Austere Cooking 101 and Bushcraft

About

The course focuses on solving the problem of meeting nutritional needs and avoiding foodborne illnesses in austere environments to include unsecured locations without safe food handling regulations and practices in place.  The course is designed to teach students the best techniques in animal inspection, harvest, evisceration and cooking utilizing little equipment with both primitive and modern technologies. Successful completion of this course will enable students to be more nutritionally self-sustaining in austere locations and rely less on store supplies. They will also have a better understanding of safe food handling and storage practices in austere environments.

We will be dispatching, field processing and cooking a domestic farm animal (goat or sheep). You will learn to properly butcher and prepare the animal from a highly qualified and certified butcher.

Objectives

• Enhancing remote feeding
• Nutritional needs and sources
• Foodborne illness reduction
• Healthy Protein intake
• Supply chain reduction and self-reliance
• Animal identification
• Medical evaluation
• Animal breakdown
• Field meal preparation and safe handling techniques
• Primitive Hygiene/Sanitation
• Enhance creativity and critical thinking skills
• Edible, Useful, and Medicinal Plants (seasonal)
• Camp Craft & Bushcraft Cooking

Course Topics

• Enhancing Nutritional Values that are directly related to
• Cognitive Abilities
• Physical Performance
• Physical Exertion
• Stress
• Metabolic Recovery
• Preventative Nutrition

In-Field Animal Evaluation

• Animal identification and health evaluation
• Animal body composition, muscle structure, cuts, nose to tail uses, including non-edible body parts
• Harvest and slaughter techniques, field dressing, and in-field safe handling and food safety techniques

Course Outcomes and Demonstrated Skills

• Basic animal identification
• Healthy animal ID pre-&-post slaughtering
• Knife skills
• Field skinning
• Sanitary filed butchering practices for Foodborne illnesses reduction
• Organ identification – healthy organs vs unhealthy
• Whole animal fabrication methods in the field
• Further processing and butchering for meal planning
• Muscle structures – Understanding nutritional values from nose to tail
• Muscle structures – Understanding best cooking methods
• Create short/long Term storage areas
• Basic Fire pit and smoking shack building
• Basic Understanding of open flame cooking techniques
• Meal preparations in field environment
• Utilizing indigenous ingredients for nutritious flavorful meals
• Utilizing the organs, entrails and bones for added nutritional meals and safe handling
• Utilizing the organs, entrails and bones for tools
• Field kitchen setup
• Frontier methods of cooking with Cast Iron
• Field cooking techniques:
• Open flame
• Smoking
• Hot Coals
• Dutch oven
• Non-Fire alternative cooking options avoiding detection
  • Solar cooking – Utilizing the sun with new cooking technologies
  • Sous Vied cooking – Water bath cooking
• Quick recipe development – High Calorie Nutritional Meals
• Knowing proper cooking temperatures avoiding foodborne illnesses
• Short Term meat curing
• Jerky processing in the field

The survival training is very intensive and is almost entirely hands on with very little lecture time. The advanced survival training is not so difficult that family and older children can’t attend though.  These are skills that your friends will be impressed with the next time you go camping or hunting and these are skills that tend to stick with you for a lifetime. The skills are taught in a laid back survival camp environment. Self Reliance skills truly give you an empowered feeling because after your training you will be confident to walk into any environment and take care of yourself, your friends, and your family. If you need advanced survival training to increase your bushcraft skills and overall comfort, then this is the perfect course for you!

What is Supplied

• Shelter Lodging: Students can stay in one of our GP Medium tents when not running field exercises or may stay in their own tents or a primitive shelter.
• Food and Water:
• Sanitation/Hygiene: A portable restroom and potable water will be provided at main camp.

Food and Water Required

Water will be provided but you may ring your own food as desired. Other food will either be harvested from natural resources or be obtained during the butchering/cooking/preservation portion of this training class. We recommend quick field expedient meals such as our Camp Ready Meals or MRE’s. They can quickly be made at our primitive camps and won’t slow down the learning process. You can also purchase food locally once you get here. Walmart and several local eateries are within a close drive away.

Minimum Survival Tools Required

• Small Backpack
• Poncho or Rain Gear
• Outdoor Clothing
• Fixed blade knife & folding saw
• Overnight Camping Gear

Bring your gear with you. We do not provide you with gear unless you purchase it from us ahead of time. You don’t need much equipment for our courses, though good equipment does speed the learning process up greatly! You don’t have to buy our gear to attend the course, but you need survival gear of equivalent quality.

Fixed blade knife preferable a bushcraft style knife, outdoor clothing, boots, folding saw, paracord, overnight camping gear, small backpack.

Length

3 Days / 2 nights