Cooking

Cooking without power

Fuel choice, safe placement, carbon-monoxide discipline, and camp-stove practice are covered step by step in Heating & Cooking Safely. Read it before the first flame of any outage: cook outdoors or under serious ventilation, never bring a grill inside, and budget fuel like water. This page assumes those rules and handles the food itself.

The one-pot doctrine

Base ratios and times

Staple cooking ratios for one burner

Food	Water ratio	Covered simmer	Notes
White rice	2 : 1 by volume	15–18 min + 10 min rest off heat	Lid stays on the whole time; no peeking
Rolled oats	2 : 1	4–5 min, stirring	Salt early; doubles fine for next-day frying
Pasta	Enough to cover by ~2 in	8–12 min until tender	Reserve a cup of starchy water for sauce
Beans, soaked overnight	3 : 1 fresh water	60–90 min until tender	Discard soak water; unsoaked beans burn fuel budgets

The flavor ladder

• Salt first — it makes food taste more like itself; almost every “bland pot” is an unsalted pot.
• Fat second — oil, butter, or a spoonful of nut butter carries fat-soluble flavor and makes scarcity taste like plenty.
• Acid third — a splash of vinegar, citrus, or canned tomato wakes a flat pot faster than any spice on the shelf.
• Heat last — pepper flakes or chili, added small and late; heat can always be increased but never removed.

Stretching meals

• Beans plus rice is a complete protein. Grains lack lysine, beans lack methionine — eaten together across the day they cover each other’s gaps, which is why half the world runs on the pairing.
• Soup multiplies small things. Scraps of meat, tired vegetables, and bouillon feed six from what would garnish two; thicken with potato, oats, or breadcrumbs if it looks thin.
• Day-old bread is an ingredient, not waste — fry it crisp in fat, soak it into pudding, crumb it to coat or thicken.
• Fat stretches calories cheapest: oils carry dense energy per pound when work is heavy and appetites run hot.

One-pot beans and rice

A complete walk-through using only shelf items — the template most one-pot meals follow.

1. The night before: rinse 1 cup dried beans and soak in 4 cups water. No time? Boil 2 minutes, cover, and rest 1 hour instead.
2. Drain and refresh: discard the soak water, return beans to the pot with 3 cups fresh water, and simmer partly covered until nearly tender, 45–75 minutes — lowest flame, lid on, saves fuel.
3. Add the rice layer: 1 cup rice, 2 cups water, a teaspoon of salt, and a spoonful of oil or half a bouillon cube. Stir once.
4. Cover and cook at minimum heat 15–18 minutes until the water is gone; lifting the lid lets steam escape and ruins the timing.
5. Rest off heat 10 minutes, then fluff with a fork.
6. Finish on the ladder: taste for salt, add your acid — vinegar, pickled-pepper brine, or canned tomato — then a pinch of chili if wanted. Feeds 4–6; leftovers fry crisped for breakfast.

If going deeper: campfire cooking zones

Cook over coals, not flame. Flames scorch the outside raw-inside and coat pots in soot; glowing coals radiate even, controllable heat. Burn wood down 30–45 minutes to a coal bed, then rake it into zones: one pile for searing and frying, a single spread-out layer for roasting and simmering, and a bare edge for holding warm. Judge heat by hand count — hold your palm level about five inches above the coals and count seconds held comfortably: 2–3 is hot (searing), 4–5 medium (roasting), 6–8 low (simmering). A Dutch oven bakes with coals beneath plus roughly twice as many on its lid.