Cooking

If you have the skill to make bread at home you’ll reap benefits in cost, taste, and health. But, for most preppers the key benefit is having access to . . .

NOTE: This is a Special Guest Contribution from longtime BackdoorSurvival reader Donna!

In a grid down situation or even a winter snowstorm presenting a temporary 3-4 day power outage . . .

Rocket stoves are popular right now.
Like any type of camping gear you can spend a few dollars or hundreds. Before you go out and buy a propane gas camp . . .

Solar ovens are a popular cooking choice for those who have the right environmental conditions.
In this guide, I’ll discuss what to consider when buying a solar oven and . . .

If there is one thing I have learned over the years, it is that survivalist preppers know how to cook tasty meals from the ingredients in their pantry and garden. Because of that, I put out a call for pantry recipes that could be cobbled together using five ingredients or less. I asked and you came. In a break from our usual prepper fare, today I share with you a compilation of your recipes. What follows is a booklet that includes those recipes along with a hat tip to each submitter. How cool is that?

This is a cookbook for you to keep, to print, and to share. Enjoy!

Harnessing the sun to boil water and cook food is a dream come true for anyone but especially so for preppers and self-sufficiency types who want to reduce their dependence on the electrical grid and traditional sources of cooking fuel. The SolSource Solar Cooker does just that; it harnesses the sun and effortlessly becomes an all-in-one cooker, stove, and grill. Not only that, it is fun to use (actually a blast to use!) and the prepared food is super-delicious.

In this review, I will explain how the SolSource works, from installation through cleanup. In addition, One Earth Designs is giving a complete SolSource Solar Cooker bundle to one lucky ready. This is a $569 value. How cool is that?

When you think about being out in the woods, what do you envision as a staple meal? Do you see yourself sitting by the fire roasting some fresh venison on a spit? Maybe you live in an area with a great deal of waterfowl, and you can see yourself enjoying some roasted duck? What you imagine in your mind is probably in large part dictated by the environment you live in. Wherever you live, one food that should be on your list of wild food is freshly caught fish.

In this article, you will learn the basics of cooking, cleaning, and cooking fish in a survival situation.

As much as I enjoy reading and learning about living off-grid, nothing interests me more than off-grid cooking using a wood burning stove. Sure, there are rocket stoves, and all sorts of grills available for use outdoors but it is a big, beautiful, antique-style wood-burning stove sitting in the kitchen that captures my imagination.

Alas, at present I do not have the space to add a full-sized wood burning stove to my modern kitchen. That does not preclude my desire to learn as much as I can about off-grid cooking using wood and biomass.

Today I am thrilled to bring us one step closer to learning our way around an off-grid kitchen.

Having multiple ways to cook outdoors using biomass is a given in the prepper community. Couple that with being lightweight and portable, and you have an extra useful rocket stove solution for cooking off-grid. Read about the Solo Stove and the Solo Stove Pot 900 plus enter the giveaway to win them for free!

If you have fond memories of tuna casserole from the 50s, you are going to love this survival casserole. Taking inspiration from depression era cooking, survival casserole is created from pantry items plus leftover odds and ends just waiting to be put to good use. This is the ultimate comfort food!

When you think of homemade goodness and simple comforts, you think of bread. Learn how and why you should make your own bread. Recipe included!

Having all of the food in the world is not going to help you if, following an emergency, you have no way to cook it. Heck, even during a short . . .

For years I have coveted a real dough mixer.  You know the kind; a mixer with a huge dough hook so I could bake 4, 5, or even 6 loaves . . .

Old cooking methods use simple ingredients and a minimum amount of equipment. Today I walk down memory lane and explain why you should keep your old cookbooks or, if you don’t already have them, why you should scout some out on the cheap cheap at garage sales, thrift shops, and eBay.

It has been a little over a year since I confessed that the ongoing joke among my family and friends is that I talk about food all of the time . . .

In the pursuit of self-sufficiency, Prepper’s are always looking for innovative ways to cook food.  Part of that comes from our desire to eliminate our dependency on fossil . . .

Today I share the next author interview and giveaway in the current Backdoor Survival Spring 2014 Book Festival.  Today I welcome Tess Pennington, the author of The Prepper’s Cookbook . . .

One of the challenges during a power outage is cooking meals.  While there are many options, most require cooking outdoors using stove-type methods such as a rocket stove, BBQ . . .

The Backdoor Survival Book Festival continues. With so many great authors and great books, I simply had to bring in another entry this week.  Today Stacy Harris, the author of . . .

Some of the most popular freebie eBooks that I share on my Facebook page have to do with cooking on a budget or with limited supplies.  That may be because . . .

One of the dilemmas we all face from time to time is deciding when is it worth it to buy something instead of making it from scratch.  As preppers, the . . .

There comes a time when every prepper will say enough with all of the food and enough with all of the gear. Preparing a survival pantry, first aid kit and . . .

The concept of a meal in a pouch is not new. For years, military organizations have contracted to have “Meals Ready to Eat” (or MREs) made for distribution to hungry soldiers in the field when a mess kitchen was unavailable.

The evolution of military grade MREs from the 1960’s era to now has resulted in light weight pouches that contain a complete meal sealed into a tidy packet. A typical MRE contains a main course, side dish, bread, dessert, and flameless ration heater. There will also be a napkin, eating utensil and condiments such as salt and pepper. True U.S. military MREs are well marked with the designation “U.S. Government Property, Commercial Resale is Unlawful” although this is a misnomer since there are no laws that forbid the resale of MREs.

Make fresh, wholesome bread in an automatic bread machine, commonly referred to as an ABM. 14 proven tips for bread machine users. No apologies needed – bread machines make great bread!

When I first started prepping, I was befuddled about wheat. I just simply did not understand why the heck anyone would want to store wheat for survival purposes. After all, you don’t eat it in its raw form? Or do you? And what about cooking with it? Being a bit naïve at the time, I assumed that you had to turn the wheat berries into flour and then the flour in to baked goods. It sure sounded like a lot of work to me..

Today we talk about growing, grinding and cooking wheat.

Today I am going to share with you the results of testing the amazing little Solo Stove and offer up some suggestions for including such a stove and some related gear in your bug out bag.

Rocket stoves and outdoor grills are great for cooking in a pot or skillet when the power is down or non-existent following a disaster or a worst case SHTF situation where fuel is either flat-out unavailable or intolerably expensive.

How to build a mud oven for use now and when the SHTF.

More and more these days I find myself baking from scratch. There are the artisan breads, the automatic bread maker breads and more recently artisan pizza. All of these hand baked items are far superior to store bought – no sneaky ingredients or preservatives that I can not pronounce – plus, they cost pennies to make. (Actually, about 50 cents which is still far less than $4 or more for store bought in my my neck of the woods.)

And then there are sweet breads or loaves. Not quite cake but not quite bread either. These are the banana breads and zucchini breads that are favored as a breakfast treat or bed time snack.

Ready for something new from my kitchen? Sometimes I put together something that falls into the genre of “survival food”. The reasons may be many but for the most part, to qualify the food stuffs in question need to be something that is easily prepared using store food products and can be cooked indoors in a conventional manner or outdoors on a rocket stove, grill or campfire. Sometimes, I also “practice” making things from scratch to decrease my reliance on store bought products.

I have decided to name these little adventures of mine “The Bite of Survival”. Today I provide just a snippet – a taster so to speak.

Depression cooking is a skill that we all should learn. Come in to Clara’s kitchen to see how to eat well when food and money are scarce. You will become both motivated and charmed!