Recipe Hub — Preparedness Cooking
Food security is not just storage — it's the ability to turn what you have stored into meals your household will actually eat. This hub organizes all recipe and cooking content on Survipedia by situation, cooking capability, and complexity. Start with the method you have, then expand.
Every recipe page linked here uses shelf-stable or foraged ingredients, works on variable heat sources, and includes fuel-saving variations.
Recipe collections by situation
Pantry Meals
Your primary cooking scenario: a stove (camp, gas, or rocket), a stocked pantry, and no functioning refrigerator. Pantry meals are designed for daily rotation over a 14-day outage. Every recipe uses shelf-stable ingredients and one pot.
Includes: One-pot rice and beans (four flavor rotations), kettle stew, lentil soup, skillet flatbread, tuna pasta, six-can tortilla soup, spam fried rice, oat porridge, cowboy coffee, and haybox cooking technique.
Outdoor Cooking
You're cooking outside with minimal equipment — at a campsite, in a backyard after evacuation, or in the field. These recipes work with one pot, a knife, and available heat sources.
Includes: Bannock on a stick, hobo stew, ash cakes, rock boiling, mud-baked fish, pine needle tea, cattail pancakes, acorn flour, earth oven, and the Dakota hole fire.
Comfort Food and Classics
Morale matters. These recipes turn a preparedness pantry into meals worth looking forward to — desserts, historical rations, and satisfying mains that don't taste like emergency food.
Includes: No-bake peanut butter bars, skillet cinnamon donuts, rice pudding, shelf-stable flatbread pizza, black bean burgers, hardtack, and pemmican.
Cooking Without Power
The heat-source guide behind all of the above. Covers propane camp stoves, rocket stoves, Dutch oven coal cooking, solar ovens, and open fire — with fuel math, safety rules, and a 14-day fuel planning worksheet.
Five recipes everyone should know
These five preparations cover the range from emergency minimum to comfortable long-term. Learn them before you need them.
1. One-pot bean and rice
The caloric backbone of any shelf-stable diet. One cup (240 ml) dry rice and one cup (240 ml) dry beans together yield approximately 1,345 kcal and 54 g protein — half a day's needs in one pot. Add a bouillon cube, garlic powder, cumin, and black pepper. Cook 4 cups (950 ml) water with soaked beans first (25–30 minutes), add rice, simmer covered until dry (20 minutes).
Works on any heat source. See Pantry Meals for four seasoning rotations.
2. Basic hardtack
A cracker with a four-year shelf life that was standard military ration from the Civil War through World War II. Combine 2 cups (240 g) flour, 2 teaspoons (10 g) salt, and enough water (roughly 1/2 cup / 120 ml) to form a stiff dough. Roll to 1/4 inch (6 mm) thick, cut into 3×3 inch (7.5×7.5 cm) squares, punch a 4×4 grid of holes with a nail or skewer. Bake at 375°F (191°C) for 30 minutes per side — or in a Dutch oven using 14 coals (see Cooking Without Power for coal-counting method). Completely dried hardtack stores indefinitely in a sealed container.
3. Fire-cooked root vegetables
The simplest cooking technique: wrap whole, unpeeled potatoes, sweet potatoes, beets, or carrots in two layers of wet leaves or foil. Bury directly in embers at the edge of a fire. Potatoes (3–5 inches / 7–12 cm diameter) are fully cooked in 45–60 minutes; smaller roots in 20–30 minutes. Test with a skewer or sharpened stick — it should pass through with no resistance.
No pots, no equipment, no fuel other than what you're burning anyway. See Outdoor Cooking for expanded fire techniques.
4. Simple sauerkraut
Fermented cabbage requires zero heat or equipment beyond a jar and weight. Shred one medium cabbage (about 2 lbs / 900 g), massage with 1 tablespoon (18 g) non-iodized salt until liquid releases — about 10 minutes. Pack tightly into a clean quart (1 L) jar, pressing until cabbage is submerged under its own liquid. Weight it down with a small bag of saltwater or a smaller jar.
Cover with a cloth. At room temperature (65–75°F / 18–24°C), sauerkraut is ready in 7–14 days. It stores for months in a cool location and provides probiotics that preserve gut health during periods of limited food variety. See Fermenting for the full process and troubleshooting.
5. Rendered fat and lard
Fat is the most calorie-dense food you can store — 9 kcal per gram vs. 4 kcal per gram for carbohydrates and protein. Rendering (slowly melting) animal fat over low heat converts raw fat trimmings into stable cooking lard that stores at room temperature for 6–12 months and indefinitely in cold storage. Dice fat trimmings into 1/2 inch (12 mm) pieces. Cook over the lowest possible heat — 220–240°F (104–115°C) — for 2–4 hours, stirring occasionally, until solid white pieces (cracklings) float and the liquid turns golden-clear.
Strain through cheesecloth into sterilized jars. Seal immediately. Rendered lard, duck fat, and beef tallow are all shelf-stable cooking fats with practical calorie density for extended scenarios.
Preservation recipes (by technique)
Recipes for making food last are as important as recipes for cooking it. The following foundations cover the full preservation pipeline:
| Technique | Where to find recipes |
|---|---|
| Fermentation (sauerkraut, pickles, kvass, kimchi) | Fermenting |
| Smoking (fish, meat, jerky) | Smoking |
| Dehydrating (fruit leather, jerky, dried vegetables) | Dehydrating |
| Canning (water bath and pressure) | Canning |
| Salting and brining | Salting |
Emergency nutrition basics
During extended disruptions, caloric adequacy and micronutrient balance both matter. The most common deficits in a shelf-stable diet:
- Vitamin C: Lost when fresh produce is unavailable. Mitigate with: dried rose hips (1 tablespoon / 7 g = 400 mg), canned tomatoes, dried peppers, or pine needle tea (small amounts only).
- Fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K): Canned fish, cooking oils, and rendered animal fat cover most of this. Salmon and sardines in cans also provide vitamin D.
- Fiber: Beans and lentils are adequate; supplement with dried fruit when available.
- Protein: Bean and grain combinations provide complete amino acid profiles. See Nutrition for macro targets.
An active adult requires 2,000–2,500 kcal per day under moderate physical exertion. A family cooking primarily from a well-stocked pantry should verify caloric adequacy for the first week before rationing habits drift below maintenance levels. See Long-Term Storage for quantity planning and Pantry for stocking strategy.
Recipe planning tools
- 7-day rotation table: See the main recipe overview for a day-by-day breakfast/lunch/dinner rotation that prevents menu fatigue.
- Caloric math: 1 cup (240 ml) dry white rice = 675 kcal; 1 cup (240 ml) dry lentils = 680 kcal; 2 tablespoons peanut butter = 190 kcal.
- Fuel-saving toolkit: Haybox cooking, lid-always-on, pre-soaking, and batch cooking are covered in Cooking Without Power.
Field Note
The best time to practice these recipes is before you need them. A "no-grid cooking day" — turning off your kitchen appliances for one day and cooking everything from stored food on a camp stove — reveals gaps in your skill set, equipment, and pantry that you cannot discover by reading alone. Run one every six months and treat any meal that fails as free training.
Where to start
- Read Cooking Without Power to select and stock your heat source
- Cook one Pantry Meal this week using only shelf-stable ingredients
- Learn hardtack and bean and rice before anything else — they are the foundation
- Make one batch of sauerkraut so you understand fermentation timing before you need it
- Check Long-Term Storage to verify your pantry has the ingredients these recipes require
- Run a no-grid cooking day — kill the breaker and cook every meal from storage