical guidance on ventilation, carbon monoxide risks, and OPSEC tactics like cracking the garage door, using a fan, and choosing recipes that won’t send aromas down the street. We share why quick-boil systems like Jetboil shine for morale drinks and water treatment, how to stock extra butane and propane tanks without breaking the bank, and which cookware stands up best to off-grid heat sources.

By the end, you’ll have a simple plan to build a layered off-grid cooking kit: fast-boil for coffee and sterilization, a compact burner for daily meals, a grill or griddle for volume, and a thermal cooker to stretch fuel in long events. Pair those tools with smart ventilation and a little discretion, and you’ll keep your family fed, calm, and safer when storms or outages hit. If this helped you think through your next power outage, tap follow, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review—your note helps more people find practical prepping they can actually use.

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Chapters

• 0:09 Severe Weather And Quick Corrections
• 1:17 Listener Shoutouts And Reviews
• 2:34 Why Hot Meals Matter In Crisis
• 3:37 Stoves, Ventilation, And OPSEC Basics
• 4:46 Jetboil And Get-Home Bag Choices
• 6:00 Rock Pot Thermal Cooking Deep Dive
• 8:53 Butane, Charcoal, Propane, And Rocket Stoves
• 14:17 Safety Reminders And Review Request

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:09

The National Labor Service has issued a severe thunderstorm warning. Welcome. To the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, where prepping doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. Coming to you from a well-defended off-grid compound high in the mountains. Coming to you from his Florida room in Richmond, Virginia. Neither off-grid nor well-defended, unless you count as chickens and cats, here is your host, Keith.

SPEAKER_00: 0:41

Well, this is Keith with the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, January the 13th, 2026. A couple corrections in my last podcast, I mispronounced the British PM's last name. It's Starmer, S-T-A-R-M-E-R, I said Stamer. Also, I think I mentioned CO2, carbon dioxide, when it comes to venting generators and grills and that sort of thing. It's actually carbon monoxide. Again, not a science major, so accept my apology. Starmer is the last name of the PM, and it's carbon monoxide. I want to thank everybody who has shared the podcast, sent it to a friend, several new listeners, and a lot of new locations, a lot of new cities. So here are the four newest cities where we have listeners: Ponta Verde, Florida, Athens, Ohio, Mickleton, New Jersey, Walpole, Mass. W-A-L-P-O-L-E Mass. So the folks up in the Northeast, I know you have some crazy pronunciations. So W-A-L-P-O-L-E. Walpole, Woolpole. Hopefully I'm getting that close. I'm also going to leave a link for those of you who listen on Apple Podcasts. I'm going to leave a link in the show notes. And if you don't mind leaving a review, you click on the link and I think you scroll down a little bit. It shows the number of reviews. And if you don't mind, if you just got two minutes, if you don't mind writing a review, I would really appreciate it. There's been a couple of additional reviews come in over the last week or two. And it really does help the podcast get out there. It really does help the algorithm. The podcast has jumped up another 22 slots just in the last three days. A lot of new listeners, a few more reviews. And again, I really do appreciate everything that you guys are doing. This will be a relatively short podcast tonight. I want to talk about seven options that we have to cook our food when we don't have electricity. SHTF situation, no electricity, we still got to eat. And cold beans can only go so long. Warm food or hot food, a hot drink, does incredible for morale. It is a very big morale booster. Look at it this way: you've been out working in the yard, it's in the fall, it's in the winter, you're cold, you're wet, it's been snowing. What better thing to have to eat or drink as soon as you get inside and get on some dry clothes? Hot chocolate, hot tea, coffee, tomato soup, grilled cheese sandwich. How much better do you feel once you get a warm meal inside your body? So here are several different options, and there's a bunch of them. Here's seven different options that we have to cook our food during an SHTF situation. All right, we'll go through a couple, the obvious ones. So we got the old tried and true Coleman two-burner white gas camping stove. The classic green tank that you screw onto the little adapter, two burners, it's got the little windshield. If you want to use the Coleman stove in your garage, you're gonna need to ventilate. Just ventilate everything. Regardless of the method that you're using in your garage to cook the food, let's just go ahead and ventilate the garage as best we can. Now, with that said, depending on the situation, you need to worry a little bit about OPSEC or operational security. In an extended SHTF situation, am I gonna roll up my garage door all the way and roll out my blackstone grill to the very edge of the garage and throw on a bunch of steaks and a bunch of burgers? The answer is no. So if I need to be discreet, if I need to keep it on the down low, is that still a term on the down low? If I need to keep it on the down low, I'm gonna crack the garage door just a little bit, maybe have a fan circulate in the air. I don't need to lift the garage door all the way up, but I need to lift it up enough that I can get some air circulating through the garage. A jet boil flash. Now I have one of these and I used it a few times when I went hiking. These things are fantastic. So a jet boil flash, it's like a pocket propane jet. One flame, one pot, two minutes, and your water's boiling in the garage. Sure. Again, it's not a huge flame. There is some carbon monoxide, but it's such a small device. But again, to be on a safe side, depending on the size of the garage, I would open a window, a garage door, or your little garage door, your man door. I guess that's what it's called. The door that you use to walk into your garage from the yard. We'll call it a man door. Open that up a little bit, still maintain operational security, but to be on the safe side, go ahead and vent it. Those things are not very expensive. Now they do burn through the propane pretty quick, just like little canisters you screw on the bottom. Very lightweight, very portable. It certainly may be something you want to put into your get home bag, but not necessarily. My get home bag, granola bars, crackers. I don't really have any food that I need to cook or I need to boil water for and then dump the food in. So that's not very practical in my situation, but there's nothing wrong with having one of those in your gear closet or in your pantry in case you need it. The rock pot. Now, this is really cool. I ran across this at Prepper Camp 2025, just a few months ago, and there was a gentleman who was selling them. It is a crock pot that's non-electric, it's a standalone crock pot. And what you do, you take a stone, one of their stones that comes with it, obviously, and you heat it up in the fire, you get it nice and warm, and then you put it into the bottom of the crock pot. Then you toss your food in there: the potatoes, the carrots, the roast, the fish, the beans, whatever you're cooking, you seal it up in a little insulated jacket you could put on it. And several hours later, you open it up and boom, there's your dinner. Now, it takes a long time, but just think about this. You don't have to plug it in, doesn't use propane, doesn't use any other type of gas. It literally just uses the heat coming from that stone to cook your meal. So obviously, it's very well insulated. Now, I have not seen these on Amazon. You can go to rockpot.com and they have several different versions. They have a small version and I think a medium version or a large version. And they have little bundles. Oh, here's an extra rock. Oh, here's an extra plate. They throw in utensils. So there's several different options for you depending on how big of a meal that you want to cook. I think it's ingenious. So I have not seen them on Amazon. I have not seen any knockoffs, some Chinese knockoffs on Amazon. They're not on AliExpress. I haven't seen them on Timu yet. But if I had a dollar to bet, it's probably not going to be too long until we see some of the knockoffs. Now it is patented. Then again, a lot of stuff made in China is going to violate a lot of patents. So we'll see. I would assume that the rock pot guy will be back at Prepper Camp 2026. So I'm going to wait until August, August 14th, 15th, and 16th at the Tryon International in North Carolina. I'm going to wait till then because I'm sure they'll have like a prepper camp special, a show special, take$20 off,$50 off for the bundle, something to that effect. So I'm sure there'll be a show special and I'm going to take advantage of that. I'd like to try it. I've heard it works very, very well, but I want to give it a shot. I think it's really cool. Again, it's nice to have, and I'll cook with it from time to time just to test a few recipes out and I'll let you know how it goes. If any of y'all out there have used a rock pot, please email me and please let me know. I've not looked at any reviews. I haven't gone to YouTube. I'm sure there's plenty of YouTube videos about people that have used them. So I'll maybe do a little research between now and prepper camp, but I thought that was really cool. I was kind of in a rush that day at Prepper Camp. I was running between classes and I really didn't get a chance to talk to the guy. I kind of walked real slow, was listening to him give his little spiel to a bunch of other folks, and I had to go on with the rest of my day. So I will check it out and probably purchase one in Prepper Camp 2026. I think it's really cool. So a butane single burner stove. Now I have one of these, it's in my pantry. It has the gas canisters that you kind of screw into a little pocket and it makes a connection. My cans of gas are blue, but they're blue and red. It just depends on the manufacturer. It snaps in instant heat, instant flame. If we're going to use it in the garage, we're going to make sure we ventilate. The butane burns very hot and it uses that butane very fast. So have multiple canisters. Don't just have one or two. And then on day two or three, you're like, I'm out of butane. It goes through butane fast. But the stoves are not expensive. The butane is not expensive either. Nice and compact, nice and lightweight, very portable. So give that some consideration. The old charcoal grill. When I was growing up, Weber, when I was growing up, the Weber grills were fantastic. I assume Weber still makes them. I'm sure there's a hundred different variations by now. So we're just talking about charcoal grills. Weber, the little disposable grills, whatever you have. Again, if we're using those in the garage, be very, very careful. We're still going to ventilate because we don't want our steak or our burgers or our hot dogs tasting like carbon monoxide. Go ahead and vent the garage just to be safe. Propane grill, tried and true. Black stone, the big one, the little one, a hundred different propane grills out there, all sorts of blackstone knockoffs. I have a black stone and I love it. If you have one of these propane grills, make sure you have the larger canisters. Make sure you have multiple canisters. Because knowing me and my luck, the first time I want to use it in the spring, I go ahead and fire the thing up, not checking the gas level. And halfway through cooking the burgers and steaks, the grill cuts off. So have multiple bottles of propane available. I've also run my generator, my tri-fuel generator, off one of the larger propane tanks. I think that's a 20-pound. I always get these confused. I can't remember if propane tanks are by the gallon or by the pound. I think they're by the pound. So the regular old ones you can get at Home Depot and Lowe's, I think those are 20-pound containers, but I've probably got it backwards. You guys know what I'm talking about. Have multiple of those, at least two, maybe three. When one goes out, especially extended SHTF situation, you want to have multiples. You might be running multiple grills. You might want to run a tri-fuel generator. It might be something you want to barter with. So have multiples. Last time I went to Home Depot, I believe they charged me$18 or$19 to swap it out. And I think Blue Rhino, I think Blue Rhino here on the East Coast is a very popular brand. And it was$30 or$35 for a brand new one. If I just walked up to the machine or walked into the store and said, Hey, I need a new canister of propane, a new bottle of propane, a new tank of propane. So make sure you have multiple tanks of propane. Some people have the large 100 pounds slash gallon propane tank. You have one of those in your garage, you secure it against the wall with a chain. You don't want that thing falling and flying all over the place and turning into a missile. Those will last a long time. So again, depending on how much cooking you do, depending on how many people you have in your home for an SHTF situation, consider the larger tanks. Rocket stoves. Now I've seen these on YouTube. There are plenty of rocket stoves. There's the DIY rocket stoves. People are making them with cinder blocks, bricks, soda cans, big ones, little ones. I'm talking about the commercial ones EcoZoom, Solo. There's a million of them out there. These things are really neat. And looking at the design, it kind of makes sense. There's a little chute that's about at a 45 degree angle near the ground, and you just put in twigs and branches. And basically, it uses air. So the air is channeled through that little chamber with the fuel up and up into the stove itself. So kind of like a little chimney. You're taking the draft, you're taking the air through the rocket stove and out the top. Kind of like a chimney. If you have a fireplace, you can see the heat, you can see the smoke, you can see everything being drawn up into the chimney as opposed to the smoke coming out into your house. So the way they're designed, it like takes the air and it takes the air and forces it up through the little chimney, if you will, for the rocket stove, and then comes out the top. So it takes a very small amount of fuel and turns it into a very hot flame. I've seen people cook on top of these, they'll take their little griddle, they'll take a cast iron skillet, they'll put it on top, and it gets very, very hot. Now it's kind of difficult to regulate the heat. So you might be having to move your pan around, taking a few sticks out. But these things are really ingenious. I've seen people that are very good with welders do a little DIY thing. I don't weld, not very handy when it comes to that type of thing. So again, they're not that expensive. Look for them on sale, Facebook Marketplace. And again, it's something that I might look into in the future, but I'm definitely going to look into the rock pot come prepper camp. I think that's a very unique item. Heat up the rock, drop it in, throw your food in, seal it up, put the insulation jacket on it, come back several hours later, and there's your food. All right, folks, that's just seven different methods we can use to cook our food, a nice hot meal in an SHTF situation. We want to make sure we're ventilating. We don't want carbon monoxide killing us. Remember, safety is paramount in these situations. Don't forget your OPSEC, but safety's number one. All right, folks, thank you so much for listening. I'm gonna go ahead and try to put the Apple Podcast link at the top of the show notes. I would really appreciate if you could take just a few minutes and go ahead and leave me a review. I probably thank you guys too many times, but I really can't say it enough. I enjoy doing this. I'm not gonna get rich doing this. I think I've made$1.50 or$1.75 in ads, in ad revenue over the last four years, but I do this for fun. I enjoy doing this, I enjoy passing on some information. All right, folks, I will talk to you soon, and as always, please be careful out there. Take care of one another, and until next time.

SPEAKER_01: 15:15

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