How To Cook Rice With 80 Percent Less Fuel!

by Ken Jorgustin

Most preppers have a quantity of dry food storage including rice. A problem with rice though, is that it requires a substantial amount of fuel (heat) energy to cook (boil-simmer) to soften the grains such that you can actually eat it.

In a SHTF world, not only will our food storage be a very valuable resource, but so will our energy sources.

The good news is that I’ve found a way to cook rice with just a fraction of the fuel energy needed compared to conventional cooking methods of boiling and simmering…

How To Cook Rice With A Thermos

I recently tried this, and it worked very well.
1. Heat a quantity of water to boiling.
2. Add the boiling water to a high quality insulated thermos.
3. Add rice.
4. Close thermos and wait several hours.
The only fuel energy consumed is that which is required to get your small pot of water to boil. That’s it. Then shut off the heat!



The thermos I chose to use will hold 6 cups of water. When I first tried the experiment, I only added 1 cup of boiling water to 1/4-cup of rice. I discovered that there was not enough heat energy in the one cup of water to do the job (the rice was partially cooked after many hours, however still too crunchy).

Next, I nearly filled the thermos with boiling water and added a fresh 1/4-cup of rice. After 5 hours passed (I had forgotten about it), I checked and discovered the rice was very well cooked (too much in fact)!

While I have yet to determine the perfect formula (which will vary depending on how much rice you’re trying to cook), the proof of concept is intact. It works!

The obvious caveat is that you will need to plan ahead (many hours ahead) with your rice – which is no big deal. If you’re in a SHTF situation and you’re trying to conserve your fuel, then this method will save LOTS of fuel by eliminating the time required to simmer and/or boil until the rice is soft.
It is VERY important that you use a well designed thermos with a double walled vacuum seal – which will hold the heat for a long period of time. A cheap plastic thermos will not work.

After researching a bit, this is the thermos that I chose. It has a wide mouth (easier for food) and will hold enough boiling water (48-ounces) to act as a long lasting reservoir of heat between two stainless steel walls separated by airless space (vacuum insulation).
Thermos 48-Ounce Wide Mouth Stainless-Steel Bottle

All it takes to cook my rice now is a few minutes of fuel to get my water boiling – and that’s it…
As I try more quantities of rice and check the process for time required, I will come back to this post and update with results (e.g. how much for 1 cup of rice until cooked well enough, etc.)

The thermos cooked rice must have smelled so good that my mini Dachshund came out of nowhere and almost got it while I was holding the bowl of rice for the picture…

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