From the slave quarters at Melrose mansion in Natchez Mississippi. Circa late 1840’s. Very simple but obviously effective.

From the picture it looks like the crane reaches almost all the way across the fireplace but the hook on the end of the arm has me wondering. Weren't pots or grills hung from the hooks maybe on a chain? 

On the other hand it would be very easy to make hooks to fit the crane's straight flat arm so cooking utensils could be slid in or out to adjust temps. 

Thanks for the pics.

Frosty The Lucky.

My guess would be that pots would be hung with chains or a trammel, and the hook would keep things from slipping off the end. 

Yeah, something like that, I was speculating based on things a slave might be able to find like a broken barrel hoop or similar, perhaps heavy wire 1864 even in the south had some industry and metal products so scrap could be gleaned and wrought iron can be worked cold if it's not too fancy.

A loop of chain would serve as well of course and a length of chain and some wire hooks makes a fine trammel. 

I did a LOT of campfire Or as Thomas Powers called it, down hearth cooking and improvising ways to hold various utensils at the fire was sort of a past time of mine.

I've always been pretty self entertaining you know.

Frosty The Lucky.

I had the privilege of making one of these for a community of nuns nearby as their main cookstove. I made it nearly identical, except with mortise and tenon joints on both the arm and the scrolled support. My understanding is that the fire is built on one side of the fireplace, and the pots are hung as close as need be down the length of the arm. 

I have always wanted one in my own home, but I have a soapstone woodstove which takes the place of the fireplace... 

Right. Except for bringing water to a boil the only time you saw pots hung directly over the fire is in movies and TV shows.

So you can't use one in your wood stove, you could always make one for the fire pit out back. The break down cooking tripod, spit thing Thomas Powers talked about so much and posted pics of would be my choice.

Frosty The Lucky.

I've always loved making the spit/tripod combos. Cut my teeth on them when I was 16 as my first "really big" project - 3/4" round! I was not a skinny kid, but with the 4 lb hammer and a small coal forge, I felt the burn forging out long tapers for the legs. Twisting them posed another more interesting problem as at that time my vise was mounted to a small hardwood table I made that measured 2' x 1', with thin strips for legs. As one might expect, the table, not the tapered steel, twisted in place. I can't remember my solution, but it may have been in the neighborhood of sitting on the table... 

The wife and I are planning a whole outdoor area behind some lealand cypress trees next to her art studio. I am insisting on making an elevated "hob" style cooking area with a grill, an oven, and a side part for my fireplace crane. There is nothing at all better than cooking over the fire. Especially when you're smoking jalepenos and habeneros for smokey hot sauce! The new setup will replace my flimsy dollar-store charcoal grill. It is a massive 16" square grill with only enough space under the grille to put one layer of charcoal briquettes. 

"Hob" cooking area as in induction range? I hadn't thought of one for outdoor use but . . . Hmmmmm. Something I've always wanted to try with an induction cooker is to put an uncoated nail or length of steel rod or seven down the center of a potato with oil or butter. Poke holes, butter / oil them and reinsert the rod(s) and see if it would fry a potato from the inside. Hmmm?

That reminds me of a Boyscout favorite, we'd bore a hole in a potato, insert a hot dog, wrap in foil and bake it by the fire. Those would last till the second day easy. First night, stuffing a spud with burger, onion, packaged gravy powder, butter and what ever else came to mind (sometimes!) was great, sometimes not so much. Another easy meal was to wrap chopped potato, onion and meat, hot dog, bacon, (CANNED) burger, canned corned beef, etc. in a couple layers of foil and set it next to the fire. Breakfast I'd open the top of the foil, crack an egg in and and set it back for a short time. The trick was to get the white to cook and leave the yolk runny. I'm an over easy guy. A scout master showed me how to separate the yolk so I could let the white cook in the package and add the yolks for just a minute or two before scarfing it down.

I agree, nothing beats cooking over an open fire. 20 years as an exploration driller living in a tent all over Alaska I did a LOT of camp cooking but thinking about that brought back how much fun it was in Boyscouts.

It's an old guy brain thing.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

 

Frosty, 

please do the induction fry with nails. Beyond being perhaps the coolest way I have ever heard to cook something, I imagine it will work with great success and you will achieve the perfect french fry, all without the fry being frenched. 

I suppose Hob is a term for it; I picked it up from an old "woodcraft" book by one of the founders of scouts. I think it was called the "altar fireplace". I adapted a version to use as a forge when my first supply of free boiler coal ran out as a kid. I built a wood-fired forge on top of a log-cabin style base filled with rocks and dirt. It worked remarkably well and was aesthetic in a rustic sort of way. The same concept this time, except out of stone and mortar from the property. 25 acres of granite should do the trick. One of the perks of living up on the Catoctin Mountains. The downside is that our water is slightly radioactive, but I am as yet unsure of how that is affecting us! 

Cooking with the scouts in my era had moved a bit away from foil dinners, though I did plenty as a cub scout. I don't think there is a better meal than hamburger, onion soup powder, an onion, a carrot and a potato wrapped and chucked in the coals by the fire. Then, with the sun set, eating it straight out of the foil in the dark. You have to pay lots of money for a sensory-free experience like that in a fancy restaurant. We had mostly transitioned to cooking on propane stoves in my day, though. It was less exciting. 

It did, however, provide a rather humorous story once upon a time. When we would host our annual "Freezoree" campout in February, the propane tanks would freeze up so we would switch to white gas. One fateful Sunday, as breakfast was winding down, our scout leaders were fiddling with the stove which was not working properly. Meanwhile, us scouts were trying to get the fire going. I was the Senior Patrol Leader, and I wanted to lend a hand so I took the dixie cup full of bacon grease and gave it to another scout to "accelerate" the fire. Only, I thought it was bacon grease. The scoutmaster had drained the white gas stove into a dixie cup, and, when he wasn't looking I accidentally grabbed that one by mistake. 

Boy was the fireball huge. Some eyebrows were lost in those moments. Thankfully no one was injured and it did, I believe, get the logs lit. 

Maybe one of these days I'll have access to an induction range top and give it a try, I've been hoping since they came out. 

Most of us in scouts discovered quickly that y don't actually put food IN the coals but near them covered in ash.  One of the guys discovered the way to bake potatoes was on a skewer propped near the fire. Give it a turn every few minutes and a good sized russet was baked faster than in the kitchen range at home. We were at a jamboree and the scout masters inspecting camps really had a conniption over our camp fire ringed with potatoes on sticks rather than buried in coals lie they were supposed to be. I believe our troop was the only one that didn't have to eat burned potatoes.

We started experimenting and it wasn't long and we were roasting bacon, biscuits or whatever needed cooking on skewers. Ever wrap biscuit dough around a stick? The flavor of the fire really ads to them. Unless your fire is made with mesquite, greasewood, sage, etc. Then it tastes like it's embalming your tongue with creosote.

We were in S. California so we didn't have Freezerees, we did have a winter jamboree once though. That was memorable, we were gathered around for the evening bonfire which was modest sized and managed entirely by a couple of the scoutmasters and Eagles. Traditionally an Order of the Arrow Eagle scout would shoot a fire arrow into the wood to light it. Being S. Cal. there was NO WAY anyone was going to shoot a fire arrow at anything. Sooooo, one of the Scout masters, (OUR Scoutmaster) rigged it. He stretched a wire from out of sight and above and had one of the Eagles shoot the fire arrow with his bow. Sounds good eh?

Wellllll, seems Jerry (our scoutmaster) wasn't very good at building fires so he added a little accelerant. Seeing as it was expected, one of the other scoutmasters provided the accelerant. Kerosene or diesel. . . Right? HAH he was literally a rocket scientist working for Rocketdyne so he brought . . . Liquid rocket fuel with some special additives to make colored flames. Talk about a wicked cool fire lighting ceremony!  

Turned out starting the fire arrow with flint and steel might not have been the best idea because it took probably 15 minutes to get it lit AND by that time the 2' deep 15' diameter fire pit had filled to the brim with rocket fuel fumes. 

The flames were multi colored as expected but forming a 50' diameter ring blasting up through the pines for at least 200' before petering out was A W E S O M E . And THAT is how our troop became a legend! It was around then that open camp fires were banned in all state and federal parks in S. Cal. I don't think fires are allowed now, not even in the funky concrete, stone and steel topped cooker things. I don't think we were the cause but I'm SURE we were a factor. I'm pretty sure the forestry guys who'd approved it had some splainin to do. Having grown up in S. Cal. I think it's a good move, it's getting hard to find anywhere in Alaska where open fires are permitted. We pack one of those screen covered fire pits with us.

Anyway, that's my Boyscout Jamboree fire starting ceremony story. The memory of every adult's horrified exclamation while the entire 500+ boy scout contingent said OOH, AWW, WOW and cheering!

Frosty The Lucky.

 

In British English, “hob” is a general term for any cooktop, not just induction.

 We have an induction cooktop, which replaced the original electric one that was installed when our house was built in 1968 and which spectacularly self-destructed a few years after we bought the place. The induction cooktop is great: quicker to heat than gas, very precise for anything from melting chocolate to boiling pasta water, and very easy to clean. 

I'd love an induction cook top, or at least try one out. Currently we have a Viking range top, 4 burners, flat top and a char grill. It was a floor display and went as a scratch and dent for more than 50% off but I'd much prefer a 24" wide flat top than the char grill. I have no use for a BBQ in the kitchen but it was the deal.

While I love the thing I'd love something easier to clean WAY MORE, especially if it's as responsive and controllable as gas. An induction top needs the right kind of pots n pans though, yes?

How about you try my inside out fried potato idea for me? 

Frosty The Lucky.