Bushcraft Stuff

Is this an American thing, or do folks elsewhere do it too?

It’s called bean hole cooking, because baked beans are what most people do in them. But it’s useful for a lot more than that…..

The basic idea is to dig a hole at least 2 feet deep (3 is better, 2 1/2 feet is a good compromise if you’re lazy), and half again as wide as your Dutch oven, and burn down firewood in it until you have eight or ten inches of coals.

When the wood is pretty much burned down, you prep your Dutch oven with layers of pre-soaked northern white beans, sliced onions, and salt pork (or bacon), then pour a mixture of hot water, molasses, maple syrup or brown sugar, salt, black pepper and dry mustard to cover the beans well. That’s a typical baked bean recipe, anyway; there are probably as many recipes out there as there are people digging bean holes.

Shovel about two thirds of the coals out, and set the Dutch oven into the hole. Fill around and over it with the remaining coals. Some folks recommend using aluminium foil over the lid; or just filling around the sides of the Dutch oven, then covering it with a wet burlap bag. Personally, I cover the open pot with the foil first, with a good skirt folded down all around, then put the lid on it. That way you don’t have dirt or charcoal sneaking its way into the beans when you remove the lids….

Backfill the hole, tamp it down well, and come back in about ten hours. Dig up the pot, and you’ll find out what baked beans are supposed to taste like.

I’ve also done pot roasts, and baked chicken with potatoes and vegetables, in a bean hole. One advantage of a beanhole if you’re out on a hunting trip is that you can start dinner cooking, bury it, and safely walk away from camp. It isn’t going to start a fire; it isn’t going to burn the food; and dinner’s ready when you come stumbling in at the end of the day. Also, there are slim odds that anyone is going to find your dinner and abscond with it.

At home some people dig permanent beanholes, and usually line them with bricks or rocks. My personal beanhole at the side of my house is lined with a chunk of heavy steel pipe from a pipeline (I work for a natural gas utility), and has several inches of pea gravel behind the pipe. My theory was that the gravel would hold heat better than plain soil would, but I can’t really prove that. The setup works just fine, though.

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