Hard Tack recipes

[Caster]

Anyone got anything better than flour, salt and water, but still maintain the storage life?

Hard Tack is a good survival subject, it's cheap, easy and lasts a long time if sealed up. It can be cooked in an aluminum foil lined cardboard box beside the campfire.

Seems to me, that with all the advances in technology, man could come up with a human kibble. Something fortified with everything the body needs. Hard enough to need chewing so it'd be good for your teeth and need to be broken down by your stomach so your digestive tract would run properly. Not hard enough to make eating laborious though. I know they make high calorie survival pellets but I mean something one could efficiently live on indefinitely. Obviously no one would be happy about it but the alternative ......

[Guest cardcutter]

The Brits and later the American Navy had something called a sea biscut. It is a little different than hard tack. I will see if I can find the recepie.

[BryanP]

Sea Biscuit is just another name for hard tack.

http://www.marinersmuseum.org/sites/default/files/biscuit_recipe.pdf

[Guest USMC 2013]

Dehydrated veggies and jerky would keep you alive a very long time without other inputs. They also would take up very little space once dehydrated and vacuum sealed. No need for refrigeration either. Just a thought,

Joe

[Guest cardcutter]

After going back and rereading the material I have , I have to agree there is not much difference. Sorry.

[Glenn]

Sea biscuits provided protein, since they were usually infested with bugs.

Glenn

[atlas3025]

Besides the bugs and thickness, is there a difference between The Ship's Biscuit and a Saltine cracker?

[Timestepper]

Yeah, the "Ship's biscuit" or "Sea biscuit" is generally much thicker and of a slightly different recipe than the average saltine.

As to hardtack, the great thing about it is that you can add anything you want if you're making your own. I generally keep with the traditional recipe, although I'll often use self rising flour instead of regular just because my teeth aren't what they used to be and the self rising flour makes it easier to break into manageable chunks. 'Course you can always soak it in coffee or tea to soften it up, but I hate like hell to ruin a good cup of coffee.

[Caster]

Similar subject, didn't the natives here in this country use white wood ashes to leaven bread? Sounds strange, but it'd be good to know.

[UncleJak]

I make a bread that I believe is called "bannock". It sounds similar to hard tack, except I add some sort of grease or oil to it (not a lot). I fry it in a skillet on medium heat. It is kinda tasty, but I don't know if I would want to eat it forever.

[UncleJak]

And, yes you can use ash, but it doesn't work well and personally I don't like eating ashes.

[Timestepper]

Similar subject, didn't the natives here in this country use white wood ashes to leaven bread? Sounds strange, but it'd be good to know.

Actually, I've researched this and the short answer is: Nope - and the women didn't chew the hides during the tanning process to make them soft, either. There is a leavening agent that can be made using certain types of ashes, but the chemistry involved is considerably beyond the average indigenous stone age American Indian.

That said, there are naturally occurring yeasts that were "gathered" for the purpose of leavening. A little library reading - or maybe even some Google magic - can get more into detail than I have time for tonight.

[peejman]

Ever considered pemmican? http://www.marksdailyapple.com/how-to-make-pemmican/#axzz1wXajpGqa

[Timestepper]

At times in the past I've eaten so much pemmican that I can't even stand to hear the word. I'll probably make up another batch sometime in the next couple of years, but the gastronomic statute of limitations has yet to expire for the last 40 pound batch I made.

[dickenscpa]

You know how you here a brand new word and all of the sudden you here this "new" word every other second?

I'd never heard of hard tack in my life. Just finished Teddy Roosevelt's book Rough Riders where they fought the Spainards in Cuba and they lived off hard tack. I had no idea what he was talking about and come in to see this thread. LOL!

Brad

[JAB]

I guess one could have some chicken bullion cubes or bullion powder on hand - heat some water, add the dry bullion to make a broth then drop in a few hard tack. Would be just about the most disappointing 'chicken and dumplings' in the history of Southern humanity but I imagine it would be better than starving to death.

While at UTK, I checked out a Native American cookbook from the library there. I think many of the recipes must have come from Native Americans after the Europeans came or else were 'adapted' for modern kitchens. One recipe I tried was acorn biscuits. Going by the recipe, I gathered fresh acorns and peeled them. The acorn 'nuts' were then boiled with enough changes of water until the tannins were removed and the water remained more or less clear. Then the 'nuts' were roasted in the oven on a very low heat. Once dry enough, I pounded them into what was basically an acorn meal (I wanted to really go 'old school' so I found a long, slender river rock, cleaned/washed it well and used it to 'grind' the acorns by hand.) The recipe called for adding the acorn meal to all purpose flour then adding baking powder, etc. and more or less making a normal biscuit. They actually smelled great while cooking but unfortunately my baking powder must have been old because they really didn't rise and came out more or less like hard tack. What little I could eat of them actually tasted pretty good. I was so annoyed with the failure that I haven't tried it again, yet (that was almost twenty years ago) but there is a good chance that I will, one of these days. I'll make sure to use good baking powder next time, though.

The point is that you could probably grind dried nuts or even dried acorns (if you want to go through the process to remove the tannins, etc.) into a meal to add flavor to plain, old hard tack. I don't see why you couldn't add a little garlic powder, onion powder or other dried/powdered herbs and spices as long as they were things that would not hurt the 'shelf stability' of the hard tack.

I also just thought of this - I sometimes make a quick bread that is called 'beer bread'. It uses self-rising flour (so that is where the leavening comes from) and uses a beer for the liquid - three cups of flour, a teaspoon (iirc - I don't think it is a tablespoon) each of sugar and salt and one, twelve ounce beer. The beer, while it probably doesn't do much in the way of leavening (maybe a little) still gives it a 'yeasty' flavor. I wonder if beer could be substituted for the water in standard hard tack to create a hard tack with a bit of a yeast flavor. I also wonder if the carbonation would leaven the bread a little and if all that would hurt the shelf stability.

Aside: Some friends and I rented a cabin in the mountains together once. I was going to make beer bread but once I started I realized that all we had was all purpose flour and there was no baking powder, etc. I thought about it and it came to me that Alka-Seltzer is largely sodium bicarbonate (baking soda.) Well, as consuming alcoholic libations was a big part of the agenda for the weekend, I had brought a big box of Alka-Seltzer along. The outcome? Yes, you can make quick bread (beer bread, at least) with plain flour and leaven it with crushed up Alka-Seltzer. The bread turned out just like it does when I use self rising flour.

Edited June 5, 2012 by JAB

[hkgonra]

Or just stir it in with the beans , rice and ramen that you have and make a survival stew.

[Caster]

I guess one could have some chicken bullion cubes or bullion powder on hand - heat some water, add the dry bullion to make a broth then drop in a few hard tack. Would be just about the most disappointing 'chicken and dumplings' in the history of Southern humanity but I imagine it would be better than starving to death.

Hike for a 24 hour period with naught to eat or drink but water. You'll change your tune. Some of the swill I eat in the Scouts would turn a pigs nose. It was some of the best chow I ever eat. I remember a trip to Virgin Falls. We walked the whole trail. Dinner consisted of left over breakfast food. The aluminum mess kits SUCK, everything sticks. Eggs - scrambled, pancakes - scrambled, even the dang bacon got scrambled. Dump it in your tray, give it a meager dousing of kayro syrup and by God we were all licking the pans clean. Good times.

Edited June 5, 2012 by Caster

[JAB]

Hike for a 24 hour period with naught to eat or drink but water. You'll change your tune. Some of the swill I eat in the Scouts would turn a pigs nose. It was some of the best chow I ever eat. I remember a trip to Virgin Falls. We walked the whole trail. Dinner consisted of left over breakfast food. The aluminum mess kits SUCK, everything sticks. Eggs - scrambled, pancakes - scrambled, even the dang bacon got scrambled. Dump it in your tray, give it a meager dousing of kayro syrup and by God we were all licking the pans clean. Good times.

Well, now, if it were for a planned hike rather than simple survival preparedness you could take along one or two of those chicken breasts/strips that are packaged for shelf stability. Break or chop the chicken up, dump it in the broth with the hard tack and add some ground black pepper. Cook it until the hard tack softened and I'd think the results would be downright edible, maybe even pretty good.

I don't do long hikes but I do know what you mean. When I camp up on the Tellico and spend the whole day wading up and down the river trying to catch trout by dinner time I am downright hungry. I am not the biggest fan of fish but in those cases the trout I catch (yeah, even the stocked, 'dog food' trout) can taste pretty darned good!

Edited June 5, 2012 by JAB

[JAB]

I like garlic cheese biscuits. I wonder if you could add some powdered cheese (like the stuff that used to come with cheap macaroni and cheese kits - maybe still does, I don't know) and garlic powder to make garlic cheese hard tack.

[Timestepper]

I like garlic cheese biscuits. I wonder if you could add some powdered cheese (like the stuff that used to come with cheap macaroni and cheese kits - maybe still does, I don't know) and garlic powder to make garlic cheese hard tack.

You could, but it ain't a real great idea - Trust me on this. If you want garlic cheese hardtack and want to use the powdered stuff, you're much better off just sprinkling it on the dough just before you bake it. Again, trust me on this.

[DaveS]

You could, but it ain't a real great idea - Trust me on this. If you want garlic cheese hardtack and want to use the powdered stuff, you're much better off just sprinkling it on the dough just before you bake it. Again, trust me on this.

I have a bad feeling about this......

[Timestepper]

I'll be bringing some of my hardtack on the 29th/30th. No extra flavoring because I always figured that the better it tastes, the more you'll eat it and it ain't for enjoying, it's for not starving when there's nothing else to eat.

And yeah, as i alluded to earlier, the powdered garlic and cheese works better as a topping rather than an ingredient.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Dunno nothin about hardtack but mom would cook a recipe around christmas time. She didn't invent the recipe but am not certain if I can lay hands on the exact recipe. Maybe wife has it somewhere. Sounds kinda like a variety of hardtack.

They were greasy and salty little red pepper cheese crackers about a quarter inch thick and the size of a silver dollar. They were hot enough to set you on fire and seriously addictive. Can't eat just one.

It was unleavened dough with lots of red pepper and cheeze. Dunno where the grease came from whiether it was lard mixed into the recipe or grease baked out of the cheese or whatever. Pretty sure they were baked rather than fried. Depending on how each batch came out they might be crumbly or crunchy, but unleavened and dense.

Dunno if a greasy unleavened bread like that might be more likely to spoil if the intention is to make something with a long shelf life.

Edited June 6, 2012 by Lester Weevils

[Timestepper]

Dunno nothin about hardtack but mom would cook a recipe around christmas time. She didn't invent the recipe but am not certain if I can lay hands on the exact recipe. Maybe wife has it somewhere. Sounds kinda like a variety of hardtack.

They were greasy and salty little red pepper cheese crackers about a quarter inch thick and the size of a silver dollar. They were hot enough to set you on fire and seriously addictive. Can't eat just one.

It was unleavened dough with lots of red pepper and cheeze. Dunno where the grease came from whiether it was lard mixed into the recipe or grease baked out of the cheese or whatever. Pretty sure they were baked rather than fried. Depending on how each batch came out they might be crumbly or crunchy, but unleavened and dense.

Dunno if a greasy unleavened bread like that might be more likely to spoil if the intention is to make something with a long shelf life.

Yeah, grease or fat and a long shelf life don't generally go hand in hand. Guess that's why I prefer a simple flour, baking powder & salt recipe for stick bread rather than a more elaborate bannock mix which usually includes shortening or fat - the bannock mix just doesn't store long without going rancid, whereas my "stick bread mix" will last pretty much indefinitely as long as it's kept dry and relatively bug free.