Cooking with Cob...

So you`ve made the great escape, made it out of dodge with your BOB intact. You didn`t have enough time/money/whatever to develop a BOL, and you have a group of people along that you`ve collected along the way. Everybody has contributed something in the way of supplies (food mostly...). So, now they look to you as their “leader” to figure everything out.

They`re getting hungry, and not everybody will be willing to take their turn waiting on dinner to be cooked in the one little pot you managed to salvage along the way, so how to feed this mob? This is where cob comes in.  Lots of food can be cooked at one time, and rather quickly. No need for a large fire, this method is from ancient days and is still being practiced today.

So what is cob? Cob is an earth based building material, normally fashioned from mud, clay, straw, grass, rocks, or whatever else you have on hand. Think adobe, mud hut, just on a smaller scale. To build you oven requires only time and manpower, all the materials can be found in nature. Straw/grass can be cut & dried from any field or roadside.  Rocks…well everybody can find rocks, they`re everywhere. Mud/clay, this is the part you might have to hunt/dig for. Most regions of the US have natural clay deposits; you just have to know how to find them.

Once you find your clay, dig a lot of it and move it to your chosen building site. Start a “pit” to mix the clay and mud, add the straw/grass as a binder. Mixing works easiest when done by foot traffic, so pick a few people to stomp around in the goo. Send everybody that`s not mixing on a rock hunt, the more the merrier.  Find as many as possible, the bigger the better. If you can find a pile of discarded bricks even better!

Now you`ve got your rocks, you`ve got your clay/mud/straw mix (cob), now to get building. Start by stacking your most stable rocks in a ring, fill the inside with the smaller ones and dirt, and pack it down good. Once you get up to a workable height, make a level platform with your flattest rocks (or bricks if you have any). This will be your cooking surface, make it as nice a possible using your best materials. Build a ledge on one side; this will be the entry/exit for your oven. Now,  build up a dome shape using sand or something you can remove later without too much trouble, size it to hold a small fire and what you will be cooking. Cover this with paper, straw, old fabric, or what you have, just something to keep it from sticking to the next layer.

Now comes the cob. Cover your dome with a generous layer, several inches thick. Form into whatever final shape you desire, most of these I have seen are simple mounds, but here`s where the artist in your group can flourish. Let them have free reign to finish the final coat, adding whatever decoration they might fancy.  Allow this to dry for a few days, maybe up to a week. Then dig out the inner dome, smooth the inside faces of the oven while you’re at it. Let this dry for another day or so, and then build a series of small fires inside the oven to help speed up the curing process. While working through this stage, fashion a door for the oven, this will help speed the cooking process by controlling heat loss.

You can cook with the fire inside of the oven, or dig out the coals and let the residual heat do the job, this will allow for more food to be in the oven at one time. Remember, wood burns at over 400 degrees, so once you have your oven fired and warmed up; this will be the temperature range you will be working with. Plan ahead on how you will be cooking, as the oven will hold heat for a long time.

Once all this is said and done, you will have a very serviceable oven capable of cooking a wide variety of foods. You have also established a sense of order and permanence in your group; this will help to build the bonds of community and family, as they are your new “family”.

Here`s a link to one of my favorite ovens I have found on the web…

http://sourdough.com/building-cob-oven