EVERY SCOUT MUST, OF COURSE, know how to cook his own meat and vegetables, and to make bread for himself, without regular cooking utensils.
Cooking Meat
Meat may be cooked by sticking it on sharp sticks and hanging it close to the fire, so that it gets broiled. Or use the lid of an old cake tin as a kind of frying-pan. Put grease in it to prevent the meat from sticking.
Or make Kabobs: Cut your meat up into a slice about half or three-quarters of an inch thick. Cut this up into small pieces about one to one and a half inches across. String a lot of these chunks on to a stick or iron rod, and plant it in front of the fire, or suspend it over the hot embers for a few minutes till the meat is roasted.
Meat can also be wrapped in a few sheets of wet paper, or in a coating of clay, and put in the red-hot embers of the fire, where it will cook by itself.
Hunter’s Stew—Cut lean meat or game into small chunks about an inch or one and a half inch square. Mix some flour, salt, and pepper together, and rub your meat well in it. Brown it in a little fat in the pot, shuffling the pot so as to sear, but not burn the surfaces of the meat. Add clean water, and hang pot high over the fire. It is important that the water should not boil hard, but merely simmer. Later add cut up vegetables, such as potatoes, carrots and onions. The water should just cover the food—no more. Cook until tender.
Cooking Birds and Fish
Birds and fish can be cooked in the same manner. A bird is most easily plucked immediately after being killed. But there is no need to pluck it before cooking it in clay, as the feathers will stick to the clay when it hardens in the heat, and when you break it open the bird will come out cooked, without its feathers, like the kernel out of a nutshell.
Another way is to clean out the inside of a bird, get a stone about the size of its inside, and heat it till nearly red hot. Place it inside the bird, and put the bird on a gridiron, or on a wooden spit over the fire.
Fire Places
Usually a Scout has his own pot or “billy” or camp kettle. In that you can boil water or cook your vegetables or stew your meat.
To cook in your pot, you can either stand it on the ends of the logs of a star fire (where it may fall over unless care is taken), or, better, stand it on the ground among the hot embers of the fire. Or rig up a tripod of three green poles over the fire, tying them together at the top, and hanging the pot by a wire or chain from the poles.
Even better, make a fire place of two lines of sods, bricks, thick logs, or stones. The lines should be flat at the top and about six feet long, four inches apart at one end and eight inches at the other—the big end toward the wind.
A fire place may be made of two lines of sods, bricks, thick logs, or stones. Place or hang your pots over it.
Then you should make your own pot hooks and hangers for holding your cooking pots over the fire. The sketch shows some of the ways of doing this.
Here are a number of suggestions for keeping your camp kitchen in good shape and for maki ng your cooking work easier.
Cooking Hints
When boiling a pot of water on the fire, do not jam the lid on too firmly. When the steam forms inside the pot, it must have some means of escape. To find out when the water is beginning to boil, you need not take off the lid and look, but just hold the end of a stick or knife to the pot, and if the water is boiling you will feel the pot trembling.
Oatmeal Porridge—Pour into a pot one cup of water for each person. Add a pinch of salt for each cup. When the water boils, sprinkle oatmeal in it while stirring with a stick or large spoon. The amount of oatmeal depends upon whether you want the porridge thick or thin. Simmer the porridge until it is done, stirring all the time.
Don’t do as I did once when I was a tenderfoot. It was my turn to cook, so I thought I would vary the dinner by giving them soup. I had some pea-flour, and I mixed it with water and boiled it up, and served it as pea-soup. But I did not put in any stock or meat juice of any kind, I didn’t know that it was necessary or would be noticeable. But they noticed it directly, called my beautiful soup a “wet pea-pudding”, and told me I might eat it myself—not only told me I might, but they jolly well made me eat it. I never made
the mistake again.
Hay-box Cooking
Hay-box cooking is the best way of getting your cooking done in camp, as you only have to start it and the hay- box does the rest. You can then go out and play your camp games with the other fellows, and come back to find that your dinner has cooked itself—that is, if you started it right. If you didn’t— well, you won’t find yourself very popular with the Patrol!
This is how you start it: Get a wooden box. Line it with several thicknesses of newspaper at sides and bottom, then fill it with hay or more newspapers; pack this all tight with a space in the middle for your cooking pot. Plenty of hay below as well as round the pot. Make a cushion packed with hay for the top, or a thick pad of folded newspapers.
Get your stewpot full of food, and as soon as it is well on the boil, pop it into the hay-box. Pack the hay or paper tight round it and over it, put on the covering pad, and jam down the lid with a weight on it.
Meat will take four or five hours to cook in this way. Oatmeal you should boil for five minutes, and leave in bay- box all. night. It will be ready for your early breakfast.
Bread Making
“The three B’s of life in camp are the ability to cook bannocks, beans, and bacon.”
