As part of any prepping store, we all need to have arrangements to cook food and boil water should the supplies of gas and/or electricity not be available. You ideally need a range of facilities to cover short term, long term and even permanent outages. Here’s what my prepping consists of have so far:

Gas Barbecue

The trusty BBQ. Loads of homes have them without ever considering prepping and should the gas and power go off, it will be most peoples’ first port of call to get something heated or cooked. Mine sits at the side of the house under a cover with a large and full Calor bottle attached. They’re not exactly fuel efficient but they get the job done.

 

Butane Camping Stoves

These are the standard camping stoves which take a butane cartridge inserted in one side.  Butane burns cleaner compared to propane and packs a bit more punch in capacity terms as it contains around 12% more energy than the equivalent propane so you can burn for longer with it. The canisters are a simple clip-on design making them very easy to change.

For flexibility I bought a single and a dual burner so that I can run either or both in combination if necessary. I also stocked up on twelve Butane gas cylinders for them.

 

Butane camping stove 2 burner           Butane camping stove 2 burner            Butane camping stove 1 burner           Butane canisters for camping stove

Butane/Propane Camping Stoves

Butane’s main disadvantage is that it will not work at as cold a temperature as propane. In order to burn, the liquid in the bottle has to be able to boil into a gas. For butane, this will happen at around -2C whereas for propane it is around -42C. Remember that this is the temperature of the gas not the ambient temperature, so it is more than possible that a butane cartridge could be a few degrees below ambient depending on storage etc, so it might not burn even though the ambient temperature is a few degrees above zero.

For this reason, I also stocked up on two Vango camping stoves and twelve Coleman 250 propane/butane mix canisters of gas for them. I added a Vango windshield to keep the wind off and help them burn better. I also bought a couple of the cheap Chinese equivalent stoves as backups and while they are fine and serviceable you can tell that the Vango’s are built better.

 

Vango compact gas stove      Vango Stove Windshield          Coleman C250 Gas Cartridge

Trangia Spirit Burner

As a really lightweight fall-back, I also have a Trangia spirit burner and a quantity of methylated spirit. You can also burn paraffin and even diesel in them but methylated spirit is cleaner, producing less soot and ash. I keep this in my BOB as the most lightweight of the options.

Trangia spirit burner

Bushbox Ultralight Outdoor Stove

To go with the Trangia I also have a Bushbox Ultralight outdoor stove with an added grill plate and ash plate which can use either the Trangia or kindling wood. This also stays in by BOB.

 

Bushbox Ultralight Stove

 

 Rocket Stove

I have mentioned rocket stoves in a recent post and have one of the 4-block variant made and ready to use in the garden. The fire they produce seems a lot more than you would expect from such a small amount of wood fuel.

 

4_block_rocket_stove

 

Fire

Finally of course, we all have the option to start a fire and cook food and heat water over it. Fire is a prepping subject on its own but for the purposes of this article, suffice to say I have a stock of kindling and logs as well as a number of fire strikers. Whilst it is right and necessary to have multiple ways of starting a fire, I recently spotter these cigarette lighters and for the price decided to buy a pack for storage. Nothing wrong with making things easy, at least to start with!

 

Cooking over a fire         Pack of lighters         Fire striker

 

Compact Camping Toaster

Whilst shopping in B&M Bargains one day in the summer I spotted this toaster to sit over a camping stove so I picked on up. It was only £2 so whether it is any good or not I can’t say yet but it seemed handy to have.

 

camping toaster

 

 Utensils

Of course, it’s OK having the means to heat food and water but you need a range of pans and utensils to do it with. Lightweight camping cook sets are inexpensive and will suit the small camping stoves well. I have a couple of different sets but there are loads to choose from.

 

Useful Shopping Links

I’ve provided some links here directly to the items I have bought for my prepping needs (or equivalents where I bought them elsewhere or on the high street)

 

As always, I’d welcome any suggestions for alternatives, improvements and so on.