How to cook without power: safe hot food in a power cut

Before anything else: never burn fuel indoors

The single most important thing on this page is a safety rule, not a recipe. Anything that burns fuel to make heat — a disposable barbecue, a charcoal or gas BBQ, a gas camping stove, a patio heater or a paraffin heater — gives off carbon monoxide (CO). CO is colourless, odourless and tasteless, so you cannot tell it is there. In an enclosed space it can reach fatal levels within minutes, and a barbecue left to cool keeps releasing it for hours. Never use any of these indoors.

This includes 'half-open' spaces that feel like outside: a garage, porch, conservatory, tent or caravan awning, even with a door, window or flap open. Ventilation does not make it safe. Early CO poisoning is easy to mistake for a bug or a hangover — a headache, dizziness, nausea, breathlessness or tiredness that eases when you step outside — while higher levels cause confusion and collapse. Get everyone into fresh air, and call 999 if someone has collapsed, or 111 if you are worried but no one is seriously ill.

A battery-powered CO alarm costs little and is worth having in any home with fuel-burning appliances such as a boiler, gas hob or open fire. Fit one and test it regularly — it is the only thing that will warn you of a gas you cannot see or smell.

What's safe to use — and where

With that rule fixed, safe hot food in a power cut comes down to three routes: cook outdoors, keep heat you made earlier, or skip heating altogether. This quick guide covers what to reach for and where each thing belongs.

Camping stove or barbecue (gas or charcoal): outdoors only, in open air, well clear of doors and windows — never in a tent, awning, garage or porch. Vacuum flask or wide-mouth food flask: use anywhere, filled before the cut or from a stove used outside. No-cook tinned and packet food: anywhere, with no flame and no risk. An electric kettle or hob run from a portable power station: indoors is fine because nothing burns, but check the wattage — a kettle or hob draws far more power than most portable units can supply, so a flask is usually the better bet.

No-cook meals that need no equipment at all

The honest answer to 'how do I cook without power' is often that you don't need to. A cold meal is completely safe, quick and needs no kit, which for a short outage is the sensible choice rather than lighting anything.

Useful store-cupboard options that need no heat: tinned beans, fish, meat and soup; crackers or oatcakes with cheese, pâté or peanut butter; tinned fruit, malt loaf, flapjacks, nuts and dried fruit; UHT or long-life milk for cereal; and ready-to-eat pouches of rice, lentils or beans. Even boil-in-the-bag meals and camping ration packs are edible cold at a push. Keeping a few days of these in the cupboard means a power cut barely changes your evening.

How to get something hot without cooking

If you want warmth in the meal, the simplest and safest method is a flask. At the first sign of a planned outage — or the moment the lights go — boil the kettle while you still have power and fill a good vacuum flask. It will hold near-boiling water for many hours: enough for tea, instant soup, pot noodles, porridge or a hot water bottle. A wide-mouth food flask does the same for stew or pasta made in advance.

Self-heating meal pouches, which warm themselves with a water-activated pack and no flame, are another safe indoor option if you keep a couple in reserve. If you do use a gas camping stove, carry it outside, cook in the open air, and bring the hot food back indoors — the cooking happens outside, the eating happens in.

Keeping the rest of your food safe

While the power is off, treat your fridge and freezer as sealed cold stores. The Food Standards Agency advises that a closed fridge stays cold enough for about four hours, and a full freezer for around 48 hours (about 24 hours if it is half full) — so keep the doors shut and resist checking.

If a long cut pushes your fridge to 8°C or above, eat the high-risk foods (cooked meat, dairy, ready meals) within four hours or throw them away. Food that has fully thawed should be cooked and eaten or discarded, not refrozen. Our companion guide walks through exactly what to keep, use and bin once the power returns.

Getting set up before the next one

None of this needs a survival cupboard. A vacuum flask, a few tins and a wind-up or battery torch cover most short cuts, and a gas camping stove kept strictly for outdoor use covers longer ones. It is also worth knowing you can call 105 free from anywhere in England, Scotland and Wales to report a power cut or check whether one is planned in your area.

If you or someone in your home relies on electricity for medical equipment, or would struggle in an outage, sign up to your energy network's free Priority Services Register for extra support and advance warning of planned work.