| 6th Bramshill (Hawley) Scouts |
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The Saga of the Slow Cooked Stew
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No wood fires were allowed in the camping area and that meant we had to cook over gas stoves. We bought a bucket barbecue to adapt as a make shift stove to try out the exercise. A lot of 'survival' books tell of different ways to cook food with the minimum amount of energy. Perhaps the best known is the hay-box method where the food is heated and buried in a pit in the ground lined with hay or other insulating material. These cookers all work on the principal of consuming small amounts of energy over a long period. We decided to use the tea-lights that are used in incense burners. They are said to burn for 2½ hours. 
We fried the meat added it to the stock and vegetables and heated it over a gas stove.
 When everything was boiling we lit five tea candles and placed them in the bottom of the bucket BBQ.
 We then placed the billy containing the boiling stew into the bucket. It rested on three flanges about 20 mm above the candles. The time was 10 am and most of the scouts left camp for scavenger hunt. So in theory while we were away our lunch should be cooking. We returned at 12:15 pm and tasted our stew. Ah, it wasn't cooked! We finished it off on a gas stove and after ½ hour boiling we enjoyed a hot tasty meal.
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Problems 1. Even though the candles were inside the bucket we found that they tended to blow out through the bucket's air vents. 2. Five tea lights didn't provide enough heat. 3. They only burn for 2½ hours so someone would have to be in camp to light some more. Conclusion A failure, but as Skip said "Don't be afraid to try different things, you can learn some valuable lessons for failures as well as successes." And did the bashas beat the hammocks? The verdict was that Bashas are rubbish!! |
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