Quick answer
No. You should never use a camping stove indoors, in a tent, or in an awning or tent porch. The NHS prevention advice is explicit: do not use a barbecue or camping stove indoors or inside a tent, and London Fire Brigade says it is never safe because of the serious risk of fire and deadly carbon monoxide poisoning. Opening a window does not make it safe, because carbon monoxide is colourless and odourless and builds up in any enclosed space. In a power cut, use the stove outdoors (the job it was built for), fill a flask early, keep food that needs no cooking, and if you want to cook indoors, the only safe route is an electric or induction hob, which a portable power station with enough output can run.
No. A camping stove is outdoor equipment, and there is no version of this question where the answer changes: not in the kitchen with the window open, not in a tent porch, not for five minutes to boil a kettle in a power cut.
People search Amazon for an "indoor portable butane cooking stove" in real numbers, especially in the week after a storm. The product they are imagining does not safely exist, and that is exactly why this page does. A camping site should be able to answer a camping stove safety question properly, so here it is, with the official sources attached and a straight answer to the question underneath it: how do you actually get hot food when the power is off?
Can you use a camping stove indoors?
No, and this is not our opinion, it is the explicit advice of the NHS and the fire service.
The NHS carbon monoxide poisoning page puts it on its prevention list in eight words: "do not use a barbecue or camping stove indoors or inside a tent".
London Fire Brigade goes further: "It's never safe to use any type of outdoor cooking equipment like a BBQ or camping stove indoors. Doing so poses a serious risk of fire and deadly carbon monoxide poisoning."
Note the wording in both. Not "take care", not "ventilate well". Never. The stove itself is not the problem; ours lives in the cupboard and earns its keep all year. The problem is where you light it.
What about in a tent, awning or porch?
Same answer, and this is the one campers get wrong most often. A tent, an awning and a tent porch all count as enclosed spaces. The canvas between you and the weather is also canvas between the fumes and the open air.
The NHS line quoted above names tents specifically, and NHS camping safety advice from Powys Teaching Health Board spells out the detail: carbon monoxide builds up in tents, awnings and tent porches just as it does in a room, and a barbecue that has finished cooking keeps producing carbon monoxide for hours as it cools. Bringing a "dying" barbecue into the porch to see out the last of the heat is one of the most dangerous things you can do on a campsite.
My own rule is the official advice in plainer words: never cook inside a tent that isn't ventilated, and be careful even in the porch areas. It comes down to taking care of yourself and your family.
So cook in the open air, a proper distance from the canvas, and leave the barbecue outside until it is stone cold. That is the whole rule.
Why carbon monoxide changes the answer
Because you get no warning. Carbon monoxide is colourless and odourless. You cannot see it, smell it or taste it, and the early symptoms (headache, nausea, feeling tired and confused) are easy to put down to anything else, which is why cases get missed.
This is also why the "I'll just open a window" logic fails. Ventilation is not a fix; the Powys NHS advice is explicit on that point. A cracked window does not stop carbon monoxide accumulating in an enclosed space, it just makes you feel like you have done something.
The scale is worth being straight about. Policy Connect, the cross-party policy group that tracks this, reports 24 non-fire accidental carbon monoxide poisoning deaths registered in England and Wales in 2019, and an estimated 4,000 A&E attendances a year, and notes both figures are likely undercounts precisely because the symptoms are so non-specific. These are not freak numbers, and nearly every one of those incidents started with ordinary equipment in the wrong place.
One line on the backstop: if anything in your home burns fuel, a gas boiler, a gas hob, a log burner, fit a carbon monoxide alarm. It is the cheapest safety purchase in the house.
What about in a power cut?
Still no. The NHS and fire service advice does not have a storm exception, and this is the moment the question spikes, so here is my own take on it. In a winter power cut it's cold out, it's dark, and things are pretty dire. Using one of these camping stoves to cook some dinner is great; it's something that can really help you. But the last thing you want to do is set it up in your kitchen and cause problems with gases that shouldn't be there.
Following the safety advice matters even more in that situation, and unfortunately that might mean getting a bit cold while you cook outside. Better safe than sorry.
It is worth looking at what the official guidance actually plans for. The government's Be Ready power cuts page advises at least 3 days of bottled water at 3 litres per person per day, and non-perishable food that does not need cooking: ready-to-eat tinned meat, fruit or vegetables, plus a tin opener. It also tells you to keep the fridge and freezer doors closed, because they stay cold for several hours.
Read that checklist again and notice what is missing: there is no cooking plan in it at all. That is deliberate. The official position is that you do not need to cook for three days, and the gap it leaves is exactly why people go searching for an indoor stove. The safe answers to that gap are in the next section, and the full checklist, done calmly, is in our power cut guide.
For what happens to the food itself when the fridge warms up, the Food Standards Agency's power cut advice is the reference.
How do you get hot food safely when the power is off?
Four routes, in the order we would use them, plus one for anyone with a gas barbecue in the garden.
1. The camping stove, outdoors. This is the use it was built for. A single-burner gas stove like the Fire Maple that makes our trail coffees boils water in minutes in the garden, on the patio or on the doorstep, in the open air. Cook outside, bring the hot pan in. Ten cold minutes for a hot meal is a good trade, and the rest of our camping stoves section works on the same basis. For us the first job is not even dinner: being able to make a cup of coffee or tea when it is cold is crucial, and the 500g canisters in the cupboard will do beach trips next summer if winter never needs them. If you do not own a stove yet, our best camping stoves guide covers every type and which gas each one takes.
1a. The gas barbecue, if you have one. The same open-air rule, heavier duty. It is not something I would go out of my way to use in a power cut, but I would rely on it if I had to, and in a longer outage it could cook up some of what was left in the fridge or freezer. Not a long-term plan, but it is there, and like everything else with a flame it stays outside, cooking and cooling.
2. The flask, filled early. If a storm is forecast, fill a decent flask (or two) with boiling water before the power goes. Hot drinks, instant noodles, a hot water bottle. It is the lowest-tech answer on this list and the one you will actually be gladdest of at 9pm.
3. No-cook food, per Be Ready. The official checklist exists because it works: ready-to-eat tins, fruit, crackers, spreads. Three days of it is survivable without a single flame. Our own cupboard honestly leans the other way: the modern add-hot-water noodles that are actually worth eating, which makes us wholly dependent on being able to boil water. That is exactly why the stove sits first on this list, and why there is a backup behind it.
4. The only flame-free way to cook indoors: an electric hob on a battery. This one is our assessment, not government advice, so judge it as such. A small induction or electric hob run from a portable power station is the one route to indoor cooking that involves no flame and no fumes, because nothing is burning. The catch is output: boiling and frying draw serious watts, so the station needs enough continuous output for the hob, and most small units do not have it. Our kettle test walks through the real numbers, and the power station finder sizes a unit for the job in seven questions.
What never changes across all of them: nothing with a flame comes indoors. That line belongs to the NHS and London Fire Brigade, not us, and it is the whole answer to this article's question.
How should you store camping gas at home?
The stove is only half the kit; the canisters need a home too. Retailer and landlord guidance (from gas supplier Adams Gas and Lewisham Council's tenant guidance, among others) is consistent:
- Upright, always, never on their side
- Cool and ventilated, away from direct sunlight and any heat source
- Outside your living space: a shed, a garage or an outdoor store, not the cupboard under the stairs or the bedroom wardrobe
A canister in a ventilated shed is a non-event. The same canister next to a radiator is a problem waiting for a warm day. Store them where a leak can disperse and heat cannot reach them, and the stove-in-the-shed setup stays exactly as boring as it should be.