How to Bake Meat in Salt

What a beautiful day. It was pretty chilly this morning and pretty horrid yesterday, so it's still pretty wet down here, some flooded patches, quite muddy, but today's wonderful. The bluebells and anemones still out, blanket in the ground. When I walk here, I walk past my shelters and camp areas to check on everything and because I've not been down here in a few weeks now, somebody else has been. They've been using up my firewood, moving around materials, using materials, modifying shelters, all that kind of thing, leaving rubbish, stolen things, items that I had down here. So they're either down here a couple of days or they've been down a couple of times, which is a shame. So yeah, I've been dealing with that and cut myself as they tie a knot, not a knot, but enough of that. Let's enjoy today, get a fire going and let's cook something interesting. So glad to have that wood store for days like today. I'm just going to batten some of this down, make it nice and small to get the fire going. I've already got my tinder bundle, which I made earlier. got quite a plethora of wood here. I've got bits of oak, chestnut, birch. Suppliers are lower, especially when someone's been down pinching it. You can see the door falling off the smoker there. That's got to come down. Well, today I'm going to be attempting something new. It's going to be salt baking. Chicken baked in salt, which is mixed with egg whites to make it kind of gloopy. And it acts like an oven within an oven, basically. You've probably seen it on cooking shows and stuff. I've wanted to do it for some time. About a month ago, I did a trial at home in the oven, which, so hopefully today's going to be more successful. I've got the Dutch oven with me. You probably saw me carrying that in. And yeah, it should be quite a good experiment. I'm going to do some accompaniments as well. And as soon as this fire's going, I'm probably going to make a tea. Now, it takes a while to get good coals for doing these cooking videos, which is why I'm going to have a nice cup of tea and relax in this peaceful, lovely day. I'm going to be using the Petromax Dutch oven trivet. I don't know exactly what they call it, to be honest, but it just folds flat, folds out. It's cast iron, so it's quite heavy, And it is a beautiful day. I know I said that, but there's been so much rain lately. Yeah, I just sat here watching the fire burning down. A little update for you, the truck is getting its lift this week. I will do a video about the upgrades and the modifications and everything to that. I may actually do two because I've got parts on order from Canada and Poland, and there's a lot of work I've got to do myself inside as well. So it's slowly coming together, but yeah, it'd be good to get the lift done and then I can get some proper tyres on there because it's been a little slippery on the mud, which is one reason I've not been down here in a while. Right, I shall start prepping after this tea, ready for when them coals are ready. Right, so I've got to do some prep first. My egg carrier here, which has done a good job, and we're going to separate these and use the whites. That's four egg whites, may need one more, we'll see. And to that I'm just going to add table salt, five to six hundred grams, something like that. I've just got a big bag, just going to use about half of it, I think it's a kilo. And we're just going to mix. And now you'll see that's kind of like a mashed potato really, so it's nice and malleable. Right, this is the container I'm going to be using. You might be thinking that's a bit small for a chicken. Well, it's perfect for a Pusan. No point in me doing a whole one just for me. So first I'm just going to line the bottom here, probably get my fingers stuck in. In goes a little Pusan, and into that I'm going to put a thermometer. This is a wireless thermometer, so that's going to really help. I can see there's a bit of a spot under there. And now we completely encompass it, no gaps whatsoever. And there we are, completely encased in salt. Now I'm going to put a trivet inside the Dutch oven, just to keep it off the direct heat, and put that in there, and hopefully... There we go, perfect fit. Starting to see some great coals on that fire. Put a little bit more wood on. Well, that's step one done. I'm just going to leave that to rest for a minute, and I'm going to prep the side dish. I'm just going to prep my saucepan here for a parboil, and here we have some potatoes. So I'm going to get peeling them, set up a cook here, and we've got poultry, chicken, whole, and then we just start cook. Now the only problem with this is it has a tough time getting through the cast iron, so I've taken the lid off every now and again. So it's off with our parbaked potatoes, and I'm going to spread out some coals here. Now I forgot my entrenchment tool, so I'm just using my gloves to get some of them coals on. I'll get a few on at first, just to heat it up. Now this is what I mean, it's a brilliant tool. This works in the oven, I want to spit whatever, but in a cast iron Dutch oven it really blocks that signal. Now I know this is going to take half hour, maybe more anyway, half hour, 45 minutes, so I'll just peak in 20 minutes or so, have a little look how it's doing. We know it started at eight degrees, target at 74 degrees, and the ambient inside at the time of connection was 14 degrees. There should be no risk really of burning, because it's all encased in that salt, so it could be a good way of baking, we will see. I'd also like to try something similar, which is clay baking, where you put the meat inside clay, usually put a barrier, you can just use like baking paper or something like that, but traditionally you'd use like leaves, use some twine to tie it together, put the clay on, just put it in the coals, build the fire around it. So I'm going to try that at some point, because there's a lot of clay here under the ground. Now if I get a bit closer to the Dutch oven here, I can actually see the temperatures. 174 degrees in that Dutch oven, target obviously, and it's 13 degrees, so it's starting to rise. The Dutch oven of course had to heat up itself first. Well it's saying 37 minutes, so it's definitely heated up. Now I'm going to run it a little longer, because on my test run a month ago, it was a little underdone. It might have been my probe placement, but generally they're pretty good, and I'll give it a longer resting time, because I'll fry these potatoes while it's still in the Dutch oven, and the Dutch oven stays hot for a while. Lovely and green isn't it? Did you see my Adirondack roof as I walked past on the way in? It's really in bloom. Some pretty big plants on there, I don't know what they are, I planted so many different things on there, wild seeds and all sorts, but it's good to see it like that. I'll have to do a night in it soon, if it's not occupied. Right, it's gone over the temperature, which is what I wanted to do, and I'm going to leave it in here for a while, but I'll give you a sneak peek. Here we go. Wow, that's expanded more than last time. I think I used more egg whites this time. Rock hard though. Get this over the heat a bit, and a pan on with a bit of oil. Okay, it's time to deal with this chicken. I'm going to twist out, ouch, that's a bit warm still. I'm a bit worried this is overcooked now, but hey ho. So this, well you don't get that colour like roasting it, but it looks and smells cooked. We shall see. Here is our chicken, brushed off some of the salt, and of course our kept potatoes, nice and crispy. It's almost like I've done it before. Right, anyone got any seasoning for the potatoes? Bit of salt on there, and we'll give one of them a go. Absolutely, I'll grab another one, beautiful. Okay, here we go, cut the twine, be done, be done. Oh, that's fine, that is fine. Oh yes, if I get a bit of that skin as well, a lot of the seasoning will be there. I am happy with that. I suppose I should take a drumstick off, looks fine. Good potatoes. Right, time to try a thigh. Oh yeah, I can taste the seasoning there, and it's not too overpowering either, it's nice. All things considered, pretty happy with that. Quite looking forward to trying the clay-baked one now as well.