Cooking off the grid

I gotta agree with Ernie... sticks and fire is my backup cooking source... or charcoal...

Anything cooked over a wood based fire is much better than anything cooked over any kind of gas...

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Never let your fear decide your fate!
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Yeah I have to agree with Ernie and simi thats why I currently looking at used wood cook stoves. We currently use propane.

Larry

I am going to try to build one of these this year but I'm still fiddling with designs.

We could cook with wood year round here (or cowchips, which give a nice hot flame too) but when it's 110 degrees outside I don't want to use the woodstove in the house.

I've never noticed any difference in flavor while cooking in a pot or pan in food cooked over a wood fire or a gas stove. In a woodstove oven, yes..but not in a pot on the rangetop.

Not quoting as fact but I have read different places that homes with gas appliances with pilot lights can waste up to 1/3 of the gas keeping the pilot lights burning 24/7/365 .
In the same vein I have also read that a dripping faucet or faucets can waste an unbelievable amount of water . They also drip 24/7/365 . Same with a leaking flapper in a toilet tank . Hope the water statements wasn't too off topic .

It depends on ventilation and whether or not you cover the pot. In the winter here though, the smoke smell is in our clothes, our bedding, the walls, the air, and the food ... so we don't particularly notice it any stronger in our food than at other times.

My wood cookstove is piped to vent outside. I wouldn't want my house filled with smoke. I thought all wood cookstoves were.

Shut the gas off to it when not using it, how simple is that??

Pilots aren't hard to light at all. We have a propane range in the basement for power outages and heavy canning season, when we are not using it we shut the gas off at the line coming into it, but if it was on a small tank we would just shut the tank off at the tank valve!!

Ours pipes smoke outside too, but there's always a little smoke which escapes back into the house when you open the front to put more wood in. Or when you're starting a fire. It's not billowing thick smoke, but it's a scent that, over winter, tends to permeate everything. I can't smell it, but town people sometimes mention they can smell it on me. I tell them to enjoy it because it's better than what I usually smell like.

We live off-grid and have several cooking methods -- backups for backups for backups

We have an LP range fed by 40# bottles. NOTE: this is an LP gas stove, not an NLG gas stove... the two are not the same and you will need a burner & pressure conversion kit to turn one into another. We use the stovetop daily in summer, and the oven about 3 hours a week year-round. A 40# bottle lasts us about 3 months. This is a pilot-less range (saves a LOT of gas!) with a piezo electronic ignition powered by two 9v batteries and does NOT require wall power, batteries last as long as the 40# bottle.

We also have a 2-burner LP caterers stove and a high output LP burner that I use during canning season or whenever we need to have instant cooking outdoors where a firepit isn't an option. These take full-sized LP bottles, not the cute little disposable camping bottles. Both of these have thermo-coupled match-start burners.

We stovetop cook on our wood heat stove in the winter. We specifically got a heat stove with a flat top so we could cook on it. The cooking temp isn't as easy to control on a heat stove vs a cookstove, so it takes some getting used to. Heavy pots are recommended, cast iron is optimal. We also have a stovetop oven for low-to-mid temp baking/roasting... we have to fire the stove so hot to get the little oven up to bread heats that the cabin becomes a sauna.

We have a folding sterno stove and keep a case of 4-hr alcohol cans (chafing fuel) for it. We can boil a full kettle of water 5x daily for 3 days on one can of fuel. This is better for indoor use than kerosene. (ETA: we also keep one in each truck in winter with 2-3 cans of fuel since the fuel won't freeze or gel and the fuel lasts MUCH longer than the cutesy camping fuel tabs).

We have a cooker attachment for our Dietz Lantern and an Alpaca stove that both use K1 clear kerosene. These are excellent for outdoor use, or limited indoor use (crack a window!).

We have a wood-fired cinderblock rocket stove outside for canning season. We intend to build a wood-fired mud/brick oven to go with it so we can bake high-heat (bread, pizza etc) without using the LP gas range.

We also have a tiny 500w microwave just for quick reheats & rapid defrost... the small amount of electrical power ends up being more fuel efficient (gas in the generator) than sparking the LP gas stove. We use this more in the summer than in the winter - 1) we've got plenty of PV power with 24-hr sun in summer, 2) we don't want to build a fire in the woodstove in the summer, and 3) we've already got the woodstove running in the winter and can easily warm things up/keep things warm.

We also have a charcoal barbeque grill AND a wood-fired barbecue grill (with a flue diverter into our smokehouse) AND a cinderblock-ringed firepit with grate & swingarm for outdoor cooking.

We also have a solar oven for summer use, unfortunately it's too cold here in spring/fall for it to get the box hot enough for anything other than warming stuff up; and it's useless in winter since we don't have much sun.

And, finally, we have a tealight warmer, which works wonderfully for keeping a pot of tea/coffee/soup warm for a few hours and you can even boil water with 3 candles.

The gas range I bought has an electronic ignition....if the batteries died it could be lit manually.

Been thinking of buying one of these. They are very similar to Dakota fire pits.

http://www.deadwoodstove.com/

I like that one. Could it be classified as a rocket stove?

It probably is.

Same with our piezo electronic ignition, we can light both the stove and oven with a match if the 9v batteries aren't working. Our outdoor burners can be lit with match or bunsen striker.

The only (minor) drawback with the piezo start oven is that it cannot cycle on/off for temp adjustment, it can only raise/lower the gas output so it takes a little longer for temperature adjustments.

If the flame ever goes out during cooking/baking, we have to wait for the thermocouple to cool down before we can relight it, but that's a safety feature of all gas burners whether they are LP/NLG or pilot/electronic/glowbar.

I know that some government idjit thought that high-power glowbars in gas ovens were a necessary safety device... they ARE NOT. They do reduce onsite gas fuel consumption from a pilot oven -- but the usage is simply transferred laterally to whatever fuel is used to generate the electricity -- and there is a marginal reduction of onsite carbon monoxide over a continuous pilot (again, transfered laterally to the electric generation fuel).

A simple thermocouple will shut of the gas flow to the burner in the event that the flame is extinguished whether that flame is pilot or piezo electronic ignited. You get true fuel savings and absolute carbon monoxide reduction from a low-power electronic start... when the burner is not in use NOTHING is burning, anywhere.

And, NO, most of the glowbar ovens CANNOT be powered by an RE off-grid system... they will kill your average inverter and likely suck your batteries dry before your cookies are done. They draw huge amounts of power (500w+) the entire time the oven is on... a 1-2kw "suitcase" generator might be able to handle baking bread, but your solar panels won't unless you have a large array or a large battery bank (not just an emergency "backup" setup).

The oven on our sailboat is a thermocouple situation and it works great. Uses no power (the only power associated with the stove is the solenoid for the gas shut-off) and has made us many a wonderful dessert! We tend to grill meats but have made lots of muffins, brownies, cakes and stuff in the oven when it gets chilly.

Yup - if you're talking about off-grid or grid-down gas solutions, you definitely want to go with mechanical or ultra-low-power safety devices like thermocouples and solenoids. Think DC & (rechargable!) batteries that will fit in a pocket, not anything requiring a wall plug, inverter, or 40lb+ batteries.

Electric heating solutions off-grid or grid-down are only efficient when you have high-output, continuous, reliable RE generation year round or for the entire season it's needed... which usually limits it to hydro or geothermal turbine in most locations.

The one possible exception to this is a small (500w or less) microwave used only for quick (2 minutes or less) reheats.

Premier brand stoves have a pilot light on the oven that is lit by a glow bar when you turn the oven on. If the power is out, you can light the oven manually and it will operate as normal. That is the brand we chose.

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Vicker
If you're born to hang, you'll never drown.

This is the kind of setup I have in my kitchen. I cook like there's no tomorrow (I'm a Cajun, so that explains it, lol). Because I don't like to waste $$$$ cooking in an energy-hogging oven (electric/gas/propane), I have adapted very well to mostly range-top cooking, which is extremely economical.

To elaborate along those lines, here is an excerpt from my post in the “How to Save $50 Week” thread:



Once upon a time, I became painfully aware of just how much propane an oven can use. My gas cookstove is hooked to a line fed by a propane bottle outside of the house. A 5-gallon sized bottle holds approximately 20 pounds of propane, which will vanish in hurry if the oven is used (even sparingly).

You would be surprised to learn how much energy (propane, electric, etc.) it takes to bake the average dish or one loaf of bread in an oven. My recipe box is full of one-dish meals that can be prepared on the stovetop and saves a bunch of money, time and clean-up. If I must use the oven, I try to make several things at once.

Ever since that valuable lesson learned years ago, I have used my oven as little as possible (maybe two or three times a year). Delicious bread can be baked in a Dutch oven on top of a wood stove or flat-topped wood heater. (There are lots of tutorials and recipes on the internet.) Even a small toaster-oven is much cheaper to use than a full-sized oven.

Gauging by my previous bake-a-holic habits, I am guessing I save probably close to $15-20 week in propane.




To save even more $$, I disabled the pilot lights. I thought the so-called convenience of having perpetually burning flames 24/7 was stupidly wasteful. Lighting the range with a match is not a problem, and certainly worth the savings. A small bottle of propane lasts me a long time!

How to disable the pilot lights: http://www.wikihow.com/Safely-Turn-o...Your-Gas-Stove
http://www.shopyourway.com/questions/1131075

I have a vintage 1947 stove, and I don't have a fancy-pants electronic ignition stove to mess with, but in case you do, maybe this link will help? (If not, a little time with Google will pay off.)
http://www.appliance411.com/faq/gas_..._systems.shtml



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http://purecajunsunshine.blogspot.com/ (I'm unable to get back into blog to post...experiencing 'technical difficulties'...)