For a 72-hour kit, you can manage without cooking at all: tins, crispbread and nuts are fine cold. But hot water makes a long outage far easier, for tea, washing, a baby's bottle or a proper meal. Thirteen of the 24 national guides we compiled list a camping stove with fuel.
Which guides list one
France, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czechia, Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia and Luxembourg. That includes all four countries that plan for longer than 72 hours (Sweden, Estonia, Germany and Austria), where dry staples like rice and pasta only make sense if you can cook. The English translation of Romania's guide also mentions a stove, but the Romanian original does not, so we don't count it.
What a stove is for
- Boiling water, to drink it safely if the supply is contaminated. One minute at a rolling boil kills germs.
- Hot food and drinks, which matter for morale, especially in winter.
- Cooking dry staples: rice, pasta, oats, instant mash and lentils, which store well and cost little.
- Warming a baby's bottle, though ready-to-use infant milk needs no water at all.
Choosing a stove
A single-burner gas cartridge stove is the simplest option for a household. It is stable on a table, easy to light, and needs no assembly. Small backpacking stoves that screw onto a cartridge are lighter but less stable with a big pan.
The most important thing is the fuel: check which cartridge type your stove takes, and buy spares of exactly that type. Our pick, the Campingaz Camp'Bistro 3, uses CP 250 cartridges, which are sold separately.
How much fuel?
For two adults over three days, we suggest a stove and two cartridges. That covers hot drinks and simple meals. If you plan for a week or more, or you will boil all your drinking water, add cartridges in proportion. Burn times vary by stove, pan, wind and temperature, so do a test: cook a typical meal and see how much a cartridge gives you.
To make fuel go further:
- Always use a lid.
- Heat only the water you need.
- Soak pasta, lentils or oats in cold water first to shorten cooking.
- Cook one-pot meals, and keep a flask for hot water.
Safety: ventilation and carbon monoxide
Burning gas can produce carbon monoxide, which you can't see or smell. Use a camping stove outdoors, or with good ventilation: by an open window, never in a closed room, tent or car. Never use a barbecue indoors, whether charcoal or gas.
Germany and Poland recommend a carbon monoxide alarm in homes that heat or cook with gas. If you plan to cook indoors during an outage, one is worth having. Symptoms of CO poisoning include headache, dizziness and nausea; if anyone feels them, get into fresh air at once.
Fire safety
Open flames raise the risk of fire just when help is slowest to arrive. Nine guides list a fire extinguisher or fire blanket.
- Cook on a stable, heat-proof surface, away from curtains and paper.
- Never leave a lit stove unattended, and keep children and pets back.
- Change cartridges outdoors, away from any flame, once the stove has cooled.
- Store spare cartridges somewhere cool, away from heat and direct sun.
Practise before you need it
Light the stove at least once before an emergency, ideally outdoors on a calm day. Make a meal from your stock. You will find out whether the pan fits, whether the lighter works, and how fast it uses fuel. Then put a new cartridge in the box.
What to keep together
- Stove and spare cartridges of the right type.
- Matches or a lighter: nineteen guides list them.
- A pan with a lid, and a manual can opener.
- Dry staples and tins. See food you can eat without cooking for the cold options.
Our checklist includes the stove and fuel, and shows whether your own country's guide lists them.