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Primitive
Cooking – A Way of Life
A Doorway
The usual scenario
when native and civilized peoples come into contact with each other
is that the natives will be offered products of new technologies,
along with the promise that they will make life easier. Metal cooking
pots are typically one of the first. And yet elders will caution
their people about accepting the pots. Why is this?
A metal pot severs the
intrinsic relationship between heart and hearth. No longer is the
skillful eye and deft hand needed to dance the fire just right to
lick the food. With the metal pot, anyone could cook food, and
anything could be burned to cook it. The elders know that a people’s
way with food is a people’s way with life.
Our relationship with
fire made us human – we are the only animals to embrace fire, and
once we did, our evolution rapidly accelerated. Honoring that bond as
it once existed when we lived in balance with all life, can be a
doorway to restoring that balance. You know the saying, "Home is
where the heart is." A native would say, "Home is where the
hearth is." Hearth and heart are one – together they
are the original and intended center of human life. When we return to
our original way of cooking, we renew the kinship of fire, food, and
feeling – we allow hearth and heart to again be one.
A Window
“...they do not have
any crockery in this region. They do not make gourds, nor sow corn,
nor eat bread, but instead raw meat–or only half cooked–and
fruit...and drink blood...they dry the flesh in the sun cutting it
thin like a leaf, and when dry, they grind it like meal to keep it
and make a sort of sea soup of it to eat. A handful thrown into a pot
swells up so as to increase very much. They season it with fat, which
they always try to secure when they kill a [buffalo]. They empty a
large gut and fill it with blood and carry this around the neck to
drink when they are thirsty.” 43
These are the words of
Pedro Casta�eda, a member of Coronado’s 1540-1542
expedition from Mexico, observing the Mescalero Apache in what is now
southern New Mexico. In this short quote is written a whole volume on
the philosophy of native diet and the principles of native cooking.
Here are the core elements:
Diet
• Meat (all of
animal, incl. blood)
• Fat
• Fruit (vegetables
and nuts implied)
Preparation
• Raw or lightly
cooked
• Dried
Primitive cooking is
really as simple as that. And yet, because we come from an
agricultural society, we have to overcome myths, learn new skills,
and adapt our digestive systems – quantum leaps for nearly all of
us, both in terms of understanding and practice.
A Myth
The popular view of
primitive cooking is that we make essentially the same kinds of
foods we are accustomed to, only on an open fire and without the
usual pots, pans and utensils. That surely qualifies as cooking
primitively; however, it is not primitive cooking. That is because
it is essentially a stripped-down version of the agricultural
cooking we are accustomed to. The percentage of food we cook, and
the way in which we cook it, came about with the advent of
agriculture.
Imagine eating raw corn
or wheat and you’ll see why most grains and seeds need soaking and
cooking, or grinding and baking, to make them palatable. Imagine
eating raw squash or turnips, or virtually any other starchy
produce, and again the need for cooking will become obvious. Just as
much as the plow, the pot and the oven are the primary tools of
agriculture. Prior to agriculture, food was eaten mostly raw, with
fire-prepared food primarily roasted, steamed, or dried. These
methods lent themselves well to the food of the hunter-gatherer
(which was low-starch), and to his nomadic ways, because they did
not require any utensils or appliances, which would have had to be
carried along wherever the nomad went.
New Skills
“They do not make
gourds,” observed Casta�eda, because gourds are breakable.
Nor did they have other solid cooking or storage containers, such
as pottery, which, along with being fragile, are heavy to transport.
When food is dried, these sorts of containers are not needed, as
they would be with the pickling-fermentation preservation methods
common to sedentary, agricultural peoples. Nor are such containers
needed with easily-prepared raw and partially-cooked foods.
Dried food is several
times lighter and less bulky than if it were preserved by other
methods – an important consideration for a people on the move, who
have to carry all of their worldly possessions on their backs.
Not coincidentally,
native food preparation methods are the most long-lasting and
preserve the greatest amount of nutrients of any known method.
Centuries-old dried foods have recently been found in Egyptian
pyramids and caves in the American Southwest that are still edible.
Raw and lightly-cooked foods are packed with nutrients, many of
which would be destroyed by thorough cooking.
Reprogramming Gut and
Palate
Our digestive systems
have to adjust to new types of foods, along with getting used to not
having old familiar foods. Nomadic peoples do not “sow corn, nor
eat bread...;” fat, rather than starch, is the primary source of
calories. Their diet is roughly five times higher in fiber than
ours, and it is much more varied. We may have supermarkets with
dozens – even hundreds – of varieties of fruits and vegetables,
and yet most of us continually rely on our few favorites. Natives
have a much more varied diet – hundreds of plants and dozens of
animals – which changes seasonally, so both their guts and taste
buds are accustomed to a wide and ever-changing variety of foods.
Some of their foodstuffs we would not normally consider eating –
or even consider food! Tongues and eyeballs, grubs and caterpillars,
buds and cones, are delicacies of the native diet.
We have been taught to
get at food’s goodness by cooking it out, and our taste buds have
adjusted accordingly. Our cuisine is based on slow-cooked (i.e.
slow-killed) sauces, broths, and stocks. Mush-and-slurp food.
Natives, preparing most of their fare fast and rare, leave the
goodness in. Their meals are crisp and juicy, brimming with life’s
energy.
Because we eat mostly
out of habit, and often for reasons other than hunger, it may take
some time to re-awaken our natural appetite for native foods.
However, when it comes back, it comes strong – after all, we
humans have been eating bugs and berries a lot longer than pizza and
pastries!
The Hearth
Walk into a native camp
anywhere in the world and you will notice strong similarities among
their hearths:
• They are the center
of camp life, and they are often the literal camp center as well.
• The hearth fire is
small and efficient.
• Food preparation is
but one of many hearth activities.
You couldn’t help but
be surprised at how unequipped the hearth seems in comparison with
your kitchen, or even your camp hearth. Instead of pots and pans,
cutting boards and fire grates, you will see sticks and stones, ash
and clay (See Photo 1). You might end up asking yourself, “How
could they possibly prepare and cook food?”
Preparation Methods
Instead of appliances
and utensils you’ll find the hearth well-equipped with stones.
Yes, stones, of various shapes and sizes. They are used in many ways
for both processing and cooking food; let’s look at two of the
most common:
Hammer and Anvil
The anvil, the larger of
the two stones, lays on the ground, and often has a bowl-shaped
depression for holding the food material (See Photo 2). The hammer
is of a size that fits comfortably in the hand and a weight that is
effective and at the same time can be used for an extended period.
The hammer-and-anvil method is used to:
• crack nuts (and
other hard-shelled foods); extract marrow from bones, brains from
skulls
• pulverize dried
meat, vegetables, medicinal herbs, edible bone and shell
• tenderize foods for
cooking and eating raw.
Hot Rock Cooking
This method is for
liquid-based foods such as soups and stews (see Pot Cooking
below). Rocks are heated and immersed in the food, causing it to
boil.
Rocks might seem to be
cumbersome kitchen utensils; however, they do not need to be
transported, as they can be found just about anywhere. In areas
where they are scarce, they are often left in a special place so
they can be reused when the band comes by that way again. This is
practiced not only by humans, but by our closest relative, the
bonobo (or pigmy chimpanzee). They live in the African Congo, a
jungle area where rock is scarce, so the bonobo place their precious
hammer and anvil stones beneath special trees and mentally note
their locations. Time and again in their wanderings they will come
back to use the same stones.
Some natives will avoid
camping in areas without stones, or they will substitute with
less-desirable materials such as wood, bone, or shell.
Many of our accustomed
utensils are either not needed for primitive food preparation or can
be ad-libbed on the spot. With practice, most foods can be easily
cut without a cutting board (as in Photo 3), and the shoulder blades
of large animals, along with the shells of turtles, clams, and other
animals, make great scoops, flippers, and servers.
(Text box insert) If
food can be eaten raw, why bother cooking at all?
My theory is that natives
give their meat a light roasting at times to kill surface bacteria.
Tough vegetable matter can be made digestible by cooking, which
breaks down cell walls (our answer to a ruminant’s multiple
stomachs). Dried foods can be boiled to reconstitute them. (End
insert)
Cooking Methods
There are so many ways
to cook food primitively that I could easily fill a book.
Fortunately, primitive cooking is naturally simple, so I can capture
its essence in a few pages. Because native foods are generally eaten
rare, and because they are naturally bursting with flavor, requiring
no seasoning or elaborate preparation to make them appetizing, they
are usually quickly and easily prepared. Here I’ll cover the
basics to get you started, and you can take off from there with your
own variations.
No-Pot Cooking
This could be cooking
simplified, and it could just as easily be cooking hell. No-pot
cooking is the polar opposite of
throw-it-in-close-the-lid-come-back-later. I call it attunement
cooking, because it is a breeze when you know what you are
doing; however, when you are distracted or don’t know the spirit
of fire and the qualities of the materials you are using, well...
let’s just say there’s no fast-food joint down the street to
bail you out.
Here are some of the
main methods, from easiest to the most involved:
Coals It doesn’t
get any simpler than this – just lay it on the coals. Fish,
rodents, birds – they all roast nicely without burning. Lay the
whole unskinned animal (see Skin, Scales, Shell below under
Pot Cooking over Fire) on the coals (hardwood are best).
Coals cool under the food, so move it around periodically, and flip
to cook both sides. Food can be steamed by wrapping it in a thick
layer of wet leaves (as in Photo 4).
Green Wood Split
wrist-sized live non-toxic wood (pre-soak if dry), lay over a good
bed of hardwood coals, and place food on wood to smoke-cook. Works
best for ribs, cuts of meat, and halved fish. Have water handy to
sprinkle out any flames.
Hot Rock Start a
fire over a flat rock no bigger than what you need to cook on, brush
off the coals when the rock is hot, and use as you would a frying
pan (See Photo 5). To keep from getting scorched, slide rock away
from fire.
Ash/Dirt This is
such a favored way of preparing food that the Gamilaraay Aborigines
of Australia have a special term for cooking ashes – thawuma-li.
27 Simply bury whatever you wish to cook in the dry ash
directly beneath a hot fire. Soil works also; however, it must be
mineral, such as sand or rotten granite. Soils high in organic
matter will not work, because they are poor heat conductors and
easily burn. Ohiyesa, a Santee Dakota elder from the 1800s, said,
“If you have birds it is only necessary to wet the feathers
thoroughly before burying them, and they will come out juicy and
delicious under a black coat that peels off like the skin of an
onion. Fish cooks perfectly in this manner, as [does]...almost
anything.”32
Spit The simplest
spit is a sharpened stick inserted in the mouth of an animal and
pushed in far enough to hold him while he is roasted over the fire,
as in Photo 6. I’ve tried a number of elaborate variations, and
have found most of them to be unnecessary. Two that I do use are the
forked stick, which keeps the animal from spinning, and the clamp,
for animals too small or slick to pierce (See Photo 7). Greens can
be steamed by sandwiching them between thin layers of green grass or
edible leaves and clamping both ends, as in Photo 8, and then
dipping in water and holding over the fire.
(Text Box Insert) Eat
Everything
Many small animals can be
eaten head, bones, guts and all. The bones of some larger fish and
other animals become crunchy enough when roasted separately that
they also can be eaten. Be careful with small sharp
bones–particularly those of fish–as they can become lodged
between the teeth and in the throat. (End insert)
Board Food is
pegged on a flat board, which is set up to capture the fire’s
reflective heat. Slip a bowl under the board to catch the delicious,
nourishing drippings, as in Photo 9. This method works well for
fatty meat, halves of large fish, and slabs of meat from large
animals.
Reflector This is
a variation of the board method, only without the board. I use it
for sides of ribs, which don’t need additional support. With sharp
sticks, pierce each end of the ribs and stake them beside the fire,
as shown in Photo 10. When one side is done, pull up one stake and
rotate the ribs so that their backside now faces the fire. And do
catch the drippings.
(Text Box Insert)
Increase Fire Efficiency
For reflector cooking and
most other methods, efficiency can be improved by circling the fire
with rocks, as in Photo 11. This reflects otherwise-escaped heat
back on to the food and creates a hotter fire with less wood. (End
insert)
Pot Cooking Over Fire
Although more
time-consuming and involving more equipment than no-pot cooking, pot
cooking is sometimes necessary. While not impossible, reconstituting
dried foods and rendering oil from animal parts is quite difficult
without a heatable pot.
Natural containers are
the biggest challenge for many reborn hunter-gatherers, especially
because clay pots and agricultural products such as gourds are not
an option. Following are some of the most easily-made containers,
skin, along with how to use them:
Bark
“Impossible!” was my response when my Boy Scout leader
instructed me to make wild sumac tea in a cardboard milk carton over
an open fire. Before long I was using all kinds of natural
containers, including the bark types pictured in Photo 12. These,
along with stomach and hide containers, will not burn as long as
they are filled with liquid. They last longest if used over coals
rather than flame.
Stomach, Hide A
native hunter will sometimes cook the highly-perishable parts of his
kill (such as organs and eyes) in the stomach over a fire, and eat
them, stomach and all. The hide, suspended in a hoop (See Photo 13),
can be used over and over again. Wash or scrape, and then dry, each
time after use.
Stone A natural
or pecked depression in a stone positioned over a fire, can make a
serviceable, though usually small, cooking pot. Photo 14 shows one
possible setup.
(Text Box insert)
Containers of bark, animal membranes, and stone, along with wood,
can also be used for hot rock cooking – see below. (End insert)
Skin, Scales, Shell
Some plants and animals come equipped with their own pots –
protective layers that naturally seal in juices and prevent burning.
Arrange clams and eggs around a fire to cook in the radiant heat (as
in Photo 15). Eggs must be punctured at the wide end and heated
slowly lest they explode. Nearly all small reptiles, amphibians,
fish, mammals, and birds, can be roasted whole (see Photo 16), and
many can be eaten skin, scales, bones, guts, and all. The hair burns
off of small rodents, so the skin can often be eaten. Warning
– do not cook and eat animals whole if they have skins with poison
or scent glands, or protective armor that might cut or lodge in the
throat.
Clay Ohiyesa
(quoted above regarding ash cooking) described this method as
“...casing the food in wet clay and burying fairly deep in ashes
or sand under a good fire....It should be done in two or three
hours, but you may leave it all day if necessary without harm.”32
It takes about the same amount of time if laid on top of the fire
(turn once to cook through), and half the time if buried in live
coals. To prepare the food, wrap it in a thin layer of leaves to
keep it clean, if you wish, and then encase it in pasty clay to
about the thickness of your thumb. Eggs cook well this way, only be
sure to pierce the big end.
Pot Cooking, Hot Rock
Along with stone and
wood containers, the bark, stomach, and hide kettles discussed above
can be used for hot rock cooking. And animal’s chest cavity makes
a great cooking container, with the animal getting cooked at the
same time. Begin by selecting about a dozen stones that meet these
criteria:
• The size of a goose
egg (diameter of about four average fingers) – most efficient for
heating, and for releasing heat.
• Fine-grained,
uniform texture, no pits or cracks – less prone to breaking,
crumbling, or exploding (from trapped moisture).
• Round and smooth –
heat evenly, so less prone to cracking, and easy to clean.
• The best rocks are
of deep green or copper hue, because they’re my favorite colors.
Well-chosen rocks can be
used over and over. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself
getting attached to the particularly smooth ones that come out of
the pot clean and last through firing after firing (See several of
my favorites in Photo 17).
(Text Box Insert) The
Best Cooking Stones
There are three types of
rock:
• Igneous –
formed from lava, has little texture or layering.
• Sedimentary –
hardened, layered deposits of of sand, clay, or calcium, usually
gray or brown.
• Metamorphic –
igneous or sedimentary rock changed by heat, pressure, water, or
stress.
Basalt, a dark,
fine-grained igneous rock, makes the best cooking stone. Hard
tight-grained granite is a fair second choice. Sedimentary rocks
like to explode, so do avoid them! Most rocks are easy to identify –
ask a knowledgeable person for help or use a field guide. (End
insert)
To heat the stones
• If burning softwood
(which produces good flames and poor coals), stack stones as close
as possible to, but not in, the fire, so they will catch the radiant
heat.
• If burning hardwood
(poor flame, good coals), place stones directly on coals.
• Stones are ready
when they cause water droplets to hiss and pop.
• With tong or fork
(examples in Photo 18) grab a few fired stones that are not yet hot
enough to burn the pot, and if necessary, dip quickly in water to
remove grit.
• Place stones in
bottom of pot to support hotter stones so they will not burn
through. Do not use cold stones – they will rob the heat from your
food.
• Place a couple of
fully-heated stones in food – more if pot is big.
• When pot quits
boiling, replace cooled stones with fresh ones.
(Text Box Insert) Don’t
worry about your food been tainted with a bit of ash, as many
natives use it like salt – for flavor and added minerals. (End
insert)
Parching
This is a dry-pot
variation of the hot rock method, which toasts or lightly roasts. It
works well for nuts, seeds, small tubers, and insects (parched
grasshoppers are a treat!). Place foodstuffs in a basket or bowl,
along with small hot stones or coals, as in Photo 19, and
continually stir, shake, or swirl until food is done.
Some grain, such as wild
rice, needs to be parched in order to loosen its husk for removal,
and many nuts shell easier after they are parched. I use parching to
dry wet nuts and seeds to prevent molding, and to prepare them for
storage.
Pit Cooking
This method seems
to have the most sex appeal, probably because it is associated with
feasts and parties. Although labor-intensive, pit cooking is well
worth the effort when you’re going to be gone all day and want to
have a meal waiting for you when you get back. The many variations
of pit cooking can be grouped into two basic methods:
Steam Pit
1. If cooking for only a
few people, dig a round hole three times as wide and deep as the
diameter of your food (as in Photo 20) and twice as wide and deep if
cooking for a group.
2. In a nearby fire,
heat enough double fist-sized rocks to glowing orange to twice cover
the bottom of the pit.
3. Lay a single layer of
rocks over bottom of pit, as in Photo 21.
4. Cover rocks with a
hand’s-depth thickness of mature live, or dead-and-soaked, grass.
5. Spread food over grass
(See Photo 22).
6. Cover food with a
hand’s-depth layer of grass.
7. Sprinkle with enough
water to dampen grass and food – a double handful or two is
usually enough for a small meal.
8. Place remaining
stones atop grass.
9. Seal pit with a
large, flat rock, or with small flat rocks covered with a hide or
large, edible leaves (See Photo 23) to keep dirt from filtering down
on food.
10. Cover entire pit with
a hand’s depth of packed dirt, as in Photo 24.
(Text Box Insert)
Variation – Line bottom and sides of pit with flat rocks
(as in Photo 25), burn a fire in the pit to heat the rocks, remove
most of coals when rocks are hot, and pick up at no. 4 above. Skip
no. 8, as no additional rocks are needed. This method can also be
done above ground, by building a circular rock wall upon a flat rock
surface (See Photo 26). (End insert)
Dry Pit
1. Dig a hole the same as
for a steam pit
2. Start a hardwood fire
in the hole and let it burn down to a good bed of coals.
3. Evenly spread the
coals and suspend a water-soaked wooden grate about the width of a
hand above the coals (See Photo 27).
4. Spread a layer of food
over the grate.
5. Lay a second grate
over the food, and spread another layer of food over that grate.
6. Seal and cover pit the
same as for steam pit (nos. 9& 10).
Burning food is virtually
impossible when pit cooking is done properly, because the pit gets
progressively cooler as the rocks (or coals) lose their heat. And
your food is quite safe from animals, so you can leave it with the
confidence that it will not only be there when you return, but be
warm and bursting with flavor and nourishment.
Conclusion
Preparing and eating
meals is perhaps the most consistent and universal human activity.
This – our relationship with food – is so central to our lives
that it is a metaphor for our relationship with all of life. It is
said that we are what we eat; the metaphor is seen in how we
eat, which includes how we prepare our food. It says more about our
beliefs, our way of life, and our state of health, than any words
could possibly convey.
The easiest way to change
our lives is to change the way we eat – all else will fall into
place around that. By awakening to the beautiful, old ways of
cooking, we cannot help but awaken to the beautiful, old ways of
living.
And now for the moment my
growling stomach has been waiting for – to sign off with the chant
I hear ringing through a Great Lakes Ojibwe camp when the alluring
aroma of sweet bear meat and wild rice fills the air before a feast –
“Neen bakade (I’m hungry)!”
# # # # # # #
# # # # # # # # # #
(Sidebar) Ways to
Suspend Pot over Fire
• Three Stones
For self-supporting pots, such as bark, this is often the simplest
and fastest method, as it requires no preparation (See Photo 28). To
allow for maximum airflow, choose tall, slender rocks.
• Tripod For
handling ease, suspend stomach or hide from a hoop, and then suspend
hoop from tripod, as in Photo 29.
• Pole Setup
is same as tripod. Use your imagination and available materials to
suspend pole (See Photos 30a, b, c). An overhanging branch or rock
could be utilized instead of pole. (End sidebar)
(Sidebar) Hunters’
Stew – an Ancient Tradition
During the winter many
native camps would have a magical stewpot – it never went empty
even though it was continually eaten from. At the end of each day the
hunters and foragers would throw in their meat, fruit, and
vegetables, making for an ever-changing medley. Winter-gathered fruit
(such as bog and highbush cranberry) was high in acid, which helped
keep the stew from spoiling. It was set out each night to freeze,
which broke down the food, thus reducing cooking time. Freezing also
helped keep the stew fresh.
Being rich in fat and
protein, it was a good, heavy winter dish. Often the leftovers from a
feast were the beginnings of the season’s stew. The tradition is
still practiced in some old European cultures, such as Poland’s,
where hunters’ stew is called bigos
(pronounced beegōs). (End sidebar)
Additions
"We not only used the paunch of the buffalo
for water-buckets, but for cooking-kettles as well. Before the white
man came, we had no iron pots of any kind, but we boiled our meat and
had soup just the same. A frame made of four sticks set firmly in
the ground held the paunch suspended in the center. This paunch had
been cleaned and the top left open like a kettle. The meat was put
into this pot with some water and hot stones thrown in. Slowly the
meat began to boil. When the stones had cooled, others were put in
and the boiling kept going. Finally the pot began to shrink and cook
with the meat. When all was done, we drank the soup, at the meat,
and finished up by eating the pot too. There was left of
the meal only the stones. There were no dishes to wash…"35 p.
110---Standing Bear, Oglala Lakota, 1800s
“Sometimes our meat was
roasted over the open fire. This means of cooking gave our meat a
very fine flavor, and if a few ashes got on the meat, we did not
mind, but rather liked it, for the Indian knows that a little ash
eaten with his meat is a good tonic for the stomach. It acts as a
cleanser and helps the digestion.”35 p. 10-11
Standing Bear, Oglala
Lakota, 1800s
“While
dressing the calf he took out and ate one of its kidneys, as our
people often did.” 45 pg. 30 Pretty-shield, Crow, 1800s
“Soup made with
bitter-roots and crushed bones is very fine. We girls all liked
it…”45 pg. 62 Pretty-shield, Crow, 1800s
“…a feast of fish eyes
and fish eggs…” 48 pg. 34 Ignatia Broker, Ojibwa
elder, 1900s
“She burned deer hooves
until the hard part fell off. When the inner hooves cooled, she
scraped them into the hominy for flavor.” Ignatia Broker, Ojibwa
elder, 1900s 48 pg. 48
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