Natural cooking pots

[MarkG]

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?

 

[Stuart]

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]

Perhaps a nice carved wooden bowl or noggin?

Dave

 

[jakunen]

May be leather? Same as the birch bark?
And bronze has been around for a long time...

 

[MarkG]

Of course clay.... no idea how I didn't think of that

 

[Carcajou Garou]

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.
just a thought

 

[jakunen]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

Tant

 

[mr dazzler]

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:

 

[Ed]

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


Ed

 

[Realgar]

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

 

[Ed]

Anyone interested in an article on clay ?

Yes please :biggthump

Ed

 

[mr dazzler]

Yes that would be sound.
Clay extraction/preperation
Also types of firing/kilns??

 

[Realgar]

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