Does anyone have thoughts on metal cup cooking?

The Bushcraft folks like the idea of a billycan. That seems to be any largish tin can that they put a wire handle on. They use it to boil water and cook food. My wife and I did an overnight survival class recently from a junior college. The instructor was from the Anasazi Foundation from Larry Olsen. They only allow a metal cup for cooking and eating. This seems like a great survival setup. I have been trying different cups to see what will be useful and fit in my CamelBak. At the moment I am using a Coghlan’s 16oz Sierra Cup.

Here is the Anasazi program’s food list:
Bacon Bits
Baking Soda
Brown Sugar
Bouillon
Powdered Butter
Powdered Cheese
Cornmeal
Wheat Flour
Fruit Drink (Tang)
Lentils
Macaroni
Powdered Milk
Oats
Raisins
Rice
Salt
Sunflower Seeds
Sun-dried Tomatoes
Fresh Potato
Fresh Carrot
Fresh Onion
Fresh Apple
Fresh Garlic

We used the bacon bits, brown sugar, butter buds, flour, oats, raisins, rice, salt and sunflower seeds in our over night class.

I was curious if I could make coffee with just ground coffee and a metal cup. Here is what I did: I heated the water, pushed a neckerchief down in the water and then poured in some coffee grounds. I stirred and let it sit a little while. Then I pulled out the neckerchief. I was left with good tasting coffee with no grounds. I shook the grounds off of the neckerchief. Some stuck to it and had to be rinsed off. On our overnight trip I took along some coffee bags. They are like tea bags but have coffee in them. If you use grounds you can use any kind of coffee you like.

Has anyone tried cooking in a metal cup and what did you make?

Thanks!

For my BOB I have a pot that is 2qt capacity and has a bail handle. I actually have a small length of light chain with a wire hook on either end so I can suspend the pot over a fire. Of course, it will also heat up quite well on a burner type stove of any type. In an emergency situation, if you have such a pot, you can boil water to purify it. Any food that you prepare by boiling is safe and good to eat, also. And a vast number of different foods can be cooked this way. Even scrounged foods like small lizards and little fish or small mammals, when boiled render all their nutrition. The soup made in this way can be consumed completely. If any kind of meat is simply roasted on a spit over a fire, a lot of the calorie potential can be lost as the fats drip into the fire and are lost as well as the possibly over cooking and charring the meat, losing more food potential. The list of items you are cooking are all good things to have in your BOB to eat on the trail. I like to have a frying pan, too, but it is not strictly necessary.

I'm currently using the Olicamp Space Saver Cup. It fits on the bottom of my 32oz Nalgene bottle. I use it with a Coleman F1 Ultralight canister stove. I mostly use it for heating water for coffee/tea, Cup-O-Soup, Instant grits/oatmeal, or freeze dried meals when I'm down on the river bank camping/catfishing. I like the swingout handles and how it saves space because it fits on the bottom of my waterbottle. It stays in my truck in a shoulder pack along with the rest of my gear and I change the water out once a week. I haven't really cooked anything in it other than pouring my soup or grits in it and eating out of it. It works for me.

Let's define the term "cup". You can make a lot more in the USGI canteen cup than you can in a GSI or Olicamp Nalgene cup. There are small pots/large cups that fit over the bottom of Nalgenes which are about the same volume as the canteen cup. The NATO waterbottle cup/pot is about the same size as the Nalgene cups, and those are bigger than what you are using by quite a bit.

For the little ones, not much you can do. I've made ramen, rice, mashed potatoes, etc in my Olicamps, and so long as you add water and completely debone, you can stew a small rodent in one. But you are constantly adding water, not very efficent. They also make you enough water to rehydrate a freezer bag or LRRP-type dehydrated meal in the meal's bag. I don't know if that qualifies or not for your purposes.

Tip- if you have a side cutting can opener, cut the bottom of a coffee can off (or the top, if your brand doesn't have a pull off lid), but KEEP THE LIP. This will make a perfect lid for the GSI or Olicamp cup, which means your water will heat faster, and you can even heat something on it while the water boils. If you are very careful, and add a drag wire to your handles, you can theoretically turn an Olicamp into a micro dutch oven this way, but I've never tried.

In the USGI cup, I've made small soups, baked small bread, all kinds of stuff, but the key word is SMALL. It's a bit over a pint, I don't remember the exact amount. You can make quite a bit in that, but you have to be used to working with it and you'll only cook for one.

My three favorites are:

NATO/British pattern mess kits- ditch the third, inner tin, you don't need it. The two halves give you two things to cook in, each can hold about a pint of stuff with room to cook, and they nest, so you get a pretty much squash proof container for your delicate items. I use one as the shell of my not-so-a-pocket survival kit for that reason. I've fried, baked (the two halves turn into a quicky oven very nicely) and boiled in the ones I have.

Coffee can: Cheap, common, and it's a good size. You can also wedge an Olicamp or GSI cup in the mouth of it if your coffee brand has the pull off inner lid, or slip it onto the bottom and wedge it on as a two-compartment cooking kit. Holds almost a liter of water, and while it might vary a little by brand and size of can, you can use the ribs as a rough measuring guide. Down side is no handle, but pliers are a good thing. I usually cut the bottom out of another can, as above, and keep that as a lid under the plastic one (the space between them is a good place to stash snare/bail wire). I've boiled a lot of stuff in them, and my only caution is to test your pot before you put it in your pack- not all of thier glues are heat stable, and the last thing you want is a liter of soup water going into your fire as the bottom falls out of your pot.

Walmart grease pot: About a liter and half, feather light, and pretty cheap. Down side is that it dings up pretty easily, has no handle (pliers again) and the rim needs to be ground off or you need to carry something to clean under it. I like the lid, but replace the handle on that with a flatter one, and I always suggest keeping the strainer tray as it is a good spot to put little stuff from your cook kit, can be used as a steamer, and if lined with aluminum foil, it's a good backwoods fry pan. Big enough to pack a lot of stuff into, and I've even seen people use it without the lid as a buttcap for the end of thier stuff sacks. Big problem is finding them- they are in a funny spot in Walmart, look around the toothpicks and the salt shakers, and they may be going away becuase they are designed for those of us who belive in the right to keep and eat transfats. I'm not sure I trust it enough to use it as a dutch oven though, due to it's love of getting squished out of shape.

in regards to coffee......at a recent civil war reenactment one of the guys related the way to make coffee.....boil it actually. He said just put the beans in the cup and grind them with the butt of the rifle (or whatever) and add water. Boil until the grinds float to the top. Put in a little cold water and the grinds settle to the bottom. At this point drink it. Yea you have to watch for grinds but it doesn't need a filter. I haven't tried it yet.

That is just a variation of cowboy coffee. Throw a handfull of coffee in a pot, put in enough water to get it wet, boil it for a while, throw in a horseshoe nail. If the nail floats, the coffee is ready. Then add some cold water. Hydraulic effect, or some fancy term like that, sends the grounds to the bottom of the pot. It works. The cold water part anyway...

This is what I use... it's a GSI double-boiler hard anodized aluminum cookset. I never really bothered going with anything smaller or harder to use. I can nest a gas canister inside either the small or large pot, however the stove cannot fit but still, it's very light and easy to pack.



It's great! I never cooked with it over a fire, but it works flawlessly with my MSR Windpro stove. I am considering drilling two very small holes to make a handle with wire and suspend one (or both) pot(s) over an open fire.

Bee,

I'm not sure of the point of hanging a pot over a fire. Placing the pot/cup in the hot coals seems to work really well.

You could use the top pot with it's lid like a mini dutch oven and bake stuff with some coals on top. Our Instructor did that with a second cup and baked a muffin. One guy took a forked stick and put thick muffin mix around the end and cooked it over the coals. The ash cake was the big eye opener for me. The cake was not dirty. I have also herd of cooking meat that way. Just throw it on the coals and keep turning it until it is done.

I guess you can cook anything in a metal cup you can cook in a pot, just less of it. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

IMHO, the point of suspending a pot over a fire is more even heating. Sure you can set a pot on coals and heat that way but air does not flow as freely and sometimes it scorches more. The scorching happens especially if the walls of the pot are thinner rather than like in dutch oven cooking where you are dealing with thick walled cast iron.

OK I tried making coffee in a cup with hot and cold water.

Puuuuoooooo <img src="/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

Most of the grounds were on the bottom but there were a lot on the top too. <img src="/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />