Why would you remove the embers? Seems doubtful to me that the pit would remaun hot enough, long enough, to cook anything. I have cooked small game, vegatables, etc. directly on a bed of coals many times without incicdent.

Funny you should mention that. I routinely raid the condiment supplies at fast food restaurants, especially taco bell. They are just the ticket for my edc and bob and for my grub boxes as well. They all have relatively long shelf life, and by nature are very stowable. In fact, I'm able to stave off hunger fairly well just sucking down a couple packets of TB's fire sauce.

Other great ones are Pizza Hut's dried pepper and cheese packets, mayonaise packets (actually contain a surprising number of calories per packet), salt and pepper packets, and McDonald's towelettes.

It is part of a bigger scheme of raid other gratuitous single serving type items. For instance, I snag on those extra individually packaged tea bags at business meetings, individual dose packets of tylenol and Ibuprofren in the first aid bins, those little half &half coffee creamers they bring with breakfast, along with those jam, jelly and honey packets they bring to your table.

Yeah, sometimes I can be kinda cheap. But at least I am thinking proper. Maybe it's borderline ethically, but I don't think it is stealing if it is being offered complementary anyways and was factored into the cost of doing business already. Greedy or over-indulgent maybe, but not criminal.

Tabasco actually sells little 1/8th ounce tabasco bottles in 6 packs, see their web site. One problem, I've had a couple that leaked when stowed in relatively stable survival kits. Don't know why but tabasco is pretty corrosive stuff.
I've taken to the fast food packets myself. some that haven't been mentioned are KFC honey packets (great for low blood sugar problems in the field). I've also seen lemon juice and margerine in packets (all handy things to have). Salt / Pepper/sugar etc. Great stuff for survival kits or just camping.

Jon

'Why would you remove the embers?'

Actually, you usually don't want to bake foods in a really high temperature. Meats are usually cooked best at 325-350F.

A fire burning in a hole for an hour or so should be, and stay, plenty warm enough to bake a chicken. If you wanted to bake some potatoes that way, you would probably want to raise the temp, so you could leave the embers in the bottom, cover with a layer of sand or soil, put your potatoes in and cover them.

A similar way of staying warm yourself (if you want to put in the effort), is to dig a fairly shallow trench as long as your body, build a good fire in it for a while, then refill it, and sleep on top. The heat should radiate up to you for most of the night. But I'm relatively sure that this wouldn't work in wet ground....

Sue

I did a little googling and found this, which is kind of interesting...

Coffee can cooking

Might want to maybe season the can first and some cans have a plastic liner.

True. And with more and more coffee coming in all plastic cans, this might be a thing of the past anyway...

You're right about the coffee cans, but....Mixed nuts still come in a 3 lb coffee can. I am saving all of them that I can get, for a vriety of reasons

They tell you to put the can right on the embers.... you can't usually do this even with a heavy dutch oven, or you'll get burnt food on the bottom long before the stuff on top is cooked. And I mean that food is WELDED to the bottom. Raise it up on some rocks, instead. (We don't need to get into how I know this.... <img src="/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />)

Also, don't plan on using the same coffee can very many times. That thin metal, once heated, rusts faster than you would think possible.

But if you could find a nice stainless steel container of a similar size (and preferably with a handle), you could pack a lot of kit inside for future use.

Sue

I've never tried pit cooking without hot rocks or embers to keep the temperature up. How long will a pit stay at a good cooking temperature after removing the heat source?

I mean you couldn't cook something as large as a whole hog this way could you? (I noted you mentioned small game)