Welcome back to the Primitive Camping and Bushcraft Podcast! Join Chris Speir as he delves into various cooking methods for camping, from simple freeze-dried meals to elaborate open-fire cooking techniques. Discover how to cook safely and efficiently in the great outdoors to maintain your health and energy.
Introduction:
Cooking Essentials:
Cooking Methods:
Cooking Equipment:
Primitive Cooking Tools:
Safety Tips:
Conclusion:
(upbeat music)
- Welcome back to the Primitive Camping
and Bushcraft Podcast.
My name is Chris Speir,
and I'm gonna be your guide
to enjoying the great outdoors.
Have you ever sat and wondered,
like, which way is the
best way to cook your food
when you're camping?
Are you a person that's
like, "I'm the easy guy.
I just wanna warm some
water up, throw some dehydrator
or some freeze-dry food in there."
Are you the kind that
wants to build a stove
and cook stuff over an
open fire and all that?
Well, today we're gonna take a deep dive
into various cooking methods,
and we're gonna show
you different techniques
for whenever you're
out in the woods camping.
Don't forget to pick
up your copy of my book,
"Primitive Camping and Bushcraft."
It's available at all
major online retailers,
and don't forget to
join the Facebook group,
Primitive Camping and Bushcraft,
where you can get in on the discussion.
So let's dig in.
Now, cooking is the
final chapter of the book,
and so like I stated before,
we're gonna go all the
way back to the beginning,
and we're gonna just pick
one little thing at a time
and take a real deep dive
into it from here on out.
I wanted to do a real
quick 30,000 foot flyover
and just show you guys all
the contents of the book.
But today, we're going to discuss the
importance of cooking
whenever you're camping,
or when you're in the great outdoors,
or whatever situation you're in,
your hiking, backpacking camp,
and you're doing a
backcountry trip, whatever.
So cooking is essential
for health and energy,
and it helps you
maintain your nutrient levels,
and it helps you maintain your energy,
and also it keeps you from getting sick,
and it keeps all the
diseases and everything away.
Now, the benefits of
cooking your own food
versus relying on prepackaged foods
is the fact that
prepackaged foods weigh a ton.
I'm not discouraging
you from bringing them.
If you wanna bring them, go ahead.
Every once in a while,
I slip a can of spam,
or a can of Vienna
sausage, or something like that
in my backpack whenever I'm heading out,
just to break up the
monotony, add a little flavor,
add a little bit of
something different, you know?
And then, but the
benefits of cooking your own food
is also, it keeps you
entertained, not entertained,
but it keeps you busy.
It keeps your mind from wandering off,
you know, stuff like that.
It allows you to concentrate on tasks
and helps you just really to unplug,
and it's really a
great aspect of camping.
Now, the main thing that
you need to be aware of
is cooking temperatures.
So, one of the most
important things to remember
when you're out in the woods
and you cook foods that you brought,
or you cook foods that you procured,
or you cook, you
know, if you were hunting
and you dispatched an animal for dinner,
you know, cooking temperatures are
extremely important.
And so, I wanted to go
over the cooking temperatures
real quick before we start getting
into different cooking methods.
So, if you want to be extra cautious,
you can bring a small food
thermometer with you, you know?
But, generally, you know,
if you just cook your food
until it's way overdone, you
ain't gonna have a problem.
But, you know, beef, pork, veal, lamb,
and roasts and stuff like
that is gonna be 145 degrees.
You wanna cook it to 145 Fahrenheit,
or 62.8 degrees Celsius.
Any kind of ground
meats, you wanna cook them
to about 160 degrees
or 71.1 degrees Celsius.
Birds, any kind of poultry,
you wanna cook your poultry
until it's 165 degrees, and
that's 73.9 degrees Celsius.
All poultry, breasts, whole birds, legs,
thighs, wings, ground meat, giblets,
and stuffing has to be
165 degrees Fahrenheit,
or 73.9 degrees Celsius.
Eggs, you wanna cook them to 160 degrees,
and that's 71.1 degrees Celsius.
Fish and shellfish is
a little bit different.
You wanna cook them to
145 degrees Fahrenheit,
that's 62.8 degrees Celsius,
and that goes to the same temperatures
for frogs and snakes.
And, now, the reason
why I threw them in there
is because I do routinely catch frogs,
and I have eaten snakes,
and those items right there
are gonna be cooked to 145 degrees.
Dutch ovens are great, but they're heavy.
You can have an aluminum Dutch oven,
which I have cooked
off of many Dutch ovens,
aluminum Dutch ovens, and they have,
I've cooked Armadillo in
one, I've cooked Bossel in one,
I've cooked all kinds
of stuff in Dutch ovens.
Skillets, logs, rocks, open coals,
you can actually throw
food onto the open coals,
and you rake your coals
to the side of your fire
and place your pot and
pan directly on the coals,
or you could just throw
your food on the coals.
I've seen a lot of
people, they will take steaks,
they will rake the coals out to the side,
they will throw them
steaks out there on them coals,
and they'll cook it, and
then they'll flip it over
a little bit later and cook it again.
And to me, it is a little
gritty, I've done it before,
and it's just got a lot of grit on it,
I don't like a lot of grit,
but not well to each their own.
You don't have a pot or pan.
But anyway, pots and
pans are very important.
One of the things, I've
discussed this in the water section,
that pots and pans are
essential items to carry with you
in the woods, a metal
container is one of the most
important things that
you're ever gonna carry with you
in the woods, and so if
you're gonna have a pot and pan
with you, or a metal container with you,
you might as well bring
some sort of small pot,
or some small pan, or
something to that effect.
And they don't weigh a lot,
you can get them in aluminum,
you can get them in titanium,
you can get them in stainless,
and stainless steel is gonna be the
heaviest option there.
Titanium pots are incredibly lightweight,
and they come in various sizes.
Titanium is usually
used for smaller cookware,
such as cups and lightweight pots,
and is ideal for boiling water.
And they're perfect for
reconstituting freeze dried foods.
Aluminum, and aluminum has
anything from 24 quart pots,
and bigger, and they're a
very lightweight option.
And these things, I mean, I've got pots
up at the restaurant
that I've used that are
completely made out of aluminum,
and these things are huge.
You could four gallons
of gumbo in it at a time,
four or five gallons.
You know, and aluminum
is a lightweight option
that has been a camper
go to for a long time.
Aluminum tends to have fewer hot spots.
Now titanium has a
lot of hot spots in it,
but aluminum has a
little bit less hot spots.
And all a hot spot
is, is where, you know,
it gets hotter in certain
areas before it does the other.
So the metal might be a little thinner,
and it generates a little hot spot there.
So depending on the
pot style and thickness,
it cooks food more
evenly, the aluminum will.
Now, moving on over,
we have stainless steel.
Stainless steel is very
prevalent in the camping world.
You know, you got the Pathfinder,
Tenet stainless steel skillets,
that's pretty much
everybody's seen those days.
You got stainless steel
pots and pans and bush pots
and what do they call them?
Belly pots and stuff like that.
You know, stainless steel is much heavier
than titanium and aluminum,
but it is durable and dependable,
making it perfect for
using it in the woods.
And, you know, one of the
things about stainless steel
is that it's pretty, it's
not very difficult to clean.
You know, a lot of people
make fun of me because I will,
I'll tell them that I
could bring some steel wool
to start a fire in the woods,
but really what I'm
bringing the steel wool for
is to clean my stainless steel pots.
You know, in the event
that something happens,
you know, you're going to,
you can start a fire with it,
but steel wool is perfect to
clean your stainless steel,
your aluminum, your
titanium, all that, you know,
whenever you get out there in the woods
and your food sticks,
stainless is notorious
for having food stick to it.
It's very, it's very heavy.
It does have some hot spots to it,
but it is very robust
and it lasts a long time.
Now there's another one, cast iron.
Cast iron is not the go-to,
is not the go-to thing
for camping and hiking
and stuff like that,
because I'm telling you right now,
cast iron is heavy.
And you know, you get
a, I got a two-quart pot
and I made an example
of it in the book here.
I got a two-quart pot and
it weighs over seven pounds.
And this two-quart pot, iron pot,
weighs more than seven pounds,
making it pretty
impractical for hiking in the woods.
If you're trying to mind your weight
and you're trying to
walk a long distance,
that seven pounds is
going to tear you up.
Now enamelware is
where they did some kind
of a porcelain coat of
steel and it's good stuff.
It's lightweight.
It does get some hot spots in it,
but not as much as
regular stainless steel.
And stuff does stick to it,
but the problem with that
is, is once porcelain cracks,
if you drop it and it cracks there,
it will start
chipping off into your food.
That's the only difficult,
the only disadvantage, not difficult,
but disadvantage to the enamelware.
It's not really, it's not
as heavy as stainless steel.
I don't know how to describe it,
but it's roughly the
equivalent in weight to stainless steel.
And that's what I put right here.
And it is somewhat more stick
free than regular stainless,
especially if you
have some kind of grease
or some oil or something
like that to line the pot with
and then throw your food on like that.
I recommend only using
these pots over the coals
because they are going to crack
if you get them
extremely hot over open flames.
So moving on, we're
going to go to stoves,
ovens and grills.
Wood burning stoves are amazing.
I've used a wood burning stove for years.
My favorite one is a $24,
just wood burning stove off of Amazon.
And it folds open like a book
and you put your little grill on top
and I cook many of
pots of beans on there.
And I describe it and I
show it a lot in the book.
But wood burning stoves are a fantastic
weight to value ratio
and you can use them to
cook food anywhere you go
and you don't have to carry
extra weight of fuel sources
because you can use
leaves, you can use twigs,
you can use trash if you got to.
Anything that are
burned can be a fuel source
and twigs, sticks, pine cones.
And over the years I've
cooked on an untold number
these wood stoves and I
can't tell you how many pounds
of beans, red beans I've cooked.
Red beans and stoves
are typically what I cook
when I go into the woods
and because they're easy
to cook, they're lightweight
and they're very nutritious
and they have a lot of protein in them.
Propane and butane stoves.
Now the jet boils come on the scene
and everybody wants a jet boil,
everybody wants to use the jet boils.
And I'm like, yeah, that's great.
But they really like, if
you're just trying to heat up
some coffee or some water real quick
so you can throw in
some freeze drive food,
that jet boils is the way to go.
But it's extra weight
is sometimes not really
what you're looking for,
because you got 24 ounce cans of propane,
you got 3.9 ounce, eight ounces, 16 ounce
and you can actually find
24 ounce cans of propane
and they weigh a lot and those,
you really don't want that
extra weight in your pack.
If you're not gonna carry
extra weight with pots and pans,
why are you gonna do it with a stove?
Sometimes, sometimes, listen to me,
there's gonna be places
where that's the only option
that you have is propane.
Now I get it, I understand.
But down here in the south,
the southeast and
west, the United States,
where it's relatively
warmer environments,
unless you're way up in
the top of the mountains,
you're not gonna need a propane stove.
Not that I'm against it,
I'm really not against it.
I just personally prefer
not to carry a propane stove.
I have before and it was great,
but it was just extra
weight that I could have used
in a wood burning stove.
Now, here's the thing
between a wood burning stove
and a propane stove.
If a propane stove, wood burning stove
or essentially if there's
a fire band or something,
they're considered stoves,
you can still cook on them,
you can still use them.
If there's a fire band,
you cannot dig and trench
and start a fire in the national forest
or anything like that and say,
"Hey, look, I'm cooking on here,"
because there's a fire
band, you can't do it.
But if you got a stove,
you can actually use that
stove during a fire band.
So there is a thing
called a bedroll stove in here
and essentially what it is, is
lightweight, is convenient,
it's a complete cooking
system that comes in a single bag
that can be rolled up in your bedding,
hence the name, the bedroll stove.
They use this a lot during the Civil War
and so they made them out of wrought iron
and it was just a cook system
that you shove it into the ground
and you made a hook and
a hanging system over it
where it hangs your pots over the fire
and you can raise it, lower it
and you can adjust your
temperature with that.
They had different
variations that they use.
Now the bush pot is one amazing item.
And it can be used for so many things.
I use my bush pots for
cooking, for fetching water.
I use them for stoves, I mean for ovens
to cook biscuits and stuff like that.
Now I've done a video out
there on my YouTube channel.
I've done this video where I
went out and I made biscuits
and I made biscuits
with my freeze-drive meal
and I used the bush pot as an oven,
put that biscuit in
there and it was pretty good.
It was real good,
actually the puppy dog loved it.
I took one of my dogs,
William and Camp in that time.
Now packable grills,
they got all kinds of
packable grills on the market today.
You got the ones that are made out of
stainless steel wire,
you got the ones that's just
made out of just regular steel,
then you got the titanium
grills and stuff like that.
Now these grills, once you burn them,
especially the carbon steel grills,
once you burn it,
it's gonna start rusting,
but you have to continuously,
everybody's seen a barbecue pit.
Once you cook on it a couple of times,
it's gonna start rusting
and you gotta scrape it off,
clean it off, no matter what it is,
you're gonna have to clean it.
But these packable grills are real cool
and I have a couple that I take with me,
the legs just fold out, you
dig a little hole in the ground,
you put that grill on top of the hole,
you light your fire under
there and you're good to go,
you got yourself a little stove
and you can do you one or two of those,
cook you two different
things, two different items,
whatever you want.
If you got a big fire,
you could just rake you
some coals to the side,
put that grill over
the top and it adjusts
and allows you to
either raise it or lower it,
depending on what you need.
And those grills are pretty cool,
I cover those in the book extensively.
And if you're going like,
let's say you're using a boat,
some kind of
conveyance like an ATV or a boat
or something to get way
back up into the woods
and you're gonna have like
a little camp right there,
it's gonna be feasible for
you to bring a large grill,
you could bring a larger grill with you
and you can set that puppy
up over your fire or whatever,
because you got
something to haul it with,
you're not having to
haul it in your backpack.
And one of the things
that I do all the time
is I'll camp on the river,
I'll load my stuff in the boat
and I'll just drive down
the river for a mile or two
or more than that,
I got a couple little camping spots
that are way away from the boat launches
and deep into the woods.
And I'll just bring
my boat, park my boat,
get out there, walk to the camp,
a hundred yards or so off of the river
and I'll just set up camp.
And that's my favorite place to camp
is out there on the
river, it's just amazing stuff.
But depending on what you're doing,
you're not gonna be hauling
stuff around in your backpack.
So let's move on to
primitive cooking tools and methods.
So primitive cooking
tools are gonna be like,
setting up the pot
hooks and stuff like that.
You can set up a pot hook
where you cut out a pot hook notch
and then put you up a support that'll
hold the weight of it
and you can hang your
pot on the bottom of it.
And all these things are in here
and you can cook over direct flames.
I don't know if you can see that too well
for those of you watching the video,
but you could cook over direct flames
with your pot cream.
A pot cream is easy,
it is extremely easy.
You could use it to cook you a chicken
or cook you some kind of
meat, a fish, whatever,
over to open flames and,
or you can put a notch in there
and put your bail on there
and just hang your pot over the fire.
And that is the most common way
to actually cook food over
fires by using a pot cream.
And a lot of people do it
and they don't even
know what it's called.
And me, I use what's
called an adjustable pot crane.
I've started using one of
these a while back where,
excuse me, where it's just
like one, two, three sticks.
One's got a V in it or a Y
and I'll lash it together
with a stop stick on top
and put it up against a pole
that is driven into the ground.
And this pole is the vertical support
and you're able to put a notch at the end
and adjust where it goes.
You can raise it, lower it, move it left,
move it right on and off of the fire
and you could cook your food.
You can adjust the temperature.
So it doesn't matter
how hot your fire is,
you can raise it up and down.
And I got the full demonstration
on how to build that thing right here
in the book "Premitive
Camping in Bushcraft."
Now, one of the easiest
methods that everybody uses,
I mean, a lot of people have used this.
I can't say everybody,
but one of the
easiest methods is a tripod.
I mean, just plain and
chiple, plain and chiple.
(laughs) Plain and chiple.
Plain and simple, a tripod.
Tripods have been used
to cook for centuries.
They're easy to make and easy to use.
They have multiple uses beyond cooking,
making them a versatile
item to keep around the camp.
So you can make you a tripod
and you can make a tripod, build a chair.
You can make a tripod, two tripods
and make it to where you can build a bed.
You can use a couple of
tripods to make water filters.
You can use tripods.
Tripods are just so versatile.
You could use them for almost anything.
And then, it's easy to make them
and they're perfect
for hanging your food.
You could use them for smokers.
You can make smokers with them.
You can catch your fish and
hang you some fish inside there,
light you a small fire on the bottom
and just let the smoke come through.
And you can line it
with some, what, a blanket
or a tarp or something like that.
Or you can just use natural branches
and leaves and stuff like that
from trees and down stuff out there.
Now, open fire roasting is
one of the most primitive way
to cook.
People have done open fire roasting
just by using a pot crane.
It's just a little higher.
You could put it on a spit
and you can make this,
stretch it out across your fire,
put it on there, put
whatever food you're doing
you just rotate it
around over and over and over.
And it is one of the
easiest ways to cook food.
But remember when we opened up,
you have to make sure your
food is cooked to temperature.
That way you don't get sick.
You don't wanna get sick.
So, all right.
Now, let's see, we did the tripods,
stuff like that, vegetables.
Now, let's go over
different types of food
that you'll be cooking in these things.
You got meats that is
very important for you
to cook your meat thoroughly.
And you want to have different ways
to flavor your meat, marinade your meat.
And I have the
ultimate is Lipton onion soup.
Lipton onion soup mix is lightweight,
is very convenient to carry.
It comes in its own little pouch.
And you can go ahead and cover your meat
with that, you can
flavor your beans with that.
You can flavor anything with that.
You can, and it will make anything good.
Anything tastes good, you know?
And then you could even make
a vegetable soup out of it.
You know, you could cook your food
and throw it in there with the vegetable,
Lipton onion soup mix.
Golly, I'm getting tongue tied.
So, Lipton onion soup mix is amazing.
One of the last things
I want to go over here
will be safety tips.
Fire safety and regulations.
Make sure you're, unless you're in a
complete survival
situation, which, you know,
if I was in a survival mode,
I wouldn't care about
rules and regulations.
But fire safety, you don't want to catch
the whole world on fire.
You know, you want to be
safe whenever you're out there.
Go ahead, dig you a trench.
You know, and they done
studies that the fire rings
that people want to put,
that's for your safety,
not for the whole woods is safety.
That's for your safety of mind.
And, you know, fire rings
are not really that safe.
They really don't contain the fire.
Because usually what happens is the fire
is going to blow an ember,
which is going to come up
and land somewhere else and catch
everything else on fire
way away from the safety
ring that you put around
for your, you know, peace of mind.
That's the word I was
looking for was peace of mind.
Now, make sure you safe handle it.
If you handle your raw foods,
make sure you wash your hands,
especially when you're out in the woods.
And if you have a first aid kit,
you should have a little bit
of hand sanitizer in there,
unless you didn't bring one
with you, but wash your hands.
If you handle raw foods
when you're in the woods,
wash your hands
because it is extremely easy
for you to touch that raw food
and then put something in
your mouth, touch your mouth.
You will not, you would
not believe how many times
you actually touch your
mouth and you never realize
you put your nasty
diseased hands in your mouth.
So wash your hands after
touching any kind of food.
Let me go over just a
couple little things
that you might want to bring with you.
Aluminum foil, aluminum foil is amazing.
Aluminum foil is fantastic item to have
on hand for cooking.
And you place your fresh catch of the day
with some vegetables in
the foil and double it over.
And that stuff, if you
throw it next to your fire
and it'll cook it,
steam it from the inside.
And I mean, that stuff is amazing.
Then you want to bring
you some camp utensils.
There's a million different
types of utensils out there.
One that I've found that I was given
as a Christmas present here recently
is called the survival spork.
And I showed that one
in the book as well.
And what it does is it pulls apart.
You have the spork and it
pulls and it have a knife
and it pulls again, you got a ferro rod
and you can start a fire.
So it's an all in one survival item.
And that thing is pretty cool.
And I've used it on a campit trip before
and it's pretty cool.
But you want to make sure
you have different items
for different things.
Essential, why not always essential,
aluminum foil can make camping easier.
And that's what it's all about
is trying to make camping easier,
making it more fun,
making it more enjoyable.
And that's what all this stuff is for.
You don't really have to have anything
that I mentioned in here.
You could do it the
way you want to do it.
But what I'm trying to get
at is that there's no one way.
Every way is, any way is the right way.
There's no wrong way you
could do it any way you want.
All right guys, that's
gonna be it for this episode.
And we're gonna circle
back around in the next one.
We're gonna start over
at the very beginning
and we're gonna pick one item
and we're gonna talk about that one item
and different
experiences with that one item.
We're gonna be basing
this off of the book,
Primitive Camping the Bushcraft.
And go ahead and pick
your coffee up right now.
It's gonna sell on
Amazon for like 16 bucks.
It's actually a pretty good little deal.
It's like 15, 20%
off, something like that.
And then you can pick it up
on any kind of major outlet,
major retail outlet,
Barnes and Noble, Walmart,
Target, any of those right there.
So hopefully you enjoyed this episode
and don't forget to
join the Facebook group,
Primitive Camping the Bushcraft.
And I'll see you in the next episode
and the next video, God bless you.
(upbeat music)