Build A Rocket Stove
Most of us use an electric range for cooking. Even those using propane stoves might be facing a shortage due to the rail strike I wrote about yesterday. Having a backup plan for cooking is as essential as heating our homes.
Although they are by no means my “go to” option, in fact they are pretty low down on my preferred list of cooking options, rocket stoves have a place in any preparedness plan.
Rocket stoves are quite efficient and use small sized wood such as sticks or kindling. They deliver almost perfect efficiency to the cooking surface. There is one disadvantage in that they require constant feeding. However, for short lived needs such as boiling water or quick frying, they do fit the bill quite nicely. Often, a quick boil of a small amount of water is just what we need for making hot beverages, reconstituting freeze dried meals, or disinfection of water for drinking or medical purposes.
You can but good quality rocket stoves online such as the Eco Zoom from Amazon, which at about 5.5kg, is quite portable, but why buy one when you can make it yourself for little to no money!
Good portable rocket stoves can be easily made at home using items you might already have on hand such as a couple of aluminum cans, or you could make a more permanent one with cinder blocks or bricks. Other building options using concrete and a five gallon bucket as a form are also good options.
The nuts and bolts of building a rocket stove are beyond the scope of this article. A simple google search would result in likely millions of hits on doing this using a variety of materials and methods, but building one will ensure you have a backup cooking source that is useful and efficient.