Top survival cooking methods
You have to cook most types of foods in order to make them safe to eat, but in a survival situation, this could prove problematic if you don’t have the proper cooking equipment.
At least you may think it will be problematic. The truth is that there are a variety of ways you can safely cook food in a survival situation with minimal resources.
Here are the top four ways to cook food in a survival situation:
Boil it
The first method is perhaps the safest method: boil your food. So long as you have a metal cup, container, bowl, or pan of some kind, in addition to a fire and some clean water, boiling food is easily possible.
The easiest way to boil your food is to make a fire in a circle of rocks, you can use the rocks to hold your pan over the fire, then you get the heat from the flames and the rocks, when the fire dies down you can keep things warm on the rocks.
Get your water boiling for a few minutes to kill any nasties like bacteria that might be in the water and are too small to filter out.
At that point, just place your food in and wait until it cooks.
Fry it
The next method for cooking food is to fry it. Frying food has been done by people for thousands of years all across the world. The advantage it has over boiling is that you don’t need any cooking equipment.
Instead, all that you need is a clean flat rock. After making sure the rock is clean, just set the rock over a fire by propping it up with other rocks. In less than an hour, the rock will become extremely hot, and you can fry your food over the other side.
Roast it
The next method for cooking food in a survival situation is to roast it. This is perhaps the method that we’re the most familiar with because it’s something that we’ve all probably done at camping.
All you do is stab your food on the end of a stick and then hold it over a fire for it to cook. Simple enough, right?
A major drawback to this method, however, is that where you can leave your food alone for the other three methods on this list, with this method you have to continuously hold the food over the fire and you can’t tend to any of your other tasks. You also have to make sure that the flames don’t burn through the stick and cause your food to fall into the fire.
You also have to continuously turn around your food so that one side isn’t burnt and the other side isn’t undercooked.
Overall though, the roasting method is a very effective way to cook food if done properly. And since all you need is a fire and a stick, it’s arguably the safest method as well.
Cook it in an oven
Finally, the other method for cooking food is to cook it an oven. The only trick is you have to make your own oven.
Fortunately, constructing a survival oven is easier than you may think. You need to make a rock structure in a rectangular or square shape. The opening should face the fire, while the rest is closed off. If there are any holes in between your rocks, plug them up with dirt or sand.
Next, just set your food in the opening of the oven. You can then control the temperature of the fire by adding fuel or allowing it to die down, similar to how you would control the heat of an oven in your kitchen.
Conclusion
While there are certainly other methods for cooking food in a survival situation out there, these four will be the simplest and safest methods for you to use, and should, therefore, be the cooking techniques that you use first.
Remember that eating undercooked food can be dangerous so make sure it’s cooked al the way through. To avoid getting extremely sick, take the time to do things right.
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