Should the grid be down then we will surely face the problem of how to cook our food. Almost all the methods used to prepare food nowadays need electricity. Those who own gas stoves may be unable to use them as some point too because the gas might cease flowing.

If you use propane to run your stove then you might be lucky; but this is only possible if the gas is available.

The ability to cook our food is very crucial though. At no point should we not cook our food. Cooking does a lot of important things to our foods like warming it, killing any unwanted bacteria that could be harmful to us in our food as well as having our food changed chemically. Killing bacteria is very vital especially when preparing meat.

The Details
Barbecue Grill. Apart from using the stove, the other very common form of cooking nowadays is by using a basic grill. It is normal to find out that people own one to occasionally cook chicken or steak.

The grills will perform well and are the best substitute to stoves should a grid-down situation arise. Some people even place pots on the top of the grill through they might get blackened.

It is possible to use most of these grills with wood or charcoal even though a majority of them use propane.

Fire Pit. It is very easy to cook well on a fire pit should you have one on your patio. All you will need is simply a metal grill to be put above the fire pit. These fire grills can be bought at the same location that you will buy your fire pit.

Cooking over a fire pit is similar to cooking over fire wood and it involves allowing the wood to completely burn down to coal. The coal will be hot but will most likely not burn the food placed on the grill.

Fireplace. Almost an entire century since the colonization of the United States, people commonly cooked in fireplaces. People would either place pots directly in the coals or suspend the pots above the fire using a frame made of metal.

Wood-Burning Stove. With time, the fireplace was replaced by the wood-burning stove as the common method of cooking. The top part of this is intended to be cooked on and is therefore flat.

For those who own a wood-burning stove and use them to warm their houses, you are lucky enough as you already have something you will use to cook should the grid be down.

Camp Stove. Camp stoves should be used in case there is no electricity. Camp stoves can be categorized into three types and is determined by the types of fuel used:
Wood burning can simply be defined as a portable box that allows you to put wood inside a cooking utensil on top.

Propane will most likely be a problem when you run out of other sources of fuel. Using propane with wood effectively is a problem too.

Dual fuel is the olden type of camp stoves that run on gasoline or some special fuel. Gasoline may not be readily available but getting some propane tanks won’t be that hard.

Solar Oven. If you do not want to heat up your house during summer then you should decide to use solar cooking. The only disadvantage with solar cooking is that it is somehow as slow as a Crockpot.

After practicing for some time though, you will come to realize that solar ovens can easily be used and are very effective. There are 3 different types of solar ovens:

Reflective box is very common. You could buy one commercially or even make yours. It is made up of a box which has flaps. Something reflective is then used to coat the entire inside surface to reflect sunlight on the pot when you place the pot inside the cooking oven. Putting the pot in oven bag will increase the pot’s efficiency.

Parabolic reflectors are normally used to make these ovens and the oven becomes better if it is big. Old large satellite TV antennas can be used to make these. Something reflective is used to coat the inner surface of the antenna. The pot will receive all the reflection once it is placed point of the receiver of the antenna.

Fresnel lens The most powerful solar oven that you could possibly make is the Fresnel lens. The Fresnel lens are basically magnifying lenses that are flat. They were normally used behind the old bigger screened TVs and one is capable of harvesting one from a discarded TV set and construct a frame for it. The focal length will be approximately two feet behind the lens.

Dutch oven. All along I have been talking about pots and how to cook meat. It is possible to use all the above mentioned methods to bake. Pioneers and colonists normally baked using the Dutch oven.

It simply involved taking the bread or pie and putting in inside the oven which was made using a cast iron then placing it in hot coals. More coals would then be used to cover up the cast iron. The contents then cooked because of the heat that surrounded them.

The Bottom Line
Having more than one alternative method for cooking is very important because you could rely on another method should the main one fail. Always try using your cooking method before a disaster strike so that you become ready.

No one would like to ruin their food when the supplies are limited, it would make sense to make mistakes when the food supply is abundant.