Im not the greatest cook in the world. so i was wondering if there is anything i (or anyone)needs to know before cooking in the woods, when your not prepared(survival situation). i mean you wouldnt need grease or anything would you. i just figured i should know just incase.theres few things i can cook, but i do make a mean tortilla and cheese and hot eggs <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
so any tips or anything on cookig in the woods?

Eat as much like you would when you are the blacktop as possible. Your belly is used to a certain diet, which is created by the variety and abundance of your local markets. If your staple is X, and suddenly you are eatting almost none of it and trying to survive on Y, your guts might decide they don't like you any more. Immodium packs small, and is worth about it's weight in plutonium, skip gold. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

The biggest thing I would tell people is don't be suprised if you don't have the same craving for meats and greasy foods you might normally have. Thing about what you want after a very long day of heavy physical activity in the sun when it's about 100 degrees out and humid- do those eggs sound so good to you? Or do those tortillas and some weak tea sound really good, maybe with only a little bit of cheese?

Thanks alot, i never thought about putting stuff for a upset stomach or whatever in, ill have to do that.

if i did have a couple of tortillas,cheese, and eggs. i can asure you that they will be gone in a matter of seconds <img src="/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />.

It to bad they dont have little bottles of tabasco or little packets. It makes anything taste btter.

Look here:

http://countrystore.tabasco.com/index_ca...;amp;moreid=C66

You can get the tiny bottles of tabasco from their website. They are 6 for $4.00. Also you can get packets from some fast food places that have chili. You can also get honey, mustard, ketchup, jelly, syrup, lemon juice and hot sauce in packets. I'm sure you can get other things too but thats just what I've ended up with so far. It does make a difference in cooking outside when you have seasonings and some condiments.

Many "Army Surplus" type stores have the little bottles of Tabasco out of MRE's...

Being tight with my dollars, I save the condiment packs from restaurants and keep them as part of my emergency rations. When I go camping, I pull out the types I think I will use. That includes little packets of Tobasco sauce.

Taco Bell is everywhere. Just ask for extra hot sauce. That's the same as Tabasco sauce, isn't it?

If you're stuck in elevated areas, some people are hit with high-altitude sickness, and if they can eat at all, only want sweet stuff.

One survival technique touted in the manuals actually works: pit cooking. Most people think of cooking game on a spit over a fire, as seen on TV. Actually, it doesn't work all that well and tends to come out charred on some places, raw inside.

If you catch some small game but don't have anything to cook it in, dig a hole about a foot deep, build a good fire in it and keep it going for an hour, then take out the embers and set them aside. Take your cleaned game (leave the skin on it) and either wrap it in your aluminum foil or smear clay mud all over it to form a shell, put it in the newly-emptied hot pit, and cover it with soil up to ground level. Let it cook for an hour or two (depending on size), then carefully dig it up. Unwrap the foil or crack open the clay shell and eat. If you think it might not cook enough this way, due to size or not being able to dig a deep enough hole, etc, heat a rock that will fit inside the carcass, and just before you put the meat into the pit, maneuver the hot rock into the carcass, then bury it.

Of course, you can cook other foods this way, too.

A friend of my mother's used to do this fairly routinely with sage hens in WY many years ago and said they were delicious.

Sue

If you are looking for little sauces, try minimus.biz. They've got all kinds of stuff in little, single serve packaging, including some AMK gear. (Kinda suprised me when I saw that.)

taco bell.... thats genius susan! haha i dont know why i didnt think about that before.

yea you dont want to cook anything and it turns out to be messes up. what comes to mind is national lampoons christmas vacation and the super dry turkey(if you remeber that). <img src="/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> haha man i love that movie

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)

Here is just one article on pit cooking Pit Cooking . There are a jillion on the net. This one makes it sound a little more complicated than just digging a hole and building a fire. But the basic concept is still a good one...

I've done a fair amount of pit cooking, but as I mentioned, never without a heat source. The source either being coals or hot rocks.

On a side note, it's fun to show people how to cook spectacular food with primitive methods. Some folks are dumfounded by how good it tastes.

At Tracker School earlier this year, I learned a bunch of primitive methods that were new to me and that I can't wait to try!

Thanks for the link though!

Please tell us about them. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Cool Beans.
I have a few pics too, and I'll see if any are of sufficient quality to illustrate.

I found this on another site, kind of interesting.
Trash can turkey

It obviously takes a little prep., but it's still interesting...

My wife's Girl Scout Troop has done this several times and the turkey is fantastic.

Pete

Nice to know that it actually works...

'...you couldn't cook something as large as a whole hog this way could you?'

I've seen hogs that weighed 600 lbs.... so, I don't think so. I am assuming you mean for a party or something, otherwise, why....... ?

Most people in a survival situation, if they can catch anything at all, will be catching small game (sometimes, VERY small game... like grasshoppers and grubs). This method would work for birds, fish and tiny livestock. One of it's advantages is that you don't have to sit there and keep adjusting it, like you would with spit cooking. You can be building your shelter or checking your transpiration bags while dinner cooks.

Sue

I remember reading years ago about cooking a duck (or other bird I guess) by coating it in mud (after gutting it), feathers and all. It cooked, the mud hardened, when done you just cracked the mud open and pulled it away, it took the feathers with it, saving you the chore of plucking. Don't know if that really worked or not...

I apologize. I was being a little goofy when I mentioned the whole hog. <img src="/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

I guess what I was trying to get some information on was how long the thermal mass of dirt alone would hold the heat, and what the maximum size of any game caught could be cooked in this manner.

I've pit cooked with heated rocks, embers/coals and a mixture of the two, but never left only the dirt and the heat it absorbed to do the work.

My bad.

Anyway, I got an idea from your last post what size range the food could be to utilize this method. Thanks.

I heard about that, too, but my Mom's friend said he always gutted and plucked them, leaving the skin on. But he never mentioned being in any type of survival situation when he used this method. Maybe you could also burn the feathers off?

I wondered about the heat dissapation (sp?) in the soil also. But since he seemed to always be out rock hunting, from what I've seen of WY, it's darned dry, which may also be beneficial.

I've always meant to try this, but haven't done so. But since he had actually done it, I consider it a viable option. I've never been very good at BBQing... <img src="/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

Sue

"...burn the feathers off..."

Oh man, that might work, but I don' want to even think about what it might smell like. Yuk...

This little project has me intrigued, so I am doing some more googling.

This one pretty much takes pig cooking in the ground out of the reach of your average unprepared wannabe pig cooker, without a lot of equipment.

This one tells how to do it like they do in Hawaii (you bring the rum).

And this one actually talks about cooking birds in clay mud, feathers and all. But it does not give a whole lot of info. Guess some willing birds are required for some experimenting...

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