Previously, I’ve described hobo stoves and other alternative cooking arrangements. You can build a stove with a cat-food tin or a deconstructed pop can (or, if you’re into serious engineering with a multitool, sandpaper and ice — no, the directions don’t call for it, but it’s way easier to sand the paint off a bottle full of frozen water without caving it in, not to mention how much easier it is to cut with a hacksaw — a reinforced beer-bottle stove). If you’re hard-core on ultra-light weight try a pika stove.
I want to talk about a couple of things that may be worth having handy as winter closes down on us. They’re DIY projects, mostly; but they’re last-ditch backups, too. I’ve had a Swiss army surplus volcano stove around for about 20 years. They’re light, reliable, and they heat water in the bottle that comes with them really fast. The bottle holds about a half liter (leave room to handle the neck without spillage if you don’t want to get burned). No volcano stove? In a pinch, a chimney made from a 46-oz juice can will work. Cut out both ends. Punch holes at the bottom as for the hobo stove. Run the wires (remember cutting up coat hangers? Yep, that’s where the wires come from) through holes about 4’’ down from the top. Set the vessel of water to be heated on the wire grate, and put a heat source (one of those cat stoves is a good start — the surplus volcanoes come with trangia stoves) underneath. Watch carefully. Make sure you don’t overfill the vessel of water!
You can set one of those up on almost any fireproof surface. I like stoneware plates, myself.
Got a fireplace? use it! people’ve been cooking and heating that way for centuries.
The other way is the clay pot candle heater. Yeah, it seems counterintuitive for a cookery discussion. The one at that link is a wicked cool-looking variant, but you don’t have to go to those lengths. You can in fact put a couple of tea-light or votive candles under one 8’’ flower pot raised on a couple of metal jar lids above a clay or tableware saucer, and it’ll do the same good. You want it to pull air in at the bottom. Heat will take the air out the top. Cheaper and likelier to use stuff you have around already too. (Do I have to say LED candles won’t work for this? I probably do, since the election went the way it did.)
Alton Brown famously built a barbecue out of a couple of garden pots. Other folks have had difficulty replicating his feat:
But the basic thing is, what you want is a little heat in a small space — if you use two tealights, it’ll heat about a 6-foot square space about 4 feet high enough so that you don’t get frostbit toes (until you run out of candles, at least). I have not experimented with the jar candle or the oil candle.
You can also just buy the multi-wick emergency candle to cook over, but I wouldn’t count on that for heating much space. No funds, or reliant on a SNAP card? Butter a string and bury it in a can of Crisco. Remember we’re talking about what to do when you’re stuck without power, now. These are temporary measures, for use when there’s nothing else available. Light and heat from unexpected places….
Old tech is cheap and reliable and will work even without batteries. Oil lamps go back at least to the time of the Romans… you do have to know how to use it and pay attention, though. This stuff can be dangerous if you’re not smart. Remember ventilation.
Remember not to put your hands / feet directly on the actual heater (yeah, the metal gets HOT).
And a few things not to do:
Mix open flames with blankets / robes / tenting. Put the candle out before you go to sleep, please.
Charcoal indoors — don’t do it.
Yeah, you might get lucky, once. But you might not, too. Carbon monoxide is one of the side effects of charcoal indoors. That instant-light stuff also has really nasty fumes from the accelerants. People die pretty regularly from using charcoal grills to cook or heat during a power outage because carbon monoxide is a side effect of charcoal stoves. It’s also a side effect of deferred maintenance on furnaces, and you can also get a buildup of it from generators, so beware. What you can do is build a fire in the grill and use that to heat water for washing, bathing, cooking … or melt snow / ice to get water if the entire world has turned into a skating rink overnight, but keep the grill out on the porch. Heck, under the carport, if that’s out of the wind and weather. Just, please, not indoors. If you’re a camper and you have a Coleman or other brand of lantern and camp stove … just remember to be careful with ‘em, and ventilate the space you’re in. I’d want ‘em to sit on something metal and sturdy, just ‘cause tipped lanterns / camp stoves are not necessarily going to confine the burning fuel as well as upright ones.
If you do have a safe way to fire up a bbq, you can heat such exotic fare as chili or soup in a pan on the grate … and of course, a panful of hot water has a myriad of uses.
Washing up.
Making java.
Fixing oatmeal (or other hot cereal).