In most flats cooking depends on electricity, and even a gas hob often needs a spark from the socket to light. If the power stays off for longer, from the second day there is a question that matters more than hunger: what do you cook on without poisoning yourself? Because the danger of cooking without power is not cold food. It is carbon monoxide.
First, whether at all
The ten-day emergency food supply can, at a pinch, be eaten entirely cold: tins, bread, nuts, dried fruit. Nobody needs to be able to cook to get through ten days. A stove still makes sense, for three reasons that all involve water: it boils drinking water when the supply becomes unsafe (the water post explains when that is necessary), it makes baby food and tea, and it heats a soup that on the third dark evening does more for morale than any checklist. The stove is therefore above all a kettle. That changes what you should buy: not the biggest, but the safest and most economical.
The options compared
| Stove | Fuel | Indoors? | Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gas stove with screw-on cartridge | Butane-propane mix, threaded cartridge (EN 417) | Yes, with the window wide open and a CO detector | The standard. The cartridge can be unscrewed and stored, and a winter mix works in the cold. |
| Gas stove with pierceable cartridge | Butane, cartridge is pierced | Yes, same rules | Cheap and available everywhere. Downside: the cartridge stays in the stove until empty, and pure butane fails below five degrees. |
| Spirit stove | Methylated spirit | Yes, same rules | Quiet, robust, no technology to break. Slow, and the flame is almost invisible in daylight. |
| Solid fuel (Esbit) | Tablets | Only as a last resort | Tiny, for the rucksack. Too weak for a family, and it smells. |
| Charcoal grill, gas barbecue | Charcoal, propane bottle | Never. Not in the garage or the conservatory either. | Fine outdoors. Deadly indoors: in a closed room charcoal produces enough carbon monoxide within two hours to knock someone unconscious. |
| Chafing stand with gel fuel | Fuel gel | Yes | Keeps things warm, cooks nothing. Built for fondue, not for ten days. |
For a household it comes down to the gas stove with screw-on cartridge, with a spirit stove as backup if the budget allows. Anyone who already has a gas hob on bottled gas is done anyway: a match instead of the piezo igniter, and it runs.
Carbon monoxide: the rules that are not negotiable
Every flame produces carbon monoxide. A cleanly burning gas stove with a blue flame produces little, a charcoal grill a great deal, but little is not zero, and in a closed kitchen where someone cooks for twenty minutes it accumulates. The gas is colourless and odourless. The first signs are headache, nausea and dizziness, and in a crisis those are exactly the symptoms people blame on stress. So five rules apply, without exception:
- Window wide open for as long as the flame burns. Tilting it is not enough.
- Never as heating. A stove running for hours to warm the room is one of the most common causes of carbon monoxide poisoning during power cuts.
- Never in the bedroom, never unattended, never with children alone in the room.
- A CO detector in the room where you cook. A smoke alarm does not detect carbon monoxide. Look for the EN 50291 standard and a sensor rated for seven to ten years.
- Headache and nausea: flame off, get out, fresh air. Do not wait and see.
And an honest word at this point: I cannot recommend a CO detector from my own use, because I do not yet have one I stand behind. So it appears here without a link, but at the very top of my list, ahead of the second cartridge. A gas stove without a CO detector is half a purchase.
Calculating fuel: an example
The "3500 watts" on the stove only says how much gas it burns at most: at that output roughly 250 grams per hour. A 500-gram cartridge would therefore be empty after two hours at full flame. That sounds like little, but nobody cooks for two hours at full blast. The better calculation goes by litres:
- Bringing one litre of water from room temperature to the boil costs roughly 15 to 20 grams of gas on a camping stove with a lid on the pot. Without a lid, in wind or from a cold canister, considerably more.
- A 500-gram cartridge therefore boils about 25 to 30 litres of water.
- A household of four that prepares two warm meals and tea a day needs about four to six litres of boiling water daily, that is 80 to 120 grams of gas.
- For ten days that is around one kilogram: two to three 500-gram cartridges, the third as a reserve for wind, cold and mistakes.
The rule of thumb that follows: one 500-gram cartridge per two people per week, if you only cook what has to be cooked. Anyone who stocks foods that cook quickly (couscous, oats, instant noodles, instant mashed potato) instead of rice and wholegrain pasta halves the consumption. And a thermos flask, filled once in the morning, saves the third lighting of the day.
On storage: cartridges cool, dry and out of direct sun, not next to the heater or the hob, never above fifty degrees. A few cartridges in a cupboard are unproblematic, a pallet is not, and large propane bottles do not belong in a flat. Unopened screw cartridges keep for many years; the piezo igniter on the stove usually lasts less long than the cartridges, which is why a lighter sits next to it.
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What is actually in the cupboard here
Two things, for years, with what annoys me about them:
- A folding gas stove with piezo ignition. Mine is a camping stove in the 3500-watt class with a screw connection that folds to fit in one hand. The output is more than a kitchen needs. What counts: it stands stable with a two-litre pot and takes any EN 417 screw cartridge. What annoys me: on every stove in this class the piezo igniter is the first part to fail, which is why the lighter sits next to it.
- Cartridges with a winter mix. Mine are four 500-gram screw cartridges with an EN 417 thread. Winter mix means butane with propane and isobutane, which still vaporises in frost. Four is rather too many than too few for a household; by the calculation above they last two weeks with a reserve.
What is missing: the CO detector, as said, and a spirit stove as a second route. Both appear here without a link, because here there are no recommendations without my own use.
Cooking what is there
Without power the fridge is gone too, so on the first day the order is: fresh food first, then frozen, then tins. The post on the first twelve hours has the timings. When cooking itself: lid on, small pot, little water. Tins only need to get warm, not hot; that saves gas. One pot for everything saves washing-up water, and in a power cut washing-up water is drinking water.
In Keepilo the fuel goes into the inventory like the food: cartridges with quantity and storage place, the stove with a reminder for the yearly ignition test. The rationing planner works out meals per day for you, and whoever knows the meals knows the litres, and whoever knows the litres knows the cartridges. No account, no cloud; the calculation runs on the device even when the power is out.
Sources
- BBK: Guide to emergency preparedness, chapters on power outage and cooking (PDF, German)
- "CO macht K.O." initiative (German Fire Services Association and partners): protection against carbon monoxide (German)
- German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment: carbon monoxide (German)
- BBK: Preparing for a power outage (German)