A Year in an Off-Grid Kitchen by Kate Downham

I give this book 10 out of 10 acorns.

After reading Kate’s first book, I was really, really looking forward to this one. The title was the hook and “off-grid kitchen” really caught my interest, as did “homestead kitchen skills,” “real food,” and “resilient health.” The book did not disappoint! Here’s why I think you’ll be interested in it too.

The book begins with the author’s story and will strike a chord with anyone who is seeking to harmonize a healthy, seasonal diet with a healthy, natural lifestyle. She then defines real food and resilient health. Following is a discussion of the tools useful for the off-grid kitchen, and an excellent how-to for cooking on a wood cookstove. Lots of excellent tips in this section. Next comes “Ways to Keep Food Fresh Without a Fridge” and “Cooking and Living with Small-Scale Solar.” I especially appreciate the small-scale solar section, because it shows that we don’t need a huge expensive system to meet our kitchen needs. The last section in the introduction is “Ways To Make Real Foods Work in Real Life.” So practical! Lots of tips and tricks in the section.

The sections that follow are organized according to season. They include both recipes, how-tos, and preservation techniques. Recipes are keyed: GF (gluten-free), P (paleo-friendly, grain-free), DF (dairy free), V (vegetarian), and O (options). The options plus recipe notes and useful tips are scattered around the book in purple boxes. The recipes include both Celsius and Fahrenheit temperatures, and metric and imperial measurements. To tempt your appetite, there are loads of gorgeous color photos!

Winter begins and ends the book. Recipes include bone broth, soups, and stews, with handy, informative sections on “Crafting Your Own Beautiful Soups, Stews, Pottage, and Curry,” “Cooking a Perfect Roast” (on a wood cookstove!), and “Home Butchery: Starting With Chickens.” The season focus is on root cellar vegetables.

Spring begins with eggs and greens (both garden grown and foraged). These form the backbone of a variety of recipes, including rice bowls, soups, and casseroles. Dairy is added in late spring, after kidding and calving. Dairy recipes cover the how-tos for a good range of basic cheeses, butter, sour cream, yogurt, and kefir. Informational sections for Spring include “Foraging and Drying Nettles as a Storable Superfood,” “More Edible Weeds and Wild Plants in Spring,” and “Keeping Dairy Fresh Without a Fridge.”

Early summer moves into fresh vegetables! You’ll find recipes for a variety of vegetable dishes, dips, and hummus. Late summer includes fruits and preserving the harvest. You’ll find “Preserving fruit without cane sugar,” “Apple Core Cider,” “Making Jam the Old Way, Without Cane Sugar or Pectin,” and “Making Herbal Medicines.”

Summer preservation techniques include dehydrating, pickling, and water bath canning. In regards to canning, it’s important to note that the author is Australian, and so follows Australian protocols for canning. She encourages those who follow USDA recommendations to do so. All recipes are easily adaptable to USDA guidelines.

Autumn introduces lacto-fermenting with a variety of recipes to try. The seasonal focus is on potatoes, fruits of the season, and preserving tomatoes. Late autumn turns to  “The Yearly Pig,” emphasizing utilizing all parts of the pig. Informational sections include “Parts of the Pig,” a daily schedule for processing the pig, “How To Butcher Without a Saw,” “The Art of Stuffing Sausages,” and “Rendering Lard and Other Fats.” You’ll find instructions for making your own ham, bacon, and sausages.

The last section, “Grains, Sourdough, and Year-Round Recipes,” is also excellent. It includes discussions on grain intolerance versus glysulphate intolerance, soaking and cooking grains, and whole grain baking. There are loads of tips, tricks, and recipes for sourdough, including gluten-free sourdough. I especially appreciated the off-grid approach for baking bread in both winter (when it’s too cold!) and summer (when it’s too hot!) Recipes include crispy Dutch oven bread, tortillas, pizza and foccacia crusts, pie crust, crackers, and sweet baked goods. Kombucha and condiments round out the year-round recipes.

If someone is looking for a comprehensive book on the off-grid kitchen, this is it. It’s not only a recipe book, but a reference book as well. Add to that interesting reading, and it's an excellent addition to every homestead library.

I give this book 10 out of 10 acorns.

Way more than a cookbook! An essential guide for making your own food from homestead to table. 

I'm not a cookbook person and generally wing it when cooking, but this is a book I will actually use. The book is full of straightforward, practical, doable recipes and techniques specific to the needs of a homestead kitchen. Coming from an offgrid mindset this book offers recipes catering to ingredients available to us whether grown in our garden or foraged from nearby. There are helpful tips for recipe variations and replacing ingredients. Variation notes are a helpful, inspiring touch, and a great lesson on how to change up recipes in general.  

Recipes such as "any fruit crumble", "any vegetable gratin", "grains, sourdough, and year-round recipes", "cooking with whole animals" show the versatility of this book as useful anywhere in the world with harvests form any garden. 

Many recipes are foods that I imagined as exclusive to a "modern" lifestyle and near impossible to reproduce on my own in a homestead setting. Foods I thought I would have to depend on the grocery store for or give up entirely like crackers, sweets, bacon, cereal, cheese, condiments. For me at least, I knew these foods must have been prepared with traditional techniques on homesteads in the past, but I just thought of these as such far away, almost unreachable skills. The presentation of traditional skills in this book in everyday, accessible language with insights and tips from the author's experience brings them within reach for me. 

Mouth-watering pictures capture the beauty and simplicity of the dishes. They look like something I can imagine on my own table, and give motivation to try the recipe myself. The organization of the book by season gives it a kind of follow along quality that makes it fun and gives a feeling of connectedness to the author and other homesteaders. I imagine others are probably cooking the same seasonal dishes or working hard to preserve the surplus of a seasonal harvest. 

Definitely recommend to anyone who dreams of providing all their own food someday!

Looking forward to learning more about fermentation (so good for our microbiome) and canning - only way to preserve my vegetable garden year round! Woo hoo!
Teresa

We lived for a year and a half, not online off-grid but off the map in a third world country. I cooked on a clay stove and had never even started a fire before that. Cooking the same foods day in and day out was depressing. I finally got a little creative, out of necessity, with the foods growing around our one room house. But it wasn't enough. I'm interested to see what Kate Downham has to say in this book. I wish I had it before going through the crucible.

Some lovely reviews online that made me smile:

This is THE book for anyone looking to reduce food waste, feedback hungry family of five and kick the habit of convenience food. These are gut friendly, inexpensive family recipes that are doable for a busy household. Everything I've tried has gone down well on the taste front and I have reduced food waste and saved money using them. Instructions are logical easy to follow and there are very few 'exotic' ingredients. Highly recommended.

This is a winner. A must have on your shelf for eating seasonally. Beautiful and full of accessible tips and recipes.

I have already read through this book twice. It has earned a permanent spot in my kitchen. There is an enormous amount of valuable information. I couldn't be happier about this purchase.

This book has great recipes for everyone, altho it's title is off grid kitchen there are plenty of instructions on doing this in a regular kitchen. This book is about using solid, healthful ingredients and making good wholesome food from scratch. There are even gluten free options in here!
I've lived off grid but currently grid tied as we finish my boyfriend's time in the Navy. I like knowing that I can live comfortably off grid, not just survive, if I needed to. My partner and I intend to move a bit remotely after he gets out and he's becoming more and more interested in simpler solutions that are healthier for our mind and body.
I have difficult medical issues from my time in the Marines and food is important, books like this fit us now, even tied to the grid and later when we aren't grid dependant.
Basically, if you're interested in some good wholesome recipes check this book out. I found it on Kickstarter originally and am super glad I did!

Where can I see the table of contents? I looked at Amazon'e sneak peek, not there, at Permies sneak peak thread, not there. Help, please

Amazon.com.au have "look inside" up for the colour edition, which is the same as the black and white except for the colours. I'm not sure why the other sites don't have this up.

https://www.amazon.com.au/Year-Off-Grid-Kitchen-Homestead-Resilient/dp/0648466159/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=a+year+in+an+off+grid+kitchen&qid=1676349493&sr=8-1&asin=B09647RBGD&revisionId=6678ce78&format=1&depth=1

The Kickstarter page has heaps of information (including most of the recipe titles): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/706848724/real-food-cookbook-a-year-in-an-off-grid-kitchen

I give this book 10 out of 10 acorns.

My husband and I have benefited so much from 'A Year in an Off-Grid Kitchen' that I invited Kate Downham to serve as a guest author for Brunette Gardens, and we also gave away a paperback copy of her book (we host one giveaway each season for paid subscribers).

As I said in my review of the book:

While there are plenty of sources out there—you can watch endless sourdough-making videos on YouTube, take fermentation classes, and Google ‘elderberry recipes’ ‘til the cows come home—it’s the rare source that cuts through all the noise and delivers practical, time-tested techniques based on a real, honest-to-goodness life of homesteading. A Year in an Off-Grid Kitchen is that rare source.

I’ll give you one example of how not all homesteading tips are the same: The conventional wisdom on making jellies and jams is to use copious amounts of white sugar and pectin. Kate’s method, on the other hand, sidesteps both, harkening back to a time before we instituted those modern crutches—at the expense of our health.

Kate's guest post is called, "How I started homesteading without any land," and that's just right for us permies.

I also wrote about my personal experience (and great joy) using her sourdough "pre-ferment" technique to a) bake sourdough more quickly and with less hassle and b) digest it more easily in the piece, "The magic of the sourdough 'pre-ferment.'"

Thanks to Kate for writing this book in the first place and for her gracious participation in our giveaway, and thanks to Permies for introducing me to Kate.

Seriously, I don't know what you're waiting for if you haven't already read this book. Go get a copy, now!

I hosted a giveaway on my Instagram page and the book ended up going to someone who really appreciated it, which is so lovely to hear. She said I could repost her comments, so here it is:

My cookbook got reviewed in the Wise Traditions journal by the Weston A Price Foundation!

https://www.westonaprice.org/book-reviews/a-year-in-an-off-grid-kitchen-by-kate-downham/

This beautiful and informative book is like a match made in heaven of Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions cookbook and Jessica Prentice’s Full Moon Feast, with a twist of sur­vival handbook. Woven amid all the clear and practical recipes to nourish your body is homage to nature’s beauty, which will nourish your soul. Each organized-by-season section begins with a stunning full-page photo and lyrical writing that effectively transports you into that time of year. I can just imagine her Australian accent as I read from the introduction to Early Spring:

“There’s a lightness stirring the air. The ice-cold winds still chill us, but on the ground, life is stirring as the sun grows higher in the sky each day… In the wild and in the garden, leaves are growing. Lush, green, nutrient-dense growth is found everywhere… The hens respond to the lengthening days… And eggs taste at their best at this time of year—rich, creamy, full of flavour, and so fresh. The nourishment from these eggs is needed for the next few months of garden work, and eating these eggs I can almost feel the goodness flowing through me, energis­ing me for the next tasks at hand and giving us hope that we can do this.”

Throughout this book, Downham invites you into her simple existence in her simply beau­tiful world. Built on a foundation of permacul­ture principles, she has created an autonomous life that is fueled by grass-fed animal fat and dedicated to reliance on nutrient-dense foods. Her seasonally appropriate eating suggestions entice us into this way of living with her “re­silient recipes” that are simple to follow, use local and staple foods, nourish good health and energy, and delight the taste buds.

Anyone attempting to follow WAPF life­style recommendations will find something valuable. “Ways to Make Real Foods Work in Real Life” includes topics like saving time, avoiding burnout, saving money, and a thought-provoking perspective on meal planning. Throughout, other recipes and suggestions offer ways to use up leftovers, tips for making apple cider or vinegar from apple cores, and every­thing you need to know about perpetual broth.

Her passion for independent living will ap­peal not only to those interested in an off-grid lifestyle, but anyone who wants to be prepared for emergency situations and inevitable periodic power outages. Practical and instructive sec­tions on “Fridge-Free Living” and “Cooking on a Wood Stove” invite us into her world that is refreshingly free of an over-consumption mindset. She says, “It’s a wonderful feeling to work with the patterns of nature and live in a seasonal way… When we expect nature to be at our beck and call, and for technology to serve all our whims, something special is lost.”

There’s even a section on foraging that focuses on the most common and easiest to identify edible and nutritious weeds and seaweeds. This includes pictures, harvesting and drying tips, and recipes.

For those with access to local farm food, this book is a treasure. Even as a twenty-five year veteran of making cheese from my own Jersey’s milk, the section on cheese making and using fresh dairy had useful information for me.
Downham covers making yogurt, kefir and simple cheeses; traditional canning and preserving and lacto-fermentation. And while this may not be for everyone, the Late Autumn section gives a step-by-step process of butcher­ing a pig!

The one downside to this book is that the sweetener often used is honey. This is under­standable because it’s a great local option. How­ever, as a beekeeper and student of Ayurvedic medicine, I would not endorse destroying honey’s precious enzymes with heating. That said, this beautiful cookbook and practical homesteading guide gets a big thumbs up!

This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Summer 2025