Do You Have Covert Cooking Skills?

Where there's smoke, there's fire. Everyone knows that, including looters and those who would rather steal than work.

At some point, you may find yourself needing to cook food covertly. Whether in your yard during a blackout, during a camping trip in an unfamiliar area, or out in the wild after bugging out.

But how can you quietly cook food outdoors without attracting attention from humans with bad intent or animals looking for their next meal? 

That's the purpose of today's communication. I want to share some ways for you to do exactly that so your outdoor cooking can be "looter-proof." 

Keep your spatula under the radar 

If you've done a significant amount of camping in the past, cooking outdoors will be nothing new for you. But perhaps you've never bothered to try to keep a low profile while doing this. 

During a blackout or bug-out situation, however, you'll want to stay under the radar. You never want to alert a looter to your location. 

The very thing that might send you bugging out – such as a natural disaster – is what will make some others desperate enough to want to steal your food and possibly do you bodily harm.

The key is making sure your outdoor cooking is done in a stealthy manner. There is an art to avoiding smoke, fire, and the smell of food you're cooking. And I want to make sure you're both able to do it and ready if you need to do it in a hurry.

7 tips for stealthy cooking

If you want to lessen the odds that your outdoor meal will be interrupted by uninvited guests, here's what I recommend: 

• Find a hidden spot away from main roads. Even though it will be inconvenient, make sure your cooking site is at least a 10- or 15-minute walk from the road. Because roads are easiest to navigate, most people will stick to them. Cooking your meal far from roads will increase your chances of not running into trouble. If you are worried about animals, try to cook your food away from your campsite and/or downwind of where they are located.

• Stick with pre-cooked meals. Emergency food, often featuring long shelf lives, will emit weaker smells than cooking fresh meat and some other foods will. Emergency food bars are a great option because they're tasty and need no prep. They require no cooking, water, or heat, and they're easy to throw in your bug-out bag.

• Douse your campfire. This is always important, but in this case it will help keep other people from noticing it and either finding you there or following you to your campsite. 

• Use sealed canisters for transporting food. In a perfect world, you'll consume all your cooked food at the cooking site. But you don't want to waste leftovers, so if you transport them from your campsite, use sealed canisters to hide smells rather than plastic baggies, which are less effective. 

• Clean your utensils. Smells will linger on knives, forks, spoons, and other utensils you use for cooking and eating, so wash them thoroughly before you leave your cooking site.

• Cook using a solar kettle to avoid building a fire and being spotted by troublemakers. Cooking food often requires boiling water, so make sure you have a solar-heated water device as part of your preparedness strategy. You'll have hot water without fuel, flames, or smoke just by using the power of the sun. You can also use a solar kettle to boil water for sterilization, sanitation, and the opportunity to make warm tea or coffee.

• Assume the worst. Always assume that unwanted visitors and/or animals will be arriving at your cooking site soon. That will keep you motivated to eat and clean in a timely fashion before returning to your campsite. It will also remind you to keep your head on a swivel and always be prepared. 

By taking some of these precautionary steps, you will reduce the odds that your eating will bring unwanted people or animals your way.