SC - cooking frumenty for the masses

[DianaFiona at aol.com]

Adamantius wrote:
  It just occurred to me that you might consider bulgur wheat, which is
  precooked, and wheat being, so far as I know, the more standard grain
  for frumenty anyway. I'm thinking that bulgur cooks very much like
  Minute (Pfeh!) Rice, especially the smaller-cut varieties of bulgur. You
  could essentially pour your boiling liquid over the bulgur, cover it,
  and let the wheat drink up the liquid, with no possibility of burning.
>>>

      And I would also second (Or third, or......;-) ) that idea! I used
bulgar last year at our August event for just that reason. The stove at our
site is old and unreliable, to the point that our shire bought a propane fish
ring (Basicly a large burner) so that we actually could boil water in a
timely fashion. Cooking a large vat of anything porrige-like would have been
  a disaster waiting to happen.

And Tibor wrote:
<< 
 The only concern I might have for you, is that by cooking out of doors a
 strong wind can rob your kettles of heat too quickly.  You may wish to
 consider setting up a windbreak, to keep all of your cooking times more
 predictable.
 
 	Tibor (Watched a 2 hour dish become a 4 hour dish that way...)
 
  >>
      Even inside you can have problems--we can't turn on the exhast fan
above the afore mentioned stove (In late August in the South, mind you!) or
getting pots to boil goes from hard to impossible. However, one trick that
can help---by letting you cook farther in advance---is to put your cooked
food in clean ice chests. With the bulgar, we just put it in there and poured
the boiling broth on it right in place. Placing a clean towel under the lid
will absorb excess steam and keep it from dripping back down on foods that
you want to stay dry. You do have to be a bit careful--I put the pork dish in
an ice chest *right* after it came bubbling from the oven and the extreem
heat of the oily broth warped the sides a bit. Fortunately, it was my own ice
chest, not a borrowed one! We also mix salad in the biggest ice chest we can
get and pop it back in the cooler until serving time. 

Ldy Diana Fiona O'Shera
Vulpine Reach, Meridies