Lightweight Fry Bake Gear and Technique (Video)

[Stephanie Jordan]

Companion forum thread to:

Lightweight Fry Bake Gear and Technique (Video)

[Ed Tyanich]

Ryan,

Nice article and video. I am a bit surprised at the use of flaxseed oil. Everything I have read cautions against heating flaxseed oil. I wouldn't be so worried about destroying the benefit of the omega-3 fatty acids, or even the potential of turning healthy fats into harmful fats, as I would the propensity of flaxseed oil to turn rancid without refrigeration. I generally use organic expeller pressed safflower oil with my frybake.

[Ryan Jordan]

Ed, good comments, and concerns.

Free radicals released from oils can be caused by excessive heating. This is the "bad" part (carcinogenic) of oils, especially "dry" oils (that polymerize) like flaxseed.

Here's how you can avoid having free radicals when you season a pan.

First, seasoning and cooking are two different things.

If you've cooked a lot with oil, you know well that at some high enough level of heat (let's call this the "smokin' point") where the oil smokes, that's bad. Free radicals are being released there and you don't want to ingest that oil. If you are adding food to this state, beware. Toss it out, clean the pan, start over.

But we're seasoning, not cooking.

Ideally, you season below the smoke point. But even if you season above the smoke point, heat til the smoke goes away. By that time, the free radicals have (probably) been all (or mostly) burned off and you're left with a (pretty) safe, polymerized film.

(note the disclaimers in parens :)

And here's another quick trick, that wasn't discussed in the video/article because it's complicated, and we're about simple. But I'm an engineer, so…(insert disclaimer related to fun vs. simplicity here).

Take some ferrous iron salt (sulfate is fine), maybe 100mg / tsp of oil, and mix it with the tsp of oil before you add it to your hard anodized pan (not needed for cast iron pans, obviously)…this improves oil polymerization, maybe it's a polymerization catalyst? I dunno, haven't studied in that much detail yet. I just know that empirically, it creates better non-stick seasoned coatings.

Also a tidbit: if you used enough oil such that globules (drops) "dry" on the pan and make a mottled pattern as the pan dries, you've used to much. A tsp might be a little too much in the little Banks' pan *if* you don't wipe out the excess with a cloth as you cook it.

[Mike Clelland]

I have a long history of cooking in the Fry-Bake from my tenure at NOLS. I feel like I've a achieved a sort of mastery with this thing.

I feel like I have perfected baking no-yeast muffins and other wheat products. Corn-meal biscuits with cheeze on the inside are easy to make in the smaller "alpine" sized pans.

On a 30-day expedition (like NOLS runs) it's important to eat well. The Fry-Bake system is heavy, but you can create some greasy satisfying meals out there.

Alas – it is decidedly NOT lightweight.

Mike C!

____________________________________

One more thing, you can see one NOLS standard issue item in the photo near the top of this article (the one showing two campers setting up mac & cheeze). THat item is the "Pot-Grips" and it's just a hardware store set of channel lock pliers. THese are steel and weigh in at over 7 ounces.

[Ike Jutkowitz]

Mike C!
It warms the heart to see you back.

Great article. I'm of the "cook-at-home, just add water on the trail" persuasion, but could easily see adopting this technique when out with my kids on less ambitious trips. Thanks!

[John Coyle]

After a bit of searching I found the fry bake gear here at wildernessdining.com along with a lot of backpacking gadgets.

http://www.wildernessdining.com/fba1.html

[Tad Englund]

As was said in a Frankenstein movie "HEEEEE'S AAALLLIIIIVE"

Mike, its good to see you your contribution.

I'm too A.D.D. (absence of direct discipline) to try and bake on the trail. But this might be something I should teach the scouts to keep them occupied. It could keep them from carving their names into trees and the like.

[todd]

Was revisiting this to actually try myself and can’t see the video….Help?

[Ken Thompson]

No videos seem to have survived the site switch. A few have been restored.

[todd]

Ahhhhh…at least we have consistency!

[DAN-Y]

A substitute till it returns :-)

[Jeff McWilliams]

Resurrecting an old thread.  I just got back from doing the northern half-ish of the JMT.  Our one luxury item was the Banks 8″ pan.  At the end of our first big day, our reward was making pizza using the new quick rising pizza yeast, which was way more satisfying than using tortillas or even the store bought pre-made mini pizza crusts.  Topped with dehydrated pizza sauce, string cheese, real bacon bits, and pepperoni.

I’m using one of Roger Caffin’s earlier remote canister stoves with the setup (the one with the FMS-116T burner head).

Making the pizza dough from scratch was a lot of work, so I only offered to do it once during the 13 day trip.  For another lunch, we used the same setup bug with the pre-made pizza crusts from the grocery store.

I’ve used the same fry-bake setup with my 7 year-old grandson to make stir fry on a short weekend trip.  Ingredients were:  Teriyaki stir-fry sauce vacuum sealed in a pouch using a home vacuum sealer, instant white rice, freeze dried chicken, freeze dried broccoli.

It worked tremendously well.

[Author]

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