The Savage Awakening (A preppers Perspective) (4 page)

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Pour a dram and enjoy

“That’s cool as hell! Pot still huh? Well we don’t have one but our table top is better anyway. You didn’t tell him about it did you?” Dennis inquired.

“Hell no, I said I was making beer but he knows I know some other moonshiners in the county so us showing up with some whiskey to trade for some hog meat wont look suspicious to him later on. He is going to run a huge batch of bread whiskey himself and he said but for us to be on the lookout for sugar and such for him.” Charles replied.

“
The hell with him, you find any sugar or grain it goes in our stockpile first. How many hogs does he have?” Dennis asked.

“He said he has around 40 but he is short on feed for them, course hogs can be put out in the woods also if he had to so they can forage. Getting back to the whiskey for a minute though, Monica knew that girl that owned the cake decorating place so we went by her house and got her to sell us some sugar and cake flour. I traded her 5 gallons of gas for it. She is getting ready to go to her Uncles house until this shit blows over or the city burns down by the way. I got a hell of a deal on 200 lbs of sugar and 150 lbs of flour because she didn’t have room to take it with her in her car. What can you make out of that kind of flour besides cakes anyway?” Charles asked.

“I don’t know, whiskey if nothing else I guess.” Dennis said grinning.

“Hello there Dennis!” Monica said walking towards them carrying a big washtub looking pan to collect the meat in for further processing.

“Hey Monica! Charles just told me you counted coup on some sugar! Good find, you going to bake us a cake?” Dennis said chuckling

“Actually I thought we could give it a try. You have a Dutch oven right? “Monica said smiling and getting ready for a little prepper lore. If there was one thing Dennis loved to do was talk about prepping.

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Yes I do, actually I have several different sizes but not for the reasons you might think. I like to do what is called “Stack cooking” in them .

When cooking several different dishes at the same time, stack the pots to save space and briquettes. Stacking works best if you put the food to be baked at the bottom of the stack and add Dutch ovens with shorter cooking times on top. Food to be sautéed is in the smallest oven at the top of the stack. Always stack the largest Dutch oven at the bottom and decrease in size as you stack. Add three briquettes to the number of inches of each pot and put that many briquettes on each lid.

"Stacking" your Dutch ovens is a convenient way to save space and share heat. Stacking is best done when ovens need the same amount of heat on top and bottom. (I.E. - Do not mix and match ovens that require different amounts of heat on top and bottom. Placing an oven with a cake, pie, or rolls in it, on top of an oven loaded with coals on the lid is not a very good idea

Paul Kautz the “Dutch Oven Dude” shared some tips with us.

Temperature Control

On my dutch oven, there's no dial, nothing to tell me how hot the oven is. Since cooking food at a fairly consistent and known temperature is important for success, there are 3 ways I know of for estimating temperature. Depending on your skill level and how you'll be cooking, one of them should work for you.

Also keep in mind that there are many environmental factors that will influence your oven temperature. Wind might blow heat away; colder air temperature, higher humidity and higher elevation reduce heat generated by coals; direct sunlight makes a black oven a bit hotter. You might consider making an aluminum foil wind shield to place around your oven, but if it is that windy, I would recommend you not have an open fire.

Nearly all dutch oven cooking will come out ok if your dutch oven is about 350 degrees. Some things should be cooked hotter and some cooler, but that's the temperature for all recipes that fail to include a temperature suggestion.

Hand Test

Use your hand to feel the heat. Of course, every person has a different sensitivity to heat but this works well for me. Just remove the lid from the dutch oven and place your hand just above or just inside the oven. Count how many seconds you can keep your hand there before it gets too hot. It is about 50 degrees per second counting down from 550, so I just count - "550, and 500, and 450, and 400, and 350, and 300, ...".

This is my preferred method. It is consistent and detects temperature instead of estimating the amount of fuel. You do release heat so you need to do the check as quickly as you can.

Counting Charcoal

Lots of dutch oven cookbooks tell you how many charcoal briquettes to put under and on top of the oven. This is the easiest way to cook since every coal is similar and consistent. If you are like me and use real wood for your outdoor camp cooking coals, it doesn't help much. Also, different brands of charcoal give off different amounts of heat. But, let's say you are going to use charcoal...
The normal formula is to use twice the number of briquettes as the diameter of the oven. For a 12 inch oven, you would use 24 briquettes. Depending on the type of cooking you are doing, you need to make the heat come more from the top or bottom of the oven. For example, too much heat on the bottom will burn bread.
To do this, you place more or less of the briquettes on the lid.
Here is a simple chart:

Most baking recipes require a temperature setting of 325ºF. An easy method to get a temperature of 325ºFahrenheit within your Dutch oven is to subtract or add the number 3 to the size of your Dutch oven to determine the number of charcoal briquettes to use underneath and on top. Find the size of the Dutch oven you use (see chart below) to know the correct number of briquettes.

Dutch Oven 325° Temperature — Briquette Quantities
Size of Oven Top Bottom
8-inch 11 5
10-inch 13 7
12-inch 15 9
1
4-inch 17 11
16-inch 19 13

The following example uses the formula for a 12-inch Dutch oven.

* Subtract 3 from 12, which equals 9 — the number of briquettes to place beneath the oven.
* Take the number 12 and add 3, which equals 15 — the number of briquettes to place on the lid of the oven.

With this formula, 9 briquettes go underneath and 15 briquettes are placed on the top of the lid of a 12-inch Dutch oven to cook at 325ºF. One-third of the heat will be underneath the Dutch oven, and two-thirds of the heat will be on top. Heat rises, so you do not need as many coals on the bottom of the oven.

Arrange briquettes so they are evenly spaced under the Dutch oven and on its lid. Also, you always need to rotate your Dutch oven a quarter turn every 15 minutes to avoid hot spots. Replace briquettes with new coals as they burn out.

Temperature control is determined by charcoal briquette placement

Rule of 3

This is a real simple estimate of briquettes. Take the dutch oven diameter and add 3 briquettes on top. Subtract 3 briquettes underneath. So, a 12 inch oven would have 12+3=15 on top and 12-3=9 underneath. This works for any size dutch oven. Then you need to adjust briquette placement depending on the type of cooking.

Rings of Coals

As it turns out, the sizes of briquettes work out so that the recommended briquettes count above can be estimated easily. As an experiment, you can take a 12 inch dutch oven and 24 briquettes. On the lid, make a ring of briquettes all the way around the outer edge. How many did you use? I bet it was 15 or 16!
Now, see how many it takes to make a ring just under the oven. There should be 3 or 4 briquettes between each leg for a total of 9 to 12.
That is pretty close to the recommendation for a 350 degree roasting set up, isn't it? It works pretty well for any size dutch oven and any size briquettes - smaller briquettes means you need more of them, but its about the same amount of burning mass to make a ring!
A ring around the top and the bottom is about 325 to 350 degrees.
Remove every other briquette underneath to make 300 degrees.
Add a second ring to the top to make 375 degrees.