Tag Archives: wonder box
The Importance of Multiple Fuels in Your SHTF Cooking Plans
In our household, we have a Sun Oven and a Solavore, SilverFire and StoveTec rocket stoves, and a dual-fuel Coleman stove, which uses both unleaded gasoline and Coleman fuel. I have the supplies for putting together an improvised cement block rocket stove, and a backyard full of trees, pinecones, and leaves. We purposely chose a gas stove for our home in order to have the ability to cook in a power outage.
In the emergency cooking department, we have numerous bases covered. Looking at these different types of stoves, it’s not enough to just have alternative cooking methods. You also need to make sure each one uses different types of fuels.…
Read More...Cooking with A Wonder Box/Oven Thermal Cooker
Summer is fast approaching and so is the hot weather. My wife doesn’t like heat, so she is always concerned about heating up the kitchen when cooking. One of her tricks is to use the Wonder Box/Oven. This is a simple homemade thermal cooker. It not only helps to keep your kitchen cool, but it also saves you money on fuel.
They are basically a well-insulated box that holds a preheated pan and lets the food cook from the retained heat. At the bottom of the page are a couple of links that will help you to make one for yourself.…
Read More...Wonder box / ovens and Why You Need One
For a number of years my wife has been using wonder boxes as part of her everyday cooking. As the name implies they are a wonder. They will serve to cook food, keep them warm or cold and use no source of fuel. Sound like it is too good to be true. Well the good news is that it is true and easy to improvise in an emergency.
Historically they have been called hay boxes, wonder ovens, wonder boxes or thermal cookers. They have been used to save fuel for hundreds of years. So what are they? They are simply a well-insulated box in which you place hot or cold foods.…
Read More...Fireless Cooking, also Known as the Wonder Box
While reading my copy of “Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis Cook Book” published in 1908, I found an 
interesting section on thermal retention cooking. They called it fireless cooking and even list recipes and instructions for their use. After reading this, I have been doing research on the history of their use in the U.S and have found them to have been quite common. They were even sold in the Sears catalogs. If you want to research addition information on old ones look under the names hay box or fireless cooking.
The book offered some interesting reasons for using them beyond the obvious one of saving fuel. …
Read More...How are You Going to Cook After the Grid Goes Down?
Different methods of cooking.
Something I have wanted to write about for a while is ways to cook when the power is out and you are dependent on what you have stored. The following is an over view of several methods for cooking at your BOL I wish to discuss in depth in the future.
Campfires – The first method that most people think of is a campfire. Personally, this would be very low on my choices. Campfires are difficult to cook on, are highly visible and give off smoke. Food odors can also be a problem. They also are inefficient in their consumption of wood. …
Read More...Wonder Oven Update:
This past week, we did some camping. I wanted to have some food ready when the family got there, to go with the hamburgers. I used my Wonder Oven to cook baked beans and some spare ribs, boneless and cut into pieces. The beans were great, but the ribs were dry. I prepared them the same way I usually do. I parboiled them and then spread the meat on a cookie sheet, covered with BBQ sauce and baked in my house oven. My mistake was partially cooking the ribs at home. Instead, I should have parboiled them and then put them in the Wonder Oven and let them cook in the BBQ sauce.…
Wonder Box Recipe for Tamale Pie
If you do any camping or traveling, these next few days I will give you a recipe that would be good to try. Finding places to eat, which are healthy is getting harder. Of course you can always go to a restaurant, pay the high price and tip. By using the Wonder Box you have a good meal at any rest stop or at gas stops. This next recipe, you can do the prep work a day ahead and heat it up in the morning. Make corn bread the day before.
Tamale Pie
In a large pot start browning the meat, until red color is almost gone.…
Wonder Box Recipes:
With summer coming, it’s going to be great cooking in a Wonder Box. No heat from a stove to worry about. Here are a couple more recipes for you to try. I haven’t tried this one, but my friend has and she gave me the recipes.
Pear Dessert (or apple)
Filling Topping
15 pears, peeled 2 tbsp. flour
Cored & quartered 2 tbsp. of brown sugar
Zest from one lemon 1 tsp. cinnamon
¼ flour ¼ tsp. ginger
¼ sugar mix together, cut in a
¼ water tablespoon of butter
Toss pears with lemon juice, zest, flour and sugar. Put water in bottom of a large pan, (like a double boiler) place pear mixture in pan that will fit inside the larger pan of water and top with topping.…
Read More...WONDER BOX/OVEN RECIPE
Here is a recipe I am trying. Some of you have probably ready gone on line and checked some out other recipes. Have you tried any yet? The stew that I made was very good.
This is the one I am trying next: TERYAKI CHICKEN
½ cup soy sauce
1/3 cup sugar
¼ tsp ginger
(Combine top three ingredients and fill with water to the top of a
2 cup measuring cup)
¼ minced onion
Raw chicken (cut up)or you use
Chicken breast , cut into bite size pieces and marinate.
Use approximately 1 piece of chicken per person (cut up) and marinate in sauce for a minimum of 3-4 hours.…
Read More...Cooking with a Wonder Box
This morning I decided to cook a beef stew, I figured this would be a good time to cook with my Wonder Box. I made a simple beef stew in a eight quart stainless steel pan. It was then brought it to a hard boil for fifteen minutes. The lid should be on during the boiling to warm it.
The hot pan was then placed in the bottom of the Wonder Box. The bottom cushion came up to almost the top of the pan. I then placed the top cushion over the top of the pan making sure there were no gaps to let the heat out.…
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