fundamentals-hay box cooking

FRIDAY FUNDAMENTALS-HAY BOX COOKING


Hay box cooking is nothing more than bringing certain foods to a boil and then keeping that heat from escaping somehow while off the stove to continue it cooking. The term hay box was, obviously, from a time when hay was used as an insulation. Today we have rigid foams and vacuum thermoses. I’ve been an advocate of thermos cooking, the idea which I got from Kurt Saxon who got the idea from a 1960’s/70’s cookbook ( I’ve seen the book, one of those skinny glorified picture books- and the thermos was one of the old fragile glass innards type. I wish I had bought it at the thrift store to supplement my faulty memory ). Yet I should admit that owning a thermos is more laziness than necessity. A minion chastised me severely recently ( and rightly so ) for recommending buying an unnecessary tool when a make-shift one worked just as well. I had passed on an observation made by another author that a tea cozy placed over a pot of rice made an easy and effective hay box. I was reminded that all that was necessary was a few layers of towels. Even my thermos coffee isn’t absolutely necessary.

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Since fuel is scarce, I started making coffee in a thermos rather than my stove top percolator. You place the desired amount of grounds in the thermos ( it must be a vacuum thermos ), pour in boiling water, cap and wait ten minutes. Open back up, pour through a filter, reheat, and nice strong coffee with a minimum amount of fuel is ready. I usually make it the night before, but that doesn’t make it any stronger. It just makes it more convenient. I don’t use a French Press after having disappointing longevity issues. I don’t make sun coffee as it is weak and foul. And I don’t make a coffee concentrate since I don’t have a fridge to keep it in. The thermos coffee works great for my needs. But if you can’t afford a thermos, just do the following. Place the grounds in a pot first, then add water. Bring to a boil and then turn off the heat. Let sit ten minutes. Pour through a filter then reheat. It isn’t as good as thermos coffee but it is pretty darn close.

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To cook hay box style without a thermos, just wrap the pot in a few layers of towels. You’ll have to experiment with each food, but as a general rule I’d say bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cook five minutes. Then leave it wrapped for about thirty more minutes. This works for rice and potatoes. I almost never eat pasta so I haven’t tried that. I would imagine you need to just bring to a boil then turn off the heat. Experiment with short increments of time. If it doesn’t work you just cook it back on the stove. If you tried for too long at first you might waste some of the food. When I’m cooking up gruel I usually just bring the water to a boil, turn off the heat, add the flour, stir, and then let sit unwrapped for an hour. Turn over the pot, let the clump fall out, leave another hour for the lump to dry out. I do that with corn meal, let it harden, slice, then fry. Add syrup or butter salt and pepper. If you get the corn meal in the Mexican section it is the whole grain rather than the degerminated crap they sell in the flour isle.

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I use two towels when I do this. I don’t know if one is adequate as I haven’t tried it. I just figured two is better. I take the pot off the stove, place of a pot holder, wrap in a thin towel ( I just grabbed something that almost looked like felt from the wife’s cloth scrap bag ). Make sure the extra length is wrapped tight around the base of the handle. You are trying to keep all the heat in. Then I wrap in a larger thicker towel. If you feel any heat on that towel you aren’t doing it right. After a half hour the pot should still be very warm and the outer towel as cool as when you wrapped it around the pot. I’m not always successful with white rice. Sometimes I get a bunch of partially raw kernels. Not enough to break teeth, but enough that the texture of it on your teeth make you cringe. When that happens I usually just fry up the rice. Then it is as good as new. When I was cooking in a thermos before I tried potatoes left for twelve hours or so. I didn’t like them. It seemed to have a bit of an off taste. So I don’t know if the heat is sufficient to cook things like meat safely. It works fine for carbs, but proceed at your own risk with slow cooking for long periods of time or trying to make stew in the morning for dinner time. Now, if you like this cooking system there is a way to make a more permanent unit. Essentially, you wrap a handleless pot in plastic shrink wrap and spray the expanding insulation ( the type you get from Home Depot that you spray into cracks to seal ) around it in a box. After it hardens you cut off the top portion and pull out the bottom. Remove the wrap, and next time you use it you take the pot off the stove, place it back into the molded foam, cover and wait. I would use a plastic tote rather than a cardboard box, just to have it last a lot longer. Just another way to do the same thing. A pot with insulation right next to it to keep the heat in so the water keeps cooking.

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Between a slow cooker and a solar oven you should be able to use a lot less fuel in the future if need be.

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