How do you know when they are done?
Beans are done when they are soft. If they have any crunch in them at all they will be harder to digest and make you fart.
Is this good for all beans?
I’ve only tried it with Pintos, Black, and Beans. It should work with similar beans. I don’t know if it would work well with Lima or Fava beans. Let me know if you experiment how it turns out. Also I like to salt the water when I cook for storage.
I have cooked chickpeas and lentils before; that’s about it. Other kinds of beans (black, kidney, fava, etc.) I buy canned (generally to save time), though I suppose there are situations where I’d want dried beans, like camping or bulk storage.
Chickpeas (garbanzo beans) definitely abide by your instructions. 
Soak them about 12 hours, then simmer for 2.5 hours (or otherwise until they are “done”).
Lentils are very different. You don’t have to soak them, but you do have to rinse them very well. They are boiled for anywhere between 25-45 minutes (depending on the type of lentil). But maybe lentils don’t really count as a bean, being a legume.
From the Repurposing Dead Cars thread (with jhereg’s compliments):
solar oven: lay a tire flat on the ground, put a dish w/ food in the center, lay glass on top. do it in the morning when clear weather is expected.
Revivification, inspired by this post:
[quote=“BlueHeron, post:14, topic:543”]From the Repurposing Dead Cars thread (with jhereg’s compliments):
solar oven: lay a tire flat on the ground, put a dish w/ food in the center, lay glass on top. do it in the morning when clear weather is expected.[/quote]
This idea got me thinking…mainly about never wanting to taste tire (again). But also how to build a natural/earth/cob/whatever solar oven. Sort of a synthesis between a wood-fired traditional oven and a solar box cooker. Basically, you’d mound up some sort of clay mixture as you might an oven, but instead of enclosing it just make it so a piece of glass caps it. You could make it as insulated – on the sides anyway – as you wanted, perhaps mix some carbon black to darken the mixture for better heat absorption.
I wonder if it would get hot enough to cook without extra solar collectors. Probably not, but it might be fun to experiment with this summer.
So, about cast iron… yesterday I bought a used c-i skillet at a thrift store. It had been cleaned, probably with soap, there was no grease/oil anywhere on it.
It looks like there are some small patches where it’s oxidizing; I don’t know if that was the result of the cleaning, or if the previous owner just didn’t take care of it at all, or what. I figured it was still good, that I could sand/scrape those patches off with steel wool and then season it properly.
But I am not at all sure – I know next to nothing about cast iron. I just know that you never clean it with soap and water; only wipe it out. Any tips on how to re-season the thing?
It’s been a long time since I had an iron pan that needed seasoning.
For a brand new one you need to get the oil that it’s shipped with off of it. So wash it in a good degreasing dish detergent maybe scour with an SOS pad or something and dry.
If I remember correctly you want to heat up the pan till warm then oil it all over. I’d probably use whatever kind of oil I usually cook with :-.
Now put the pan in the oven at about 250 and leave it there till the oil seems to have soaked in or dried off some. Do that a couple of times then start cooking with it. It will get better the more you use it.
Wash in plain warm water (no soap) and dry.
Same directions for a good steel wok, which by the way is another great multi purpose cooking vessel. Forget the stainless or teflon woks, crap.
They are the best kind of pan to use. All our frying pans are cast iron. We have a cast iron pot that we use for popcorn that is great! It heats slowly and evenly and cools the same way. Popcorn popped in bear fat will knock your socks off. mmm mmm mm.
Wow, I never would have thought to “cook” it in the oven. OK. Thanks.
The popcorn sounds delicious. Where do you get your bear fat? I don’t think there’s any way to get it in Seattle unless I knew someone who hunts for bears.
I work for a meat cutter during hunting season and I can get bear fat there. Either from trimmings off the meat or from fleshing it off of hides that are getting tossed.
Some people actually hunt bears for the meat and don’t want the rug.
Hmm, there are not too many other people in this world who can claim that as a job perk.
Hah, yeah I guess not. I also get all the brains, all the moose bones a person could ever want, a couple hundred deer legs, a pile of antlers and all the skins 8)
I think what most of us are wondering is: where can I get a job like that?
Find the meat cutters that cut wild game in your area. Not that many young people are wanting to learn to butcher and cut meat nowadays. During the hunting season some of those guys are totally swamped and need help. It’s a great skill to learn. Usually there is a big season then it ends. So your not looking at any long term commitment, but you can learn a lot in a short time from some of those oldtimers.
I love cutting meat and hearing the hunting stories.
Hmmm, when my family gets a pig from a local farm, we take it to a butcher a couple towns away. Now that I think about it, I think he does game too. I should check with him.
I love cutting meat and hearing the hunting stories.
I do too! Deer hunting is a big tradition in Wisconsin and in my family. In my early twenties I could never figure out why my cousins and friends (They were close to my age) mostly enjoyed just hunting the deer. After harvesting one they ended up taking the deer to a local butcher or just giving it away. They hated cutting them up.
For me hearing the stories and cutting up the deer was just as important. Some of the fondest memories I have of my grandfather were during those moments. I wouldn’t trade them for anything.
Take care,
Curt
The Zalabiyeh Bedouin use this method:
Find a big ol oildrum barrel, dig a hole in the sand big enough for the barrel to fit inside ( takes a while, I helped dig a few for a camp once) , and when the hole is dug put the barrel in.
To cook, start a fire inside, let it burn till it’s almost all coals and then place a cover on it. They use a big metal bowl placed upside down to fit overtop or the top of an oil drum flattened a bit for the cover, but you could use any circular piece of iron or steel that was hammered to the right shape I would think.
They place the food on a sort of circular grate that is a few inches smaller in diameter than the barrel so it fits nicely inside the barrel and the bottom rests on the top of the coals. The meat and veggies are placed on this grate, seasoned and then placed on the grate, the grate is placed in the barrel and then it is covered with the cover.
Then sand is shoveled on top of the cover so it is completely covered. Several hours later, the sand is brushed off with a broom, the cover opened, and the grate removed, steam rushes out revealing the barbequed/pit cooked meat and vegetables.
The tourists who have never ate pit-cooked meat before frequently say that it’s the best tasting chicken they have had and so on, it lends a superior flavor to most other methods of roasting , IMO.
This method of pit cooking/earth oven roasting in the sand is called zaerb. Other times meat is just broiled directly on the coals of an open fire or boiled but the zaerb is more practical for roasting a large amount of meat for lots of people while allowing one to concentrate on other tasks (such as preparing other food) until the meat is ready to be taken out of the pit.
Here’s a pic to better illustrate:
Whoah! Great picture. :o
Cookind depend primarily on 2 things.
How many are you cooking for?
What will you be cooking?
For a small group eating primarily meats and large veggies, you can simply cook the right on a fire. If it’s small pieces, soups are better.
For large groups, combinations are better. Both fire roasted meats, roasted large veggies and small vefggies/grains boiled.
WOKS are one of the MOST versitile cooking items!
you can fry, boil, steam, etc… and they were designed to be efficient.
the shape makes them easy to use in the wild, you can just set them right on a bed of coals, or push coals up around them. They balance well on uneven rocks, and provide a versitile cook serfice allowing multiple types of cooking at once.
Look up Cooking with Woks.
Woks are also easy to make!