Hard Tack for Survival
Hard Tack for Survival
Hard Tack, also called a Ship Biscuit, has been around for a long time. It may be the very first survival food. Sailors and soldiers carried these when food was scarce. These biscuits would fill a belly and never good bad. There are museums with hard tack that goes back to the civil war! Often sailors would eat their hard tack in the dark to avoid seeing the worms that were in them...hey it's extra protein.
Have you considered making hard tack one of your survival foods?
Hard Tack for Survival Transcript below
hey guys it's all in slot here I haven't
made a video since we moved back to
Idaho from Maine but we're back in Idaho
and we're getting situated here one of
the things that I've been getting into
lately is emergency preparedness or
prepping disaster preparedness and all
that stuff
because it's fun and you know into the
world is coming and all that fun stuff
so anyway what I wanted to do today was
to make a video about heart attack it's
also known as ship biscuits and this is
this is what the final product looks
like or supposed to look like and they
call hardtack or ship biscuit because it
is hard but these things have been found
in Civil War rations and supplies they
use these when they were merchant ships
were traveling overseas they would take
these because they don't go rotten and
they don't spoil they have these in
museums that are over a hundred and
fifty years old and they're still edible
so we make these and we store them in
our food storage supply we're trying to
work up to having a one-year food supply
in case of disaster or emergency or you
know if you think about it if something
bad happened in the world or if we went
to war
World War three broke out Armageddon or
whatever then how long do you think the
food would last at the grocery store
maybe one or two days at the most and
then if you don't have the food at your
property or you don't have the ability
to grow it on your property or you don't
have the seeds or raising chickens or
whatever or have food storage you're
going to go hungry and you're going to
starve to death and be in big trouble so
that's what we're trying to do is get
prepared for any kind of disaster and
today I'm going to show you guys how to
make hardtack or what they were
originally called as shipped biscuits
now in order to make these you have to
have flour any kind of all-purpose flour
work so you can have whole wheat flour
you need water a rolling pin rolling
pins optional I've made them by hand and
you don't really need that you need a
mixing bowl a nice little pizza cutter
works good
you need salt and then a fork I like to
use two forks to poke the holes but this
is an unleavened bread and it's kind of
like a big thick cracker so that's what
we're gonna make this is probably the
easiest recipe out of anything that I've
ever seen so there's no reason why you
shouldn't have some of these on hand to
be able to tap into if you get hungry
one day and it doesn't matter if you
spill a little bit of that because I'm
gonna be pouring some on the counter
anyways here in a second I'll do let's
see I'm not gonna make too many I'll
just do about that much worth I don't
measure anything when I make these
because it's it's pretty bomb-proof it's
pretty Carl proof I can make these and
not screw them up too bad so I don't
worry about too much so I'm just gonna
use about this much flour and then
here's where I'm going to get messy
start adding the water in you can use a
mixer if you want I just do it by hand
and let my hands get all full of dough I
don't really care that much it gets
stuck all over your fingers that you can
scrape that off anyway that's it you can
start mixing that in in a point you
probably should have done this when it
was still dry I just add some salt and I
don't measure this either just add some
salt in there for to help it dehydrate
and dry out that's probably good and
then just start mixing it all together
like I don't have this water majored out
I'm just using this to pour it right and
it's simple you just when it gets the
point where it's really sticky then you
just add a little bit more flour just
kind of kneading it and off you go now
I'm just gonna spread some flour out
here on the countertop try and keep it
from spilling on the floor we're gonna
take our dough here just plop it right
out there on the flour
now you can if you want scrape all of
this out and make use of it if you want
it dry that's a lot of flour like that
that's totally fine it's not a problem
and then you basically want to knead the
dough together so just old press old
press just like this and just keep going
until it's all mixed in really good all
right now you're just gonna roll it out
until you get it about the thickness
that you want takes a little bit of work
okay now that we've got it rolled out to
about the thickness that we want we're
just gonna take I like to use two forks
because you can go a little bit faster
now this dough it's not going to rise
because it doesn't have any yeast in it
doesn't have any leavening agents so
it's going to stay the same size as to
whatever you cut it out when you bake it
but we want to poke the holes in it just
so we can get all the moisture out when
we bake it and it helps to hold butter
or jam on or anything like that when
it's got a little bit of texture to it
so just take the forks and start poking
it all over it doesn't really matter you
can make them look really nice if you
wanted to make them look like saltines
but you're basically just going to do
this this will also keep any air bubbles
if you've got any air bubbles trapped in
your dough it'll pop all those so you
don't have any big bubbles that will
burn in the oven now you just take your
pizza cutter and you just slice it up
I'm just going to go ahead and do these
kind of in rectangles
again there's nothing that has to be
precise about this cuz it's just for
food storage it's not like you're going
to be feeding it to your guests or
people coming over your house and then
you just take these and you put them on
a cookie sheet make sure that your
cookie sheet doesn't have any oil or
anything on it this has just got a
little bit of flour on it from the last
batch that I did but you just throw
these on here it doesn't even matter it
doesn't matter if they're right up next
to each other because like I said they
don't rise
they're not gonna puff out and crowd
each other out so you just pack them on
your cookie sheet and then when you take
them to the oven now you want to set
your oven to bake at 365 370 or 375
depending on where you're at and how
humid it is but we're going to hit start
and we'll do ours at 370 I did the last
batch at 365 it took a little bit longer
okay and we're up to 370 so we're just
going to stick these in now now we're
going to set the timer for we'll do 28
minutes look at this here's our new dog
her name is Coco Commun she was the
stray that wandered up on her porch here
and we still have tag and she's the
stray that wandered up on our porch and
we took her in and she so far she's been
a really good dog
except for pooping on the floor the kids
already named her Coco go go go so
jealous
oh come here hey hi she's a good dog
though huh you're a good puppy turd okay
the timer just went off so now we're
just gonna open the oven lay these out a
little bit and then we're just gonna
flip them all over
okay now we're just put them back yet
for another 28 minutes and they'll be
done now when it comes time to eat this
hardtack or these biscuits whatever
you want to call them you definitely
don't want to eat them because they're
really hard like that you can break your
teeth are so one of the best things to
do is you can either break them up and
pour milk over them this is raw milk
unpasteurized right from a dairy cow we
trained our chicken eggs for some dairy
milk and so you can soak it in milk like
that for 10 or 15 minutes or you can
soak it in water and to soften it for
about 10 or 15 minutes and then you can
fry it in a skillet of butter or eat it
just like bread and it'll soften soften
right up and you can eat it like that
but this hasn't been soaking very long
so hard in a rock and that's why they
call hard tack well I hope you guys can
get more prepared for the end of the
world we'll make some hard tack or sit
biscuits and put them in your food
storage or put them up in your cupboard
and they'll last a long time but if
you're hungry you'll be glad you did it