5 Ways to Use Hot Rocks in a Survival Situation

open fire cooking with hot rocks

Enlarge

Tim MacWelch

Cooking on rocks is a great option in a survival situation—you just have to pick the right rock. Here's what else you can do with a pile of stones in the field.

Fighting the cold? Need help cooking? Don’t underestimate the power of hot rocks! Stones can hold a lot of heat, and radiate that warmth for a long time when properly insulated. Start with rocks from a high, dry area. Never use rocks from a wet area. They may have trapped moisture which can cause them to explode when heated. Avoid glasslike or crystal filled stones. Don’t use slate or shale, either. These are prone to explosion and breakage near heat. Just grab some plain old ugly rocks from a high dry location, heat them up and enjoy the results.

1. Bed Warmer

For a warm and comfortable night, heat large flat stone to about the same temperature as scalding hot tap water. Wrap it in tough cloth or clothing, and put it in your bed or sleeping bag. The heat will soak into your cold bedding and you’ll drift off to a snug night of slumber. I’ve had rocks remain warm as long as seven hours this way.

2. Rock Boiling

Rock boiling can be used to prepare soups and teas, and boil your water to disinfect it. Collect about two dozen egg sized or slightly smaller stones to rock boil 2 to 4 quarts of water. Heat them in your fire for 30-45 minutes. Use sticks or split wood tongs to pick up the rocks and drop them into your water. Use one or two at a time, and rotate “cool” ones out and hot ones in.

3. Rock Frying

For small cooking tasks, chuck a flat rock into the fire for ten minutes to heat it up. Once hot, slide it out of the fire with a stick and dust off the ashes. Drip a little oil on the stone and set your food on the rock to cook. This is a dead simple way to make delicious fried foods, and you don’t even need a frying pan! And for a more permanent set-up, place a large slab of stone over a trench or on top of stone legs. Build a fire underneath, heat the stone, drop your food on top and listen to your meal sizzle!

4. Heat On Injury

For sprains, strains, cramps and other maladies, a warm rock can provide soothing comfort when held against the affected area. Warm stones can even help with problems that are severe, like hypothermia (cold exposure that can lead to shock and death). To treat this with hot rocks, place a warm stone under each armpit and between the thighs of the exposure victim. Wrap them up and repeat the treatment until their body temperature rises.

5. Punch Holes in Ice

Want some fresh fish, but you lack the tools to bore a hole through the ice? Step back a few thousand years and use something our remote ancestors would have used – a hot rock. Simply burn a large fire on the shore, heat up a large stone in the blaze. After an hour of heating, use a shovel to carry the dangerously hot stone to your ice fishing spot and set it on the ice. It will begin to melt the ice immediately and work its way downward. Soon the rock will melt through the ice and drop into the dark water below. Your ice fishing hole will be open, smooth and ready to fish.

Source: http://www.outdoorlife.com/5-ways-to-use-hot-rocks-in-survival-situation

Survival Skills: How To Build A Stone Oven

After our chicory root coffee post the other week, someone asked us how we should roast our roots for coffee while out in the field. Well, that sounded like a good enough invitation for me to roll out one of my favorite wilderness kitchen projects: the stone oven.
The stone oven is a good cooking tool for meats, vegetables and even some breads. Once built, it can be used over and over again. With the work involved, this wouldn’t make much sense for a nomad, but it can be a useful addition to a permanent or semi-permanent base camp. And what a great way to cook a roast!
There are really two types of stone ovens: those that are either internally or externally fired.
For this installment, we’ll focus on the internally-fired oven, which is usually made of very large stones that can absorb a lot of heat, hold the heat, and radiate it back for some time. This oven type is heated by simply building up the fire inside the oven for at least an hour and a half (two hours is better). Just about any tight pile of suitable rocks with a hole in the middle and a door will work as an oven, but it’s always nicer to bring out your inner stone cutter to craft a decent looking oven.
To make a typical square oven, three walls are built out of stone and the gaps are filled with clay or mud. One or several large, wide rocks are placed on top to form the roof of the oven, and all gaps are caulked with clay. Think about the oven door as you build the walls and roof, looking for a stone that will fit well in the oven opening. Internally fired ovens should have an opening on the top at the back of the oven to act as a chimney during firing. Once built, the oven can be fired right away. Build the fire inside with the door in place, but cocked to the side. This ajar door allows the fire inside the oven to breathe, but it allows the door to heat up too.
Additional Tips:
Internally-fired ovens should be fired for 1½ to 2 hours, after which the ash and coals are swept out, the food is quickly placed inside, and the door and chimney are sealed as tightly as possible.
Use only stones from a dry area, as wet or waterlogged stones can explode dangerously when heated. Granite, soapstone and greenstone are the best and safest choices for these ovens.
Ever use a stone oven? Let us know what you prepared with it.
Source

Books Of Interest:

How To Cook With Hot Rocks

Hot stones have been used for cooking for thousands of years. Three of my favorite rock-cooking methods are frying, boiling, and stir fry. The upside to these methods is that they don’t require a lot of materials from home. Most or all of the gear for these low-tech culinary techniques can be sourced in the field. If you’re a careful cook, you’ll even make some meals that taste good. Seriously, this is nowhere near as nasty as you would think. 
Warning: For all of the methods in this post, make sure you gather the rocks from a high and dry location, as waterlogged rocks can explode dangerously when they heat up in a fire.  The steam builds pressure in the rock causing it to blow up like a grenade. Also, avoid slate and shale, as they are prone to explosion regardless of where you find them.

Rock Frying
A large flat rock can be set up over a fire like a griddle, as I wrote about in an earlier post (link to hot rock frying Oct 2011), but a faster rock-fry method is to throw a flat rock directly in your campfire to heat it up. Using a stick, slide it out of the fire after 30 minutes. Dust off the ashes, grease the surface a little bit, and fry away. Bacon is great this way, assuming you brought bacon from home. It lays flat and doesn’t curl up too much. Reheat the stone after frying a few things, and you can use that rock many times over.
Rock Boiling
This method involves egg-sized or smaller stones that are heated in your fire for 30 to 45 minutes. Twenty or more stones are required for most of your water boiling and cooking tasks. Scoop them up with sticks or tongs and drop them into water or a soup or stew. I’ve used wood or bark containers to boil in, as well as a deep hole in a rock. I’ve even boiled with rocks in a hollowed-out pumpkin at Halloween (pumpkin and butternut squash soup).
Rock Stir Fry
Stones like the ones used for rock boiling can be used to make a mean rock stir fry. Move them out of their heating fire after 30 minutes and quickly quench them in some water. This gets the ash off, and brings the temperature of the stones down to a level that shouldn’t burn your food. Add the hot stones to a large bowl with a little oil and your meats and vegetables. Stir the stones and ingredients until the meat is well done. However, if you fail to stir it enough, I promise you it will burn. It’s called stir fry for a reason. Heat up 10 or more stones for a rock stir fry.
Let us know if you’ve tried any of these methods, and what you cooked, in the comments

Source:
http://www.outdoorlife.com/blogs/survivalist/2013/07/survival-skills-how-cook-hot-rocks


Books Of Interest:

FREE: 500+ Camping Recipes (Incl 100 Dutch Oven Recipes)

That’s right folks – over 500 camping recipes that also includes over 100 for Dutch ovens. Oh yeah, it’s yours for FREE down below! Many thanks to ‘Troop 26 Parkville Maryland‘.
Many of these recipes can also be cooked at home in the kitchen or on the barbecue etc. Don’t wait until the weather is nice and you go camping, to try some of these recipes. The free PDF of camping recipes would also be useful for emergency preparedness as you’ll likely end up cooking outdoors if the SHTF. Download and print out this free PDF cookbook below.
FREE: 500+ Camping Recipes (Incl 100 Dutch Oven Recipes)


Source:
http://knowledgeweighsnothing.com/free-500-camping-recipes-incl-100-dutch-oven-recipes/


Lodge L12DCO3 Pre-Seasoned Cast-Iron Camp Dutch Oven, 8-Quart