Hardtack & Hell Fire Stew

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Subtitles: Jose Mendoza

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[BDylanHollis]

You mean to say there's a somewhat edible use for my Civil War Hardtack!? I'll stop using them as doorstops and try this now.

[jakedesnake]

I love how hard tack has basically become a recurring character on this show

[Swindle]

Hardtack was used as paving tiles to make sidewalks in some Civil War camps, particularly in muddy conditions. A common joke was "I bit into something soft while eating hardtack today." "A worm?" "No, a nail." And Steve 1989 actually ate a piece of Civil War-era hardtack and said it tasted like mothballs and old books ("Nice!").

[carlchapman]

"A single loaf of dwarf bead could keep a warrior marching for months on end because with every step he is thinking 'I have to find food soon or it's back to that that fu*king bread'" - Terry Pratchett

[keefursabertooth]

I do antiques as an avocation and do appraisal work for the local PBS station sometimes. I once had a lady invite me over to look at some things that she had. Included in her items were two hard tack biscuits from the Civil War. She also had a letter of provenance with them that was written in 1886. The original soldier had served in the Union army and when he was mustered out, was given a weeks ration for the trip home. He described the daily rations he received in the letter, as well as all the officers, etc that distributed the rations, etc. Daily rations consisted of a pound of bacon, a pound of coffee, and a hard tack. He went on to describe how the hard tack was prepared. At night, before going to bed, you were supposed to get a tin of water and put the hard tack in it and weigh it down with a stone. In the morning, you would skim the worms off the top of the water. You would cook your bacon and coffee, then you would drain the hard tack and put it in the pan with all the bacon grease, making sure it soaked up as much of the fat as possible before consumption. During his journey home, the locals treated him like a hero and fed him. When he finally made it home, he still had his hard tack left. He threw his haversack with the biscuits in a cedar chest and went to California to look for gold. He returned after the war and found that the cedar had preserved the hard tack. He threw the biscuits in his desk and forgot about them. When the letter was written, he was distributing the hard tack to different family members as an interesting memento of his time as a soldier. I thought you would appreciate this account.

[kernowman]

I served in the British Army in the 1980's & we had a form of hardtack in our ration packs. They were called Biscuits AB, the AB stood for Alternative to Bread. But we called them 'ard bastards!!!

[Pinely]

I usually have a hard time watching cooking videos because of how hungry they make me, but that's definetly not a problem with these hardtack videos

[xassylax]

Honestly, I half expected this to just be 15 straight minutes of Hardtack Smack™. And I still would have watched it. 😂

[alcatrazthatguyontheintern]

He cooks, he researches, he builds with Legos, he reviews.

Max truly is a cultured man.

[Dohlenblick]

"We considered using hardtack in lieu of grapeshot and firing it upon the enemy, but on further reflection that seemed too cruel a thing to do to our fellow man." (Is what I imagine word around the campfire was)

[cammobunker]

Common names for civil war hardtack included "sheet iron crackers" and "tooth dullers". Some guys excavated a civil war burn pile a few years back (from when they would break winter camp and move out for the spring campaigning season) and they literally found a couple of original hardtacks that had been in the ground for 150+ years. They were still recognizable and seemed not especially worse for being buried that long.

[amberdent]

My mom told me that her father, who was born in the 20s, would stir saltines into his coffee as late as the 70s because he grew up needing to eat hardtack during the Depression, and one of the popular ways to manage hardtack at the time was to just stir it into coffee until it turned into mush. So even when he no longer needed to eat hardtack, he still liked the texture of mushy coffee, I guess.

[Atamosk-buzt]

Fun fact, hardtack at 1/4" thick has been proven to be effective at acting like a ballistic insert for up to .38 rounds. It also proved to be a somewhat ineffective radiation shield, dropping rads by as much as 11.5% at smaller dosages.

I learned this by actually googling "could hardtack stop a bullet"

[FrikInCasualMode]

Fun fact: Polish Army still uses (sometimes) kind of hardtack called "Suchary Specjalne" (Special Hardtack). Soldiers call them panzerwaffles, and joke they can be used as bulletproof inserts in their combat vests. But the best part is... they are good! Baked with caraway seeds and quite tasty. Still hard and will last decades if kept dry, but they do taste great.

[daveryan]

My Dad was in the 81st infantry division. They had been eating dehydrated vegetables for weeks. They went into Pelau and K Rats was it for quite awhile. Then one day they got canned corned beef. They ate it until they were sick of it. Then one day they got in potatoes. My Dad was the mess sgt. He got busy and made potato salad. An officer happened by and saw they were eating potato salad. He asked my Dad where he got the mayonaise. He said I made it. Next thing he knew he was cooking for the officers.

[swapertxking]

This dish saved my grand father and his brother so during the Great Depression when all the grain they grew had to be sold and his father had been baking it every Sunday for decades since 1899. Of course, he called dry stone stew, or brimstone stew.

[lou]

I love your last line of description, "If I was really, really hungry and hadn't eaten that much and had just gone on a 20-mile march, I'd gladly eat this." I get it, because it's always important to look at things in both context and perspective. Proper use of this is not as common as you might think. Thank you.

[chikntendie]

I love the dry humor of the drummer boy around 9:09. It's these types of moments that really highlight the humans behind the conflict. My favorite instance of this type of moment is from a book called "A narrative of a Revolutionary soldier" by Joseph Plumb Martin in which he recounts an event where he was waiting in the line for mess and some commotion broke out elsewhere so the sentry had to go deal with it thus halting the line with Joseph P Martin stopped just near a biscuit barrel. Immediately Martin recounts how he "did as any good soldier would do" and stuffed every part of his uniform with as many as he could as quickly as he could.

[NotTheWheel]

9:00 As a Veteran this made me laugh. Good to see Military humor has been a common theme throughout our history. Gave me a good chuckle because it sounds like something me and my friends would have said.

[DanielleStJohn]

This reminds me of a thing we made from MREs when I was in the military. We'd grind up the crackers, add the powdered hot cocoa they'd sometimes have, then add water. They called it Ranger Pudding.