Ask HN: What are some good food suff to have on hand when the power is out | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are some good food suff to have on hand when the power is out

20 pointstocs349 comments

Here I am in Central Texas and we are facing another, maybe, cold winter (This week is going to be a little unusually cold) and I would like to buy a few things to have on hand in the event that the power is off for a week again. The house here is all electric. We have a generator but it is mostly to keep refrigerator on (is this irony?) and run a little space heater for my elderly mother.

What sort of things can I get to make meals more interesting with maybe just hot water? Sandwiches, ramen noddles, oatmeal all come to mind but I am hoping for a few ideas that will seam more "We are going through a not cooking but eating well." phase and not "We are eating this way because the power is out." Any ideas?

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My recommendation on short notice would be to get a couple Mr. Buddy/Mr. Big Buddy heaters. You can get days of use out of one if you buy an adapter and a propane bottle for a gas grill. Says on the box they are indoor safe, just be careful where you place them because they get very hot. This will probably be more effective than a space heater run off a generator.

As for eating well get a camp stove. You can also run this off a big propane bottle with the same adapter used for the Mr. Buddy heater. You can use the camp stove to make side dishes. You'll also want an outdoor grill. Webber charcoal grills work great and you can do both hot and low and slow cooks with the right technique. Since you have a generator you could also consider an inexpensive pellet grill. This will require electricity, but not much. You can use this type of grill like an oven, and it is much easier to manage compared to charcoal. With this setup, you can make anything. Pizza, chicken, roast, and ribs all come to mine. I'm smoking a chuck roast on my pellet grill in the snow right now.

Thinking long term, I've been thinking of the same thing with the low temps and heavy snow we got in the PNW this week. My house is also all electric. I have a heat pump and electric aux furnace. Heat pump is slow start/solar ready and has been doing fine with temps in the teens. It only needs 30 amps to run. I looked into whole house generators and I'd need an enormous propane tank to run it for just a couple of days. Having the heat pump available year round is appealing. Has anyone gone with a smaller generator to just run their heat pump?

I think direct gas heaters would be more affective use of the fuel.

True, but a heatpump can heat and cool. Power outages can happen in the summer as well. During heatwaves the local power company actually cuts service to some to prevent wild fires. Losing power during a heat dome is what I'm thinking of.

My winter plan is to supplement heat with a fireplace insert, but I haven't gotten that far yet.

That's fair... If you have a secondary area using a mini split, might be a good option to huddle in over cooking an entire home... Not against a generator, just thinking efficiency.

I used to keep a portable AC that had a slot for window venting when I lived in a place in Phoenix where the power used to go out in the summer a few times each year.

If you're dealing with actual cold, you do definitely need some secondary source of heat, ideally one where the fuel can sit around for long periods of time (propane, wood stove, etc). Running a generator just to dump the electricity into a resistive heater is a bit poverty-living ridiculous, and indicates addressing heat should be the primary concern rather than worrying about boring food.

Whether portable propane heaters are considered "safe" to run indoors depends on what state/country you are in, so make of that what you will. Personally I'd rather not add the additional variable of carbon monoxide to what is already an emergency situation, but perhaps a few CO detectors would alleviate that concern.

Buy a home "cryovac" machine like food saver. Prepare cooked meals such as pasta sauce, stews, curry etc in meal size portions. Cryovac and put in the freezer. To use them put, still in their sealed bags in hot water and bring to the boil. You can do things like boiled, mashed rosti potatoes. Frozen beans, peas, broccoli etc can be portioned out into separate bags (either at use time or in advance). It doesn't matter what combination you choose to use, they are all in separate bags in the same pot of water. The range of meals is only open to your imagination.

A bowl with dolmas (stuffed grape leaves), marinated beans, Greek salad, olives, and even a precooked protein can be made entirely from canned and room temp ingredients.

If you can open the freezer, ceviche is a really nice food to enjoy with fresh veggies and requires no heat.

That said, I agree with the others here that a camp stove would be worthwhile if only to feel like you’re eating a true at-home dish rather than a backpacking meal. You can likely get away with this in your garage so long as you maintain good ventilation when the burner is on.

Peanut butter. It is dense in calories, tasty, great shelf life, and you can just eat spoonfuls of it directly from the container without cooking or additional ingredients if you want.

Two burner propane camp stoves work just about as well as a home range. The one pound propane cylinders are stupid expensive; so go to a propane supplier to get an adapter made up and buy a small cylinder. You can cook for a month or more on a single fill.

There are cautions about using camp stoves indoors but people have been surviving cooking on propane and methane (natural gas) stoves inside homes.

15-30 gallons of safe drinking water per person. Even if it's cold outside, of your water gets cut off for any reason you won't last long without it.

As others have mentioned, propane for heating and cooking... A few solar chargers and battery units and a generator.

Canned meat and vegetables. I usually buy packs of sardines at Costco and have some around. I also keep a few packs of jerky on hand

Seconding this. A person can survive weeks without food, but only a few days without water.

Perhaps not immediately useful but I would suggest buying an alcohol fueled camp stove in the future. A can of denatured alcohol (paint thinner) is compact and stable indefinitely. That will allow you to do most of the things you would do with a regular stove burner during a disaster. There are even devices sold for camping that will let you do limited baking over such a stove.

I purchased a chafing pan and Sterno fuel, such as would be used for catering. It was readily available at the local Smart & Final.

I've never opened or used it, unfortunately. My friend informs me that camp-stove cooking is a very, very slow process that could take hours to heat a meal. I really want to test this thing out before I have to use it in a crisis.

I suppose that I should maintain a stock of food that I can actually prepare with this system, because I really don't normally cook anything at home. I doubt I could make pasta, because that requires boiling. At this point, I would probably clear out the freezer, which currently contains a lot of sourdough bread, frozen fruits and veggies. I could probably get a few presentable meals out of that stuff.

> I really want to test this thing out before I have to use it in a crisis.

Definitely do, you can just have a no electricity/running water day at home or go camping to test if what you have is going to work or not. The worst thing would be to actually need your cooking gear and notice you're missing something silly like a lighter to turn it on.

There are camp stoves of varying sizes and heat outputs. I'd suggest doing some research (there are plenty of YouTube video demos, for example) before writing the idea off.

This. Google for Trangia. Great stuff, very light and compact.

I have one of those Korean / Japanese portable propane stoves[0]. They take disposable propane cylinders which are widely available in asian stores and last virtually forever. Much less fiddly than dealing with alcohol or other liquid-fueled stoves. Also you can use them to make nabe[1] and sukiyaki.

[0] Random Amazon listing, but something very similar to this: https://www.amazon.com/Iwatani-Cassette-grill-tatsujin-CB-TA...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabemono

You're in Texas I realize that it can get cold (chilly) but not really that cold. I wouldn't think you need to be resorting to MREs and other kind of food stuffs especially if you have a generator that can run your refrigerator for the time the power is out. You should be able to eat largely a normal diet unless you realize solely on a microwave and frozen dinners for your food. A propane grill means that you should be able to cook nearly everything you would in a kitchen. A charcoal or Wood grill would work as well just cook outside it's not that cold.

Through most of human history people cooked over fire.

Basically any canned food you normally have. You can eat it hot or cold. Want it to be interesting - get some granulated garlic, hot sauce, and toasted sesame oil (basically all the shelf stable spices etc that you already have).

There's dehydrated backpacking (or emergency) food that's pretty tasty once you boil them.

The emergency kind you can get in big tubs at Costco: https://www.costco.com/chef's-banquet-one-month-emergency-fo...

The backpacking stuff you can get many places, like REI or any outdoor store.

Some brands: https://mountainhouse.com/collections/camping-food-and-backp...

https://backpackerspantry.com/

There's also meal replacement powders like https://huel.com/products/huel-hot-savoury (these are more nutritionally balanced but not as tasty IMO)

If you have a food coop nearby, they'll usually have dehydrated soups in bulk too. Some, like split pea soup, can be very protein rich and calorie dense. You can also get dehydrated textured vegetable protein that tastes like nothing, but good in a true emergency I guess.

Dehydrated backpacker meals - These are lightweight, compact meals in a bag that you just add hot water to rehydrate. They come in lots of flavors like pasta primavera, chili, rice and chicken, etc. Canned soups/chili - Stock up on cans of soup, chili, beef stew, etc. You can eat these cold if needed, but they're better warmed up. Couscous - Couscous is very easy to make with just hot water. You can make it savory by adding in canned veggies, tuna, precooked chicken, or peanut butter for a Thai style couscous. Quinoa - Cook quinoa in hot water and mix in canned beans, corn, peppers to make it a filling meal. Steel cut oats - More hearty and filling than regular oats if you cook them in hot water overnight in a thermos or insulated container. Top with dried fruit, nuts, cinnamon. Rice and beans - Canned beans, minute rice or precooked rice and seasonings make a nutritious, filling meal. Ramen - Jazz up instant ramen by adding frozen mixed veggies once the water is hot. Scramble in some eggs too. Hot cereal - Packets of plain instant oatmeal, cream of wheat or grits are good to have on hand.

Is couscous not considered savory by default?

I don't know any metric by which wheat would be considered savoury.

ChatGPT says that couscous is generally considered to be savory.

I think perhaps you are conflating a savory flavor ala umami with the concept of savory dishes, i.e., non-sweet dishes.

Whilst I would agree that couscous isn't umami, I do consider it to be a savory dish by default as it isn't sweet in its unseasoned state.

Chatgpt doesn't have taste buds; it isn't a reliable authority on this or anything else. Couscous, like any other pasta, has little flavor and serves as a starchy vehicle for whatever flavors you choose. There are sweet preparations, there are savory preparations.

> ChatGPT says that couscous is generally considered to be savory.

You are asking a language model to tell you what taste wheat has, instead of using your own mouth, nose and eyes?

What on earth is it about AI hype that has people forgetting how to function as human beings?

This is the way. Typical Mountain House meal is 650 calories and requires 1.5 cups of boiling water. High in sodium but overall not too unhealthy. Costs about $8 per meal.

On the trail, maybe.

But when you are in your house, what advantage do they have over cooking from scratch with actual ingredients?

Pasta, beans, couscous, meat...can all be cooked the same way you're heating water for your dehydrated meal.

They're much easier to cook. Pour hot water in and wait a few min and that's it. If you were to make pasta, sauce, toppings, meat etc. individually using only boiling water, it'd take quite a while and probably not taste very good. But I guess if the power's out and you're not working or anything, time isn't really an issue?

Shrug. Just tradeoffs between cost, time, health, convenience, and taste, like most food.

I buy 5-lb bags of adzuki beans, mung beans, garbanzo beans, black beans, and lentils, soak about a half cup of each all together overnight, rinse twice a day thereafter for a few days, and microwave on 30% power for about ten minutes along with some beetroot, sweet potatoes, and/or whatever else I want to add. Sprouting the beans reduces cooking time significantly, thus saving you fuel- they cook up at about the same rate as the beets- and they're more digestible. Once your guts adjust to that much fiber (if they aren't already) you'll be just fine.

I add all sort of things for taste, and prefer diced apples, green olives, and raisins. Raw red cabbage, diced, into the mix right after it is done cooking softens the cabbage and adds sweetness. Cauliflower is sweet, too (as are beets, turnips, parsnips, carrots, yams, ...). Another upside is that bulk dry beans are not costly. Sprouted lentils can be eaten raw, but I've read to avoid eating raw sprouted white beans- I don't remember why.

That's my recommendation. Good luck over there.

The companies that produce the field rations for the armies also sell it for camping. It usually has everything needed and can be eaten cold(depends on the food), but it can be heated with esbit, spiritus or sterno. Only the german rations are for a full day, other NATO nations have only a meal in them.

A caveat: such rations are also extremely high in salt since they're intended for soldiers doing heavy physical exertion and because it helps with shelf life.

This is true, you will also be constipated and have an epic time on the toilet. MREs are designed for people in survival conditions and if you aren't, it'll be a fun ride. But they are the most calorie dense way to store ready to go food for an unknown situation, if that's what you need.

Those are bad for my mental health and bowel. Also, they are really expansive.

When you are at home, there is no reason to stock stuff whose main advantage is being lightweight.

Pasta with premade tomato sauce. If you have it around, the sauce sold in mason jars is usually better than the canned one. You also need a can of mushrooms to add some texture to your sauce.

Tuna cans and bread to make tuna sandwiches.

Some chocolate or other treats to keep the fun.

Not everyone knows it but you don't need to keep the water boiling when cooking pasta : https://lifehacker.com/you-don-t-need-to-boil-your-pasta-jus...

With a Weber grill and some charcoal, you can basically make anything.

Use it as a stovetop for normal cooking or get fancy and do some wok cooking.

A Dutch oven can be used for classic winter meals like stews and braises.

If you're able to boil water then that opens up a lot of possibilities. Pasta, rice, and potatoes are all options there. Throw in some canned meat/veggies/beans, oils, spices, whatever you got.

If you can cook water, you can already make basically anything which doesn't require a convection oven. Which is most dishes. A more interesting question would be: What if you don't have hot water?

Solar panels and many kWh of charged batteries.

Lithium-based batteries in particular have been dropping significantly in price over the past few years.

Biolite has some cool off-grid stuff you could check out. I have a CampStove 2+, which I occasionally use for cooking outdoors.

posted 3 times: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=tocs3

earlier, different user, posted the same thing 6 times: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whiplash451

..someone working up a new "spam to HN" script?

I am the poster that posted this a bunch of times. I kept getting a (I do not remember now exactly) "bad gateway" message when submitting the post. I was assuming it was not getting through. When I noticed I was able to delete one of the extra posts but not the others.

I am no sure what exactly I was doing wrong (Except I should check better if the post got through).

Edit: One typo above. Also, this question is less about bare survival and more about comfort for someone a little less able to cope. A lot of good and interesting suggestion. Thank you everyone.

Perhaps that explains the other multiple poster, too; thank you for the context.

That's weird! I've deleted the other posts now. Sorry, all.

There was a cloudflare error while posting which triggered lots of folks to repost lots of things. The error came up after the post was saved, though.

that explains observations better, thank you

Hmm do you know of other cases of this that I could look into?

> Hmm do you know of other cases of this that I could look into?

No clue. What happened was...

i had noticed that a surprising number of people were posting the same things 2-3 times and assumed it was due to some non-obvious error. Then i posted something (must have been /item?id=38989363) and, indeed, got a CloudFlare error. My instinct was to tap Back and Submit again but the number of repeated posts i'd noticed earlier tipped me off not to. Instead i visited /newest and there was my post, despite the CloudFlare error.

FWIW I saw the Cloudflare error a few times whilst attempting a comment, though it seems to not have created dupes:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39002310>

(Sort of an anti-example of the problem, people's experiences may have varied.)

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