When the power is out, you will need a DIY Cooking Stove. And if SHTF some of these will come in incredibly handy to know, as they can be made out in the wilderness if required as well. Luckily for you, there are several true and tested methods to making a DIY Cooking Stove.
DIY Cooking Stove
The most common DIY Cooking Stove is the Rocket Stove, but there are a plethora of ways to cook, including with a basic Sterno can or with natural gas stoves. The reason that rocket stoves are so popular, is that you can use twigs and leaves to cook your food, so there’s no need to have stores of fuel, to eat.
Cinder Block Rocket Stove
Cinder block is a widely utilized substance in urban settings. With merely four cinder blocks and an optional grate for the cooking surface, you can effortlessly create a straightforward rocket stove.
Position three blocks horizontally, one on top of the other, and place the fourth block vertically on the side. The openings in the cinder blocks will align in an L-shaped configuration, providing the ideal structure for a DIY Cooking Stove.
Brick Rocket Stove
You can construct a rocket stove as effortlessly with bricks as with cinder blocks, though it will require slightly more materials. If you can gather around 24 bricks and some aluminum foil from your environment, you can create a functional rocket stove.
Position the bricks in a square layout, ensuring there’s a gap in the center that serves as your chimney, and utilize the foil to divide the upper and lower sections of the DIY Cooking Stove.
Coffee Can Rocket Stove
You can craft the traditional rocket stove model using a coffee can, various smaller cans, and an insulating material such as Plaster, JBWeld (we recommend the 7-minute quick set JB Weld — also good to keep some in your BOB), Clay, or even mud in a pinch. If you possess tools to cut through soft metal, you can create an impressive DIY cooking stove with just a few straightforward cuts.
Wood Rocket Stove
If you have the means to drill a hole into a log or beam, you can easily construct a basic log rocket stove by creating one vertical hole in the log (which will serve as the chimney). Another hole intersects it at a right angle, forming an L-shape. It’s just that straightforward!
Dirt Rocket Stove AKA Dakota Fire Hole
To establish the foundation for your dirt rocket stove, simply create two holes and a tunnel linking them. Start your fire in the larger hole while allowing the second hole to supply oxygen to your flame. Ensure that the air hole is dug upwind. Place rocks on top, which creates an opening like a grate, and you’ll have successfully crafted an DIY cooking stove. If you have a metal grate, feel free to use that, however do NOT use a plastic covered metal grate like from a refrigerator. The plastic is toxic, and bits of the plastic can get into your food making it poisonous, just like the fumes.
Concrete Rocket Stove
If you’re looking for a more robust option, you can create your own rocket stove using concrete. All you require is a bag of concrete mix, a 5-gallon bucket, and two sections of PVC pipe.
Make an opening in the bucket to accommodate the horizontal pipe, then angle the pipes together at a 45-degree direction. Fill the bucket with the concrete mixture and remove the mold once it has cured.
There may be other ways to make rocket stoves, but that’s a pretty exhaustive list for urban settings — with the Dirt Rocket Stove being able to be used in the wild too.
Alcohol Fuel Source
Next, we are going to look at some different ways to cook using alcohol as our fuel type, as a rocket stove uses twigs, leaves, or wood chips. For these types of DIY cookstoves, you are going to need access to either store bought liquor, denatured alcohol which is used as a fuel, ethanol, methanol, or isopropyl alcohol which is usually sold in the pharmacy area. In order to burn, alcohol needs to be at around a 40% or higher content. Wine will NOT work, nor will beer.
Warning: You may not be able to see the flames of alcohol burning. The more pure the source, the less likely you will see it, especially in high light areas (direct sunlight). This then becomes a problem if you can’t see the flame, as you could sustain a burn. It is better to move away from direct sunlight when working with this fuel, or to work in shaded areas.
Ethanol
It is highly unlikely that you will have ethanol when SHTF, however it will still be covered briefly. If you have access to Ethanol, understand that the flame will burn blue or cannot be seen in direct sunlight. Ethanol tend to be a high proof alcohol, here’s a link to 190 proof. It can be used to convert marijuana into an extract.
Isopropyl
I have some of this in my bathroom. It is good to clean oil off of our faces, wipe away bacteria and virus, or to ensure wounds are clean. It can also be used as a fuel. You can pickup a gallon of 99% isopropyl for about $30. However, for first aid, using 70% is just as effective and won’t irritate the wound as much. But as a fuel, the higher the percent, the cleaner the burn.
Liquor
For Liquor you’re going to want to find (when available) anything with about 80 proof or better (which is 40% alcohol) You might find some Bicardi 151 Run, Everclear (151 to 190 proof), or a Polish vodka called Spirytus which tops out at around 196 proof. Proof is the alcohol times 2. The history of the word “proof”, is interesting to lookup someday.
DIY Cooking Stove with Glass
Glass is an excellent material for constructing a DIY stove for cooking. Particularly effective for stoves that utilize alcohol, glass containers such as jars serve as splendid heat-resistant vessels for holding fuel.
Mason Jar Burner
You can build an impressive alcohol-burning stove using just a stick, sealant, wicks, copper tubing, and a Mason jar. This remarkable device burns similarly to an intensely hot candle and can be stacked together in a compact area. Assemble the materials precisely as demonstrated in the tutorial below.
Carbon Felt Candle
Another DIY Cooking Stove using glass jars, would be to use a variation of the unlimited heat candle. In the video below, you will see a method to make a candle out of coper tubing, which doesn’t use a wick, but rather Carbon Felt used as a wick inside copper tubing. This one uses denatured alcohol, but again, you can use any of the sources above you can find in a SHTF situation. This build is magnificent, as it can be used to heat your home, but also as a cooking candle — just change the “wick” size, to set different temperatures.
It might even be possible to make an oven with this “candle”, however using bricks or cinder blocks would probably be better for a build like this.
DIY Cooking Stove with Metal
Metal is probably the easiest item to find in SHTF situations. You can use almost any metal to create a DIY cooking stove, as long as it doesn’t have paint on it.
Sterno Stove
One of the easiest and most found substances people have in their homes, garages, or maybe storage unit, is a sterno can. Also known as buffet warmers. These generally have one of 2 substances in them, either an alcohol gel (2 hours of heat) or diethylene glycol which tends to burn hot, but can last up to 6 hours. They have various names, just look for the shape of the cans (right).
Slap a couple of bricks or 3+ stones to either side, then place your pot over it, without extinguishing the flame.
Can of tuna in oil
A can of tuna in oil, is an example of thinking outside the box. You will need to poke small holes around the outside of the lid. If you have easy open tuna, flip it over. We don’t want to risk opening it, as we use this as a fuel source. You can stick cardboard or cloth inside the holes to make a wick, which will suck the oil up, to be burned. You should be able to eat the tuna afterward as well.
Coffee Tin or Soup Cans
You can construct an excellent mini-stove using just two cans of different sizes, along with some tin snips and a perforating tool. With a few precise cuts, you’ll have overlapping cans capable of boiling water in no time.
WARNING: Do NOT use old paint cans to cook from. The paint may be laced with harmful chemicals or even lead, which is poisonous. Burning them could poison you with the fumes or even your food.
Breath Mint can
Nothing surpasses the compact functionality of the breath mint stove. Just locate an empty mint tin, such as Altoids, and place four screws, some mesh, and a lighter inside. Drill four holes for the screws, and you’ll have yourself a miniature stove.
Note: There are also variations that use alcohol or oil. In these cases, you will need a wicking material as well.
Wood DIY Cooking Stoves
Each of the following DIY cooking stoves are made from wood, which can use any of the fuels you have on hand, including the wood they are made from. Oil can enhance the burn, but alcohol will burn off quickly in these types of stoves — especially if the wood is wet.It’s not an ideal fuel source.
Torch Stove
Wrapping cloth around wood and securing it, then saturating with oil, can be used to make a torch. Old socks or strips of cloth are ideal for this. In an emergency, that torch could be used as a DIY cooking stove as well. Just lay the burning torch down between some rocks, stones, or bricks.
Swedish Candle
When other options are unavailable, a straightforward log or a substantial section of a beam from a fallen wooden structure can serve as a stove. If you come across such a log-shaped piece, use a saw to make vertical cuts along the grain until it’s divided into quarters or eighths, depending on the wood’s size. This forms your typical Swedish Candle, allowing you to place pots and other cookware on top with ease.
No-Saw Swedish Candle
If you lack the tools to cut your salvaged wood, you can still create a variant of the Swedish Candle by bundling smaller logs (or 2x4s) together and packing kindling in the center. Secure the bundle with metal wire or twine if you can’t find wire, to achieve the same effect as a standard Swedish Candle. This allows you to have a functional fire source without the need for cutting.
DIY Cooking Stoves in Theory
In theory, there are more ways than this to create DIY Cooking Stoves, it just depends on you finding a fuel source and utilizing it to cook your food. This is especially important when cooking up dehydrated foods as they need water and heat to rehydrate. In an emergency, you use what you have – including regular candles or even nuts like almonds and walnuts (they can also be used to provide light). Even just throwing a cooking grate over your campfire coals, can work. But these are meant to be used when logs or coals aren’t easy to find.
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