A New and Easy take on Pack-able Frying Pans

[Greg]

In my search for a small, pack-able frying pan to fulfill Tolkien's description of Sam's:

"...Sam was a good cook, even by Hobbit reckoning, and he had done a good deal of the camp-cooking on their travels, when there was a chance. He still hopefully carried some of his gear in his pack: a small tinder box, two small shallow pans, the smaller fitting into the larger; inside them a wooden spoon, a short two-pronged fork, and some skewers were stowed; and hidden at the bottom of the pack in a flat wooden box a dwindling treasure, some salt."
-The Gear of Samwise Gamgee described during their time in Northern Ithilien, The Lord of the Rings, Part 2: The Two Towers, Book IV, Chapter 4: Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit

...I have pretty much struck out. I refuse to carry cast iron...there's no reason to torture myself to that end just to add the ability to fry food on occasion. No one makes one small enough for my personal wants/needs, nor makes one out of an acceptable material for, again, my wants and needs.

So a few weeks back, I came across this gem in a local antique store, along with a pair of spatulas which matched it in style of manufacture: a large, flat ladle made of mild steel.





It is pretty clearly hand-hammered, and a bowl of this sort could easily be cold-worked by anyone on this board with a dishing stump and a bit of time. If you have a bench grinder and an old Shield boss you don't need, grinding off an inch of depth could achieve the same effect. The handle in this particular piece has either been forge-welded on, or is a part of the whole, but regardless, it is conically rolled, and welded/soldered together in some fashion along the seam.

Somewhere (though not in the above quote) I could've sworn that Sam's pan was described as having a folding handle. I've considered cutting this handle off and making a new handle on a hinge to make this super-compact, but I hit a wall when I considered in advance (for once) the adventure that would be trying to pour off grease out of a pan that has a folding handle. Adding a latch mechanism to keep it in place when wanted was starting to get too complicated, and a handle that folds is going to wind up a bit short, thus a bit close to the fire for my finger's personal preferences.

Quick Test Run this evening, for Baked Potato Night (no, I don't feed my family potatoes baked in mud):




So I decided, against every fiber of my being, to leave this sucker as is, with a 4" pan and a 7" handle. I carry a meager amount of cooking oil in a little corked flask of sorts to help avoid burning/sticking, and the fact that it's steel, rather than tin-lined like my boiler and cup, means I can scrub the crap out of it with creek gravel after cooking to get any leftovers out of it, rather than having to worry about scratching off a lining, etc.

Anywho, cooked bacon up in a reasonable amount of time, and slides comfortably between wraps along the top of my Yukon pack, so it's accessible enough for a quick fried mushroom on the trail if I'd like, but complately out of the way and out of sight at all other times. The BIG perk, is that it is small enough to help me ration my meat supply, so I don't fry up an entire side of salt pork in one night, etc. I'm planning to save the bacon drippings from one night's salt pork ration by keeping them in the pan for one night, so the next morning I can heat it up and immediately have some flavoring that I can add to some crumbled up hardtack or the like. If I soak one meal's worth of hardtack in water overnight--as was common in its use--I can fry up the crumbles and have bacon flavored fried "pancakes" of a sort for breakfast. Quick, easy, and nothing has to boil, etc.

Did I mention I got this and two spatulas for ten bucks? Not sure what I'll use the spatulas for as far as Rangering goes, but they'll serve nicely at some larger function, I'm sure.

Rather proud of this one. I think it'd be plenty reasonable to say that this could've been made BY Rangers, FOR Rangers, but I'd like to think that a Dwarf of the Blue mountains, traveling as a tinker to repair cooking pots and such for money was commissioned to hammer this out real quick when visiting Bree.

Would've been a fun conversation to hear. "You see, Dwarf, I've got this problem..."

[Straelbora]

Nice find. One of these days, I'm going to inventory (and photograph to post here) my Middle-Earth home furnishings. Most have come from Salvation Army and Goodwill stores.

I'm afraid of the damage I would do if I start checking antique stores.

[Ringulf]

If the handle is rolled and of a size to accomodate a small shaft, perhaps you could use the but end of a wooden spoon made to fit and possibly even having a small pin if you wanted a bit firmer attachment. Perrsonally I have affixed a small band or d ring to the rim the put the long fork down through from the top. when levered back it holds the pan in three places and is normally quite stable.

[RikJohnson]

I was at the swap meet and saw something similar.
An 8" wok with rounded handle for $10 or so.
It wasn't thick or heavy and I wondered it it would be worth having???

still thinking of it.

It was made for the Mexican crowd to burn tamales or some such thing but is small and light enough to go in a pack.

[sgainbrachta]

Great little pan idea!

I have altered a couple of gold pans into fry pans as well- you can sometimes find them in a 5-6" base size, the outside dia. is about 8" or so. I added a rolled tube, like your handle tube- but only about 2" long to put a stick into on mine.

Also- you can get those ladles at most Asian markets, or possibly even a small wok- which I can absolutely see a ranger using! It can be a pot, or a pan at need- and is light. most early woks had a wooden top, and with a pair of wooden tongs, a shallow ladle and a spatula shaped the the curve of the wok- you'd have everything you could need to cook with! Even better- add a fire stand (trivet?) the the wok rests on, that can nest inside it- and you can cook fast and hot with pine needles, if it was all you had~ A period volcano stove, almost...

And yeah- a bit of oil or grease is a great thing in the field. I have some bacon grease in a tight-lidded tin, wrapped in greased cloth- which is again wrapped in an oilcloth bag. Of course, it STILL gets everywhere- but is a gift of the Valar when it comes time to cook in the field!