View Full Version : Natural cooking pots
Bearing in mind that out ancestors wouldn't have had coffee cans and aluminium pots what would have been used for cooking in?
All I can think of is that you could try and wear a bowl into a rock and use that like a pot but that would obviously take a long time. I know birch bark is used for a lot of things but surely not for this as well?
Clay pots are obviously one answer but bark contaners were also used for boiling water in, not directly over the fire but by heating stones in the fire and the dropping the stones into the water filled bark contaner untill the water boiled
MartiniDave
16-06-2004, 09:57
Perhaps a nice carved wooden bowl or noggin?
Dave
May be leather? Same as the birch bark?
And bronze has been around for a long time...
Of course clay.... no idea how I didn't think of that :oops:
Carcajou Garou
16-06-2004, 15:36
Stuart is right on, birch bark, leather bags containers were used in this fashion as well as hollowed wood bowls. Also native people used to add hot stones to the inverted stomacs of animals they had just butchered for this very same purpose. I remember seeig where they (natives) gutted a pig and filled the cavity with hot stones and buried the carcass in ashes to cook the pig. Waited a few hours and voila steam roasted porc. One thing to make sure that the stones you use are devoid of water content (not river stones). Stones are somewhat permeable and will explode in a fire if water is present and they are heated to fast, dry stone through and through before using them as heating stones and condition all sizes for small critters as well.
P.S. don't eat the stones you will need them later. :lol:
just a thought
Yeah, saw that once on TV. They even put a few VERY hot stones on the skins to make crackling as well.
Made me VERY hungry watching that.
Justin Time
16-06-2004, 22:13
Vikings used ?soapstone to make bowls, or at least that's what I think I remember from an archeological programme from Shetland. They showed the sites where the bowls had been cut out, a relatively soft stone which could be worked by the metal of the time.
Keith_Beef
17-06-2004, 14:17
Vikings used ?soapstone to make bowls, or at least that's what I think I remember from an archeological programme from Shetland. They showed the sites where the bowls had been cut out, a relatively soft stone which could be worked by the metal of the time.
Soapstone is soft enough to carve easily and is very resistant to heat. Viking and Anglo-Norse smiths used a soaptone "doughnut" around the pipe of a pair of bellows to protect the wood and leather parts from the heat of the fire.
Keith.
Keith_Beef
17-06-2004, 14:24
Bearing in mind that out ancestors wouldn't have had coffee cans and aluminium pots what would have been used for cooking in?
All I can think of is that you could try and wear a bowl into a rock and use that like a pot but that would obviously take a long time. I know birch bark is used for a lot of things but surely not for this as well?
How far back to you want to go, when you mention "ancestors"?
Cast iron cooking pots, available today, have been used for centuries. Copper pots (probably tinned on the inside) have been used for centuries, too, and are still used for jam-making.
Before iron, there was bronze, maybe even brass. There's some quote about the Oracle of Delphi mentioning something along the lines of "there stirketh upon my sense the smell or turtle meat; brass is vessel below it and brass the cover above".
And clay. North africans have a pot called a "tajine" that you can put inside an oven, or on a small tripod over a fire.
Keith.
mr dazzler
04-09-2004, 20:49
I've read about kettles and cauldrons of rivetted bronze (assembled like steel plates on a ship) I think they were celtic or Scythian. I think clay reinforced with ground up sea shells or egg shells or sand has been used for aeons to make cooking pots. I think I saw somewhere about (I think) ancient Irish people who used the hot stones technique but in trenches dug in the peat with a wooden board lining to broil venison.
On a different note has anyone else ever boiled water in a regular paper bag over a fire?
MR D :wave:
Tantalus
04-09-2004, 20:55
On a different note has anyone else ever boiled water in a regular paper bag over a fire?
lol yes i have but everything above the water line burned off in a flash and it was impossible to remove the soggy bag full of boiling water from the fire without it self destructing
i guess i was just one of those kids who had to try it tho
Tant
mr dazzler
04-09-2004, 21:30
Hi there Tant,
Didn't yer rimmember to soke all ov't bag fust bifforr purrin'it on't fiyerr?
Mind you for the life of me I can't remember how I supported the bag "ovver't fiyerr"!! :?: (about 32 years ago)
MR D :wave:
Tantalus
04-09-2004, 21:36
oooooh is that one of the things i did wrong?
lol my idea of a campfire at that age involved several medium sized trees as well perhaps it was a bit of an ill fated mission
but it did boil :D
Tant
mr dazzler
04-09-2004, 23:02
Yes (grinning) I remember cooking eggs "instantly" over a raging blaze, and the entertainment was chucking hot boulders in the river and watching them boil. We did some daft things, but it was innocent fun. :roll:
MR D :wave:
On a different note has anyone else ever boiled water in a regular paper bag over a fire?
You lucky person.... we were given a candle in the cubs to do it :banghead:
:-)
Ed
Soapstone is soft enough to carve easily and is very resistant to heat. Viking and Anglo-Norse smiths used a soaptone "doughnut" around the pipe of a pair of bellows to protect the wood and leather parts from the heat of the fire.
Keith.
They also used to carve the bowls directly out of the rock outcrop rather than take lumps away. It needs firing before you use it - nothing sophisticated just a big fire over the bowls.
Anyone interested in an article on clay ? - I collect and prepare my own from the local geology.
Realgar
Anyone interested in an article on clay ?
Yes please :biggthump
Ed
mr dazzler
05-09-2004, 16:18
Yes that would be sound.
Clay extraction/preperation
Also types of firing/kilns??
Full works from extraction, processing, kiln building and firing - maybe glazing too. This might take a while, I'll grab my trowel and a placcy bag , there's a seam of white clay I've been meaning to try out.
Realgar
Sounds great, I can't wait. Is it going to be a forum article or are you going to do it for the website?
:-)
Ed
Sounds good - photos would add an extra level to it too! :-D
jamesdevine
06-09-2004, 09:33
Yep we Irish did dig trenchs and fill them with water and but hot rocks in it to boil the water and cook the food.
If I remeber correctly there is some theory that it was a method used by hunters as they are not always found in or near settlements. So they were used instead of pots etc.
I will have look and find some more info.
James
You can also line a hole in the ground with a fresh deer skin for example (hairy side out obviously) and use the hot rock method in that. You need to stake the hide out and leave plenty of slack as it'll shrink alarmingly. It's also best to not put the hot rocks directly onto the skin as they may burn through.
I also recollect reading somewhere that some soapstone contains asbestos. Is this true?
Roving Rich
06-09-2004, 14:07
Realgar - that would be great :biggthump its one of those thing that i have been wanting to do for years now, but not many people seem to know the whole process.
The other one i intend to make is a clay bread (well pizza really) oven.
look forward to reading it.
Cheers
Rich
jamesdevine
06-09-2004, 14:08
Found it. It's called a Fulacht Fiadh (cooking place in the wild) and was used by hunters while camping. According this site http://www.inhp.com/ the same campsites were used on a regular bases and they were usually near water marsh, river, lake etc.
The animal was skined and then the meat wrapped in straw. The water was brought to the boil by using heated rocks and the meat put in. Accord the tests at the heritage centre it takes 20mins per pound + 20 more pretty much like a modern oven. They don't say what meat they used do.
I have been here in Winter and was pretty dead but I have been told it's lot more active during the Summer.
James
mr dazzler
06-09-2004, 16:35
I can also remember seeing some travellers on tv in a desert being shown how to cook a sheep or goat in hot sand (Cant remember if theyd lit a fire among some stones first) :?: :wink: