Survival Cooking

Recently we had several power outages reminding us to get prepared for the inevitable loss of electricity that occurs in the country. We have several propane lanterns and stoves for providing light and cooking food. Baking however poses a slightly different problem. We have two different methods we use to bake in our fireplace. The tried and true method for hundreds of years is the cast iron Dutch over (pictured on the left) and our other method is the high tech cardboard box covered with heavy duty aluminum foil better knows as a reflector oven.

Using the Dutch oven method, we placed the biscuits in a round pan and put them on a trivet in the Dutch oven. We then shoveled out some of the coals and placed the Dutch oven over the coals. Next we placed several scopes of hot coals on the top of lid. The lid has a rim that holds the coals in place.

 You can check the bread by lifting the lid with a tool made by a blacksmith. This tool is specially designed just for lifting the lid without getting burned. Making the biscuits with this method took about 32 minutes.

Here you see the results of using the reflector oven. We placed the open front of the box toward the fire. The heat can be controlled by moving the box closer or further away from the fire. We did elevate the pan on a trivet so heat could circulate underneath. We found it necessary to do this in 1993 when we had a huge snowstorm and was out of power for eight days.  By trial and error we found that elevating the pan created more even cooking. During the snowstorm we had biscuits every morning as well as homemade cakes. The reflector works especially well with a fireplace because the heat is reflected forward. If used at a campfire, it will probably take longer to cook.

Here are the two pans of biscuits we cooked. The reflector oven took a few minutes more because we did not have a large bed of coals. In bad weather our fireplace burns constantly and has a better bed of hot coals, thus reducing cooking time. You really cannot tell the difference between the two. Both methods did the job in almost the same time as an electric oven. So when bad weather hits, either method will keep you in bread, cakes, and pies.