Cooking with Boy Scouts

[stagis]

So - I recently resigned as Scoutmaster due to health problems and assumed my new post as Assistant Scoutmaster in Charge of Eating. Boy Scouts are 11-17 years old and their tastes are um, different than adults. My statement to them is that they can cook anything they eat at home over a fire. This includes, but is not limited to, open fires, charcoal, backpack stoves and Dutch ovens. They'll also use, on occasion, solar cookers, cardboard-box ovens (ask me some time) and other various weird implements.

My first lecture was "40 Ways to Die From Eating". I went over, basically, health and safety. "Though shalt not put chicken in your pack the Thursday before an outing" "Though shalt not eat anything unless it's clean" etc., etc. "If you eat this, you'll go to the hospital, then probably die." "If you eat this, you'll sit on the crapper until you die." "If you put this in a fire, it'll explode and you'll die before anyone can get to you." This is all basically tongue-in-cheek, but I was trying to impress on them the importance of cleanliness. I even made up a song:

Salmonella, salmonella, can we all sing Salmonella? (sung to the melody of Cinderella)

Anyway - I know that there's a zillion recipes out there on backpack sites, dutch oven sites, etc. But I feel it incumbent upon myself to at least check with the Gulleteers to see what ideas they can come up with. The idea here is that during the winter, we'll stay cold and can pack pretty-much any food we want. Weight is an issue as is water usage. The boys are told that their pack should weigh no more than 1/3 their body weight (which allows yours truly a 200-pound pack...just kidding). Water, at 8 pounds a gallon, is usually limited to 2 quarts. We don't allow water filters (to pull water from a stream) just because I don't want the boys to get into a 'gear race'.

When you delve into this area of cooking, things change: We're talking ingredients like Parmalat (sterilized milk), powdered whole eggs, dehydrated fried ground beef, etc. Techniques also: I've got a widget called a Bakepacker that's basically a grid I put into my backpack pot. Using a (I'm lazy) prepackaged muffin/cake recipe, I add dried milk if milk is called for, pack along a couple of packets of olive oil that I swiped from the local sandwich shop, put it in an oven roasting bag (the plastic kind), add water, the oil, smoosh it until it's mixed, then put into the Bakepacker to steam for 25 minutes. Simply grand on a cold winter morning.

Tamales can be steamed in an open fire by wrapping them in a wet paper towel and putting in the coals.

Awesome onion recipe (though boys don't like onions): Carve out some of the onion, drop a beef bouillion cube and a large pat of butter into the resulting hole, wrap in foil and put in the coals.

Did you know a Porterhouse looks great when stuck onto a stick and held over a bed of coals? Or that you can boil Poptarts (leave them in the foil pouch, please). If paid enough money, I'll share the recipe for omelet-in-a-Baggie.

Clean-up is an issue - boys don't clean, and with limited water, they have the perfect excuse.

So, Gulletanians: Any good ideas? What do boys like? What should I try myself? (hint, hint).

Shameless plug: Boy Scouts sell Trail's End popcorn as a fundraiser. It's the best microwave popcorn on the market, but stay away from the bagged stuff.

Thanks.......

[Miss J]

Bannock.

On sticks. Over a slow wood fire.

[bigbear]

I fondly remember "mickys." At least that's what we called baking potatoes that were cooked right in the coals of a campfire. We don't need no stink'n tinfoil.

[stagis]

unwrapped potatos...de rigeur :) Bannock...that works. Hmmm...

Things I've done:

Jerk pork

Beef jerky (just for the flavor - I wasn't preserving anything with a dozen hungry Scouts salivating around it)

Soup-to-nuts meal for a competition. This was my heaviest-ever backpack at around 70 pounds, but worth it.

Muffins

Biscuits

Cake

Pies

Lasagne on charcoal is easy.

[mamster]

When the conversation runs to cooking with Boy Scouts, I think the question on everyone's mind is: how do you slice Boy Scouts really, really thin?

[Saffy]

similar to bannock try aussie damper .. great as a loaf or on sticks with butter and jam pushed down the middle. Corn cobs rolled in foil and pushed into the embers of an open fire :)

[winodj]

Things I learned about cooking in boy scouts. You can't make toast by holding wonder bread over a coleman stove with a fork. Well you can, but it tastes like cooking gas. Spam is a malleable substance. Dutch Ovens are easy to forget about when you are cooking, and a pain in the rear to clean. Chili is an easy answer... but there's the clean up issue. I remember, occasionally, my mom and I would preprepare a cookout on a campout... and had some kick ass spaghetti dinners.

My question to you and your troop: Where are you camping? Is it a backwoods trek or at a site where water is available, like a boy scout camp?

Wino Dj, who somehow got eagle scout.

[stagis]

*grin* I've got an Eagle replying! Cool! (minor aside: my daughter brought home a BOY from college last weekend. Turns out he's an Eagle Scout - therefore, she's safe, right? Yeah, right.......)

We're camping mostly in state forests, which means, at least through November, water from hand-pumps. I've been teaching the boys to make use of available resources, so if there's water, they'll use it. However - even with water, will they remember a pot (or to ask my troop quartermaster for one) big enough to boil pasta in? Somehow, I think not....... I try to teach them to live out of their backpacks rather than hitting up the gear trailer for all the stuff they need. This limits cooking techniques to fire/grill and small-pot cooking, generally. I spent a year, after buying a really nice (and cheap!) pan set, cooking with a 1 pint metal cup and aluminum foil. I finally stopped bringing the pan, then resumed when I got the Bakepacker.

I think we've scared the gormays off with this thread. It isn't all THAT bad, except that I'm also trying to find out what boys will enjoy cooking, and then actually eat! This whole thread/problem started at an outing last year when one of my 12-year-olds showed up to cook his Saturday night dinner, which is usually the big meal of the weekend. He had a hot dog. I mean, just a hot dog! No roll, no nuthin'. I got a little cranky (Scoutmaster's prerogative) and, once I 'retired' as Scoutmaster, concentrated on getting this guys to actually think about what they were going to eat.

*grin* Cooking faux pas's from the past?

Heh - "Sure - I know how to make fried dough - let me handle it" (This from a 13-year-old). He heats up the oil in a Dutch oven, then drops the entire 2-pound blob of dough into it.

Me: "Nicholas - what did you bring for food this weekend?"

Nicholas: "Bacon"

Me: "What else?"

Nicholas: "Nuthin' - I like bacon"

The boy who said he was cooking 'spare ribs' for Saturday night dinner. I'm all proud of that, right? *sigh* He brings out the full rack of pre-packaged pre-sauced Lloyd's ribs - and plops 'em into his mess-kit frying pan.

"Has anyone seen my potato?"

Let's not talk about what happens when I bring Max, the world's fattest Labrador Retriever, on outings. He gets fatter - the boys get skinnier. "I told you guys to guard your food!" "I know, Mr. Stagis, but it was 6 feet up in that tree!"

Or the pyros cooking bacon on a griddle...........you only look when the crazed laughter starts disturbing your nap.

Remember - if you rub your sweet potato with butter, salt and pepper, wrap it in foil and put it in your pack Monday night, it'll be inedible/gross by Saturday night.

Bagged salad is heaven. The dressings that are prepackaged with them are not.

D'Angelo's Sandwich shops have foil packets of olive oil and lemon juice. Taco Smell has prepackaged hot sauces.

Wonder Bread smashes when put in a pack. If you want to make a sandwich for Saturday lunch, you probably don't need an entire loaf.

During my Tuesday night lecture, I challenged the boys to come up with something we couldn't make outside.

Souffle? I wouldn't mind impressing him.......but I'm a little clueless.

One of the boys also hit me with something "garbled la boeuf with real grapes" Any ideas?

Truffles - I swear. I told him we'd need to bring a pig.

PS - the boys will slice themselves really, really thin when there's more than one preparing dinner at a picnic table.

[PascalScheffers]

If they want to eat sandwitches why don't you let them make break on a stick. I remember having tons of fun with that. You only have to bring some flour, salt, dry yeast and find some water somewhere. Oh, and possibly something to mix it in, although any flat, clean surface should work. Of course, this will only work if it's warm outside, otherwise the dough won't rise properly. Just take some dough, turn it into a string and wind that 'round a stick (not dry sticks!) and hold it over the fire.

You can turn this into desert by adding some sugar to the dough and possibly some chocalate chips.

[winodj]

i wish that we had done that more often when i was a boy scout. but camping for the adults was not being able to take a shower in the morning. my dad was my scoutmaster for a while and if we camped close enough to home, he would go home every morning for an hour to shower.

The BSA puts out a lot of good publications with cooking ideas for teens and younger. It ain't no Gor-May.... but it'll feed the kids.

P.S. Don't shy away from making them do the dishes.... it builds character... and callouses. (The first time I went camping, they made us use sand since we forgot scouring pads!)

[CathyL]

If they want to eat sandwitches why don't you let them make break on a stick.

Yeah, bread on a stick is fun. Do I remember we did it with biscuit dough rather than yeast dough?? Easier to mix and no rising required. After you take it off the stick, fill it with butter and jam for breakfast.

No one's mentioned hobo packs: chicken, hamburger, sausages etc., sealed in foil with onions, peppers, catsup, potatoes and cooked in the campfire embers.

[winodj]

I remember those. They work pretty well, but how long would the meat keep in the foil?

[PascalScheffers]

Do I remember we did it with biscuit dough rather than yeast dough??  Easier to mix and no rising required.  

That could well be, the last time I did it was 15-18 years ago, when I wasn't yet paying attention to silly details like what you put in food :) But that does sound like a good/better idea, I can imagine half a dozen ways to kill a yeast dough, with biscuit there is a lot less chance of that happening.

Maybe you should give the younger ones the biscuit recipe and the older ones the yeast one. Just for fun, of course. And then make it a contest: who makes the better bread

As for the sealed hamburgers, et.al., I have even seen varieties that you don't even have to keep in the fridge. Most supermarkets do that anyway, to make them seem 'fresh'. Just check the packaging, that will usually say 'store at 20C' or something.

- Pascal