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Frying pan challenged

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It just takes another small mule too pack it in, they’re mighty tasty when times get hard…😎
 
Frying pans were just sheet metal. I don’t know if cast iron frying pans were made yet. Pots common, but frying pans seem to be just sheet metal.
We do have specific mention of frying pans as gear traded. So if stewed buff was common they were at least frying something
 
If I run a heavy camp for 5-6 days its put the iron horse to work and take all the good kitchen items, grates, spits, Dutch oven, fire back but the skillets are pressed tin and the pots are tin lined copper from Westminster forge, on the trail I have a small nesting tin lined copper cook set and a very small, pressed tin skillet. Thats fits really well in my haversack along with a squirrel cooker but then a forked stick works well also, without taking up much room. Have also pressed flat rocks into service as a makeshift cooking implement, or just throw whatever meat potatoes carrot right in the coals. A small pumpkin cooked in coals is very good. Guess it all comes down to what type of camp and how long the duration. might as well eat good no matter the situation.
 
Something that strikes me as ridiculous,,
Gadd's!
There was this one guy,, he'd dig a 16"wide x 4' long pit and hang 3 kettles and 5 pans on irons!
Then another guy,, thought that he was going to make a few bucks selling cast iron pans,, he must have at one time had 20 iron pans hangin from a rack,, all $20-30 apiece, not a single Griswald or Wagner amoung'm.

Flip the coin;
There ain't a decent buckskinner out there that can't make ya an Omlete with a 10" griswald over an open fire.
I've found that a tin pan does just fine for fryin, and a small boiler.
Must admit, I do keep my dutch oven.
Who doesn't like a Cobbler?
 
I always wondered, beans were a main staple of civil war soldiers, beans need to be soaked for a long time. Imagine 80,000 soldiers coming into your neighborhood looking for firewood to cook their e beans Day one every fence post is gone day two not a scrap to be found. Out on the prairie you could use buffalo chips, but imagine coming out of your Tipi at 4 in the morning, temperature about -39 and looking for chips
 
If you are talking mountain men it depends on group size. Trapping brigades had camp keepers who regularly used three wood tripods lashed with rope and an iron chain and hook to suspend a cast iron bell pot. How long do you suppose it would take to feed an entire brigade if you had to cook and feed everyone from a frying pan? See Alfred Jacob Miller's paintings, Mountain Man Sketchbooks by Hanson and Wilson and Rex Allen Norman's 1837 Sketchbook. Ciboleros (Mexican buffalo hunters) used a iron comal (flat griddle with a handle). Fur trade forts like Bent's Old Fort used a lot of cast iron pots and skillets, sheet metal coals, sheet metal coffee pots with grates, swing away crane pot holders in addition to the tripods. Had hornos - (adobe ovens) too. Alexander Barclay, superintendent and clerk at the fort complained about monotonous meals of fried slabs of bison meat that were already partly dried. Free trappers, voyageurs, courier de bois would have traveled lighter having to pack everything on their horse and pack animals (mules). Decide on the persona and period you wish to re enact and do your homework, A big fad of the long hunter re enactors were the sheet metal frying pans with folding handles, American Mountain Men camp outs required hauling everything for the outing half a mile from the vehicles. Made you pare down to the essentials that research showed they actually used.
 
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