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Wilderness Survival - Food & Cooking
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Boiling With Hot Stones -
Part 1
Text and Photos by
Storm
(Part 1
Part 2)
View this article as a PDF
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From microwaving popcorn to roasting potatoes around a car’s hot exhaust
pipe, humans have developed a variety of cooking methods by which we
render food safer, more digestible, and more palatable. Stone-boiling is
one of my favorite Stone Age (pardon the pun) methods. Some alternatives
for boiling food are energy intensive and more difficult to prepare
(rawhide bags, pottery). Stone boiling requires a fire, some rocks, and
a coal-burned container.
I started experimenting with stone-boiling while living in Olympic
National Park (WA State). I had heard that some types of rocks were
better to use than others, but I couldn’t locate any information
regarding which tended to crack (or explode!) and which are keepers for
a lifetime. So here are the results of my very limited exploration on
the subject at hand. |
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Let’s begin with the contestants.
From the nearest extinct volcanic pluton, let’s welcome Granite!
Granite is relatively large-grained, which we think doesn’t bode
well for this igneous rock. |
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Although most of this melange of
cobbles started out as lowly depositional sand, these glassy
rocks endured sweltering heat and enormous pressures in order to
metamorphose into the beautiful Quartzites you see before you
today! On a more serious note, there is some Quartz and other
igneous rocks in here as well. |
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And coming all the way from the
spreading Pacific Oceanic Ridge, taking 200 million years to get
here, it’s Basalt! Fine-grained basalt has a good reputation for
withstanding rapid heating and cooling amongst abos in the
field. Good luck to all of you! |
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Ahem. Now that I have that out of
my system...
Heating up the rocks...
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Got my coal-burned Western Red
Cedar cooking vessel ready, in which I’ll test the hot rocks. |
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On to Part 2...
(Part 1
Part 2)
Text and Photos Copyright by Storm
www.stoneageskills.com
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