Slow Cooking Without Electricity

When we first went off grid, one of the things I really missed was my electric slow cooker. I had used that thing for cooking carnitas, beans, chicken stock, making yogurt, you name it. I mentioned my yearning to use it again to my husband, but unless we ran the generator for 8 hours (which would be a very expensive way to cook), it just wasn’t possible now. And in the future, when we finally get a solar power system in place, it wouldn’t be very practical. As my husband pointed out, contrary to what the marketers of slow cookers would have you believe, it does actually take a considerable amount of energy to run them.

My old slow cooker...before it was well used. From what I've read, apparently Hamilton Beach is the only slow cooker manufacturer that guarantees their liners don't contain lead which, umm...is pretty important to me.

Hmm….but I still really needed a way to slow cook. We are very blessed to have a Sun Oven. It is surprisingly effective. But I like to slow cook my chicken stock for at least a good 24 hours to get all of the minerally goodness out of it, and a Sun Oven is only as good as your available sunlight. And so, like any rational person with a Smartphone, I Googled off grid slow cooking. That’s when I found this.

God bless those people. That YouTube tutorial was such a godsent.

A hay box is surprisingly effective. All you do is throw whatever you’re wanting to cook into a large pot,

bring it to a boil, and then simply place it inside a cooler

lined and stuffed with towels, bedsheets, a winter jacket with a zipper that your son managed to completely destroy…whatever you’ve got lying around really.

You can even use hay if you want to be really authentic. If you’re going to cook for a long time, as in the aforementioned chicken stock, after about 8-12 hours (depending on your cooler and the ambient room temperature), reboil the pot and return it to the cooler. That’s it.

I check the temperature of whatever I’m cooking every time I pull it out of the cooler, partly to be sure of food safety but mostly because I find it so impressive. The coolest temperature I’ve ever had was 146F after leaving chicken stock for 12 hours.

Legitimate slow cooking without electricity. Yup. I’m amazed every time. In fact, I am so consistently impressed that I kind of feel like a sucker for having ever believed that I needed a special appliance for slow cooking.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting you run into your kitchen and dramatically throw your slow cooker out the window. I’m just saying you could. 😉

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So Where Was I…?

The last time I posted was…February?!? Oops! Sorry about that.

Too much has transpired since I was here last to list it all, but I’ll give you the highlights. I’ll try to keep it short, I promise. Let’s see…

Spring arrived in Texas.

We got some more ducks…

…and few cows…

…guineas…

…five Angora goats…

…bunnies…

…and some Black Copper Marans, Silver Laced Wyandottes, and Lavender Ameracauna chicks.

My incredible and very adventurous mother came to visit. We’re already trying to talk her into returning.

The process of planting raspberries, peach trees, apple trees, figs and pomegranates has begun. 

Peas, carrots, cucumbers, potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers have been started in garden boxes which are actually repurposed shipping crates. With some luck, we will get a fence up to plant a big garden very, very soon. (Last fall, we tried a garden without a fence. It didn’t take the feral hogs long to find it.)

Thanks to my brilliant husband, using an IBC tote and a water pump, we now have running water whenever the generator runs. Which means I can use the washing machine. Which basically gives me 16 hour per week back. Have I mentioned how amazing my husband is?

We are going on six months of living off grid. Six months. Whoa…that’s weird to think about. It has gone from being impossible to manageable to euphoric. I’ve learned how to function without endless electricity and water. It’s hard to explain just how freeing it is to know that we are slowly becoming a little more self sufficient every day.

I must say, the strangest development around here has been the evening noise. You know how you’d expect to hear crickets and a few birds out in the country at night? Well, we do hear them, but imagine my surprise and disbelief when my husband and I stopped putting up the animals to hear the sound of (are you ready for this?) lions. Real ones. In Texas. I’m serious. See, we discovered that there is a facility about a mile from here as the crow flies that rescues large cats. Really large cats. Zoo cats have nothing on these tigers which, judging by their size, eat an entire cow each and every day. Rumor has it that a few years back, a bad storm damaged their fences and a family of mountain lions presumed to have escaped started picking off cows and entire herds of goats until the local farmers rounded up most of them. Of course, mountain lions are also native to Texas, so who knows? From a quick driveby, it looks like a fascinating place. The kids and I plan on going on ones of their tours soon. But still, as I tuck the kids into bed to the sound of a lion’s roar, I do find myself often pondering, ‘From what exactly do lions and tigers need to be rescued?’ I am just thankful that there are fields and fields of cattle (or tiger decoys, as I now affectionately call them) between us and them.