Outdoor cooking methods through the ages

There’s nothing like eating in the great outdoors, with campfire cooking being one of my favorite reasons for spending time in the wild. Cooking openly outside wasn’t always done for pleasure and it became necessary for people to develop ways of cooking food outdoors while on their travels. Over the ages, people have come up with some rather interesting outdoor cooking methods and some of these ancient techniques are still used in bushcraft today.

Open Fire cooking

There are many estimates of when humans were first able to produce controlled fires which range from 200,000 to 1.7 million years ago. The most commonly accepted theory is that our ancestors developed fire around 1 million years ago as traces of wood ash have been found at numerous excavation sites dating from this time suggesting controlled campfires. Cooking on an open fire would obviously be very basic and done by hanging food on sticks above the flames or placing food directly onto the hot ash. It wasn’t until late in the Neolithic period which began 12,000 years ago that people discovered how to make pottery, so anything cooked on a fire would be done so openly.

Steaming

Popular in tropical regions of the world or anywhere that bamboo grows, steaming can be done using either some kind of container or simply with moss. A fire is lit and after enough hot ash has formed a layer of wet moss is placed on the fire, then the fish or vegetables in the middle followed by another layer of moss. The moisture in the moss turns into steam and cooks the food while the moss protects it from direct contact with the flames or coals.

Bamboo works the same way but is much easier to control. A section of bamboo is cut so that one end is capped by one of the natural segments, and a plug is made for the other end. The food is placed inside the bamboo with a little water, then the plug is placed over the other end and the whole thing is then put onto some hot ash or over a small fire. The bamboo is strong enough to be able to stop the flames from burning through but gets hot enough to boil the water inside. This method is still used today but how old this method is will never be known.

Ground oven

A popular method of cooking meat and still used today in certain tribal areas, the ground oven is capable of cooking something as big as a large game animal and doesn’t require any maintenance after it is made. A hole is dug and lined with stones before a fire is started to heat the stones. When they are as hot as possible, the fire is scraped out and the food, usually wrapped in leaves to stop it from burning is placed on the hot stones before an airtight seal is built over the opening. The stone-lined oven bakes the meat and normally makes it nice and tender, or with fish, a little water is poured into the oven to help create some moisture and steam it slightly. As with bamboo and moss steaming, this method is impossible to date as nothing would be left to identify it as a ground oven, but it would be one of the cooking methods available to people during the Stone Age because no pottery or metal was required.

Smoking

One of the oldest methods of preserving meat ever used and is most likely much older than salting. Smoked meat can last for a few weeks if done correctly and provided the only method of making meat safe to eat for anyone on the move. Salt usually has to be mined or extracted from seawater, something unavailable to Stone Age people, but smoking takes nothing more than a stick-covered frame thatched with leaves or reeds to keep the smoke in, and placing some damp wood on the fire to create the smoke. There are cultures all over the world that have used smoking as the primary source of preserving their food.

Clay oven

The various cultures that use this method all seem to have their own version, with the best one being the Indian clay oven. In Europe, clay ovens were of a different style and almost always built outside, but they all worked in the same way. The oven is made of nothing more than clay and some kind of binder, like grass or reeds to help keep the clay together. A fire is lit in the center and the thick clay walls absorb the heat, staying hot enough to cook food for hours. They fell out of fashion across Europe when cast iron stoves and cookware came along, but in the Middle East and India, they are a very common thing to see.

Chuck Wagon

These became popular in the old west with cattle handlers and were hired to provide food for a team of people for weeks at a time. A chuck wagon is nothing more than a regular wagon converted to house more storage compartments and cookware. They followed the cattle handlers around the huge open plains of the Wild West as they herded thousands of cows across the land looking for ground to graze their animals on. The chuck wagon would simply set up whenever they made camp for the night and cook a meal for everyone, with the larger teams numbering around 30 people.

Field kitchen

Very popular during World War two, the field kitchen can provide a hot meal for up to 150 people. Most towable kitchens would have a volume capacity of at least 10 gallons and with a ratio of 1 pint of soup per person, that’s 80 pints per cook. The kitchens would often turn up with some soup made and a load of ingredients in a side box which allowed the first batch to be cooked off, then the ingredients put into the pots with some water and another batch made. Every nation during the war had its own version of the field kitchen, but they were all of similar style and most of the time only served soup or stew.

Self-contained stoves

Gas cooking and fuel block stoves are a relatively new invention, with the gas camping stove being patented in 1849, but they didn’t become popular until the early 1900s. The easiest way to cook food while out in the wild and a favorite with campers the world over, nothing beats the convenience of a hot surface at the press of a button. Even though they are very useful the wise bush crafter should never rely on such a device alone, as most aren’t made for long-term use in the wilderness, and knowing how to cook after the gas runs out or it breaks is a valuable skill to have.