Utencil-less cooking is the art of cooking without the need to clean up, as you don’t use pots or pans to prepare meals. In this video I take you through several example recipes.
Transcript:
Utencilless cooking is the art of cooking without the need to clean up, as you don’t use pots or pans to prepare meals.
Utencil-less cooking is also part of the Webelos Arrow of Light adventure, Castaway. Stated:
On a campout or outdoor activity with your den or family, cook two different recipes that do not require pots and pans.
In this video we are going to go over a bunch of ways to complete this using a charcoal fire, but this can just as easily be done with a wood fire.
The first recipe is egg on s skewer. To be effective with this, first you take a green stick, that’s one that’s pretty fresh and bendable. This makes it less susceptible to burning. Whittle it down to about 3/16 of an inch in diameter and about 12 inches long. This process takes about 10 minutes, and makes a soft-boiled egg. If you want it more cooked, leave it on longer; you need to turn it periodically as well.
The major problem with this recipe is you can’t really see how well the egg is done, so essentially scouts just stare at the egg and hope for the best.
This next one is a great breakfast activity. Take a couple of strips of bacon, a handful of frozen hash browns and a couple of eggs.
Lay the bacon as a base, followed by the potatoes and the crack in the eggs. Fold over the top of the bag and poke a hole above the air pocket, this is the important part, as the air helps it cook.
Then arrange the stick and bag above the heat source. You can also use a binder clip to secure the top, it also makes it easy to hold above the fire.
When it’s done, you have a bacon and egg breakfast, but be careful, as all the grease is in and around the bag.
The next utencil-less recipe is cooking inside of an onion. In this example you use the onion as a pot for the cooking. Here I have two versions, one a simple ham and egg in the onion, and the other some chopped meat.
For this one, you place it directly in the coals with your ingredients inside, and then use the top of the onion as a cap to keep the heat in.
The next one here is called “Burger in Leaves”, it relies on cabbage leaves to be the base to cook your meals. This can be a good patrol activity, as you need to watch it and turn it. For something like this I would have onions, cheese, even hot peppers available to customize the burger.
Simply put 3 cabbage leaves in the embers, and place the burger on the leaves, you turn it over every 10 minutes until it’s done. After you turn it over the first time, you can add your cheese, and even add onion rings under the burger to cook. For this you do need spatula.
You can also do a lot with foil, an in this recipe. Take out the center of a potato. Fill with hamburger and diced onion, or with butter and cheese. Plug the hole with some of the pieces you removed. Wrap the potato in foil and put by the coals for about an hour, turning it every 15 minutes.
