How to fix an easy, delicious meal using a haybox

My breakfast is cooking while I write this, but there is no camp fire and the stove is off while it simmers. How? That is the beauty of what is known as “haybox cooking” — basically, it’s a crockpot without the electricity.

Great-grandma used to use actual hay in a box to insulate a just-boiled pot of whatever she was cooking, and that kept it simmering for hours. Nowadays, people use all kinds of materials to insulate (some hikers even use their sleeping bags), and all kinds of boxes.

Besides saving fuel, one of the big advantages for forgetful flakes like me is that you can’t burn your food. Hehe.

You can use this method to slow cook almost any liquid-based meal. The longer it needs to cook (i.e., beans), the more time you will have to boil it before putting it in your “haybox” — five to fifteen minutes, max. I’m making quinoa (pron. KEEN-wah), which has a short cooking time, so it only needs to reach a rolling boil. Here’s my recipe:

Hot breakfast quinoa

• 1/2 c. quinoa, rinsed (substitute oatmeal or other cereal grain if you prefer)
• 3/4 c. water (usually, I just need 1/2 c., but the air is so dry here in the desert that a little more is necessary to cook the quinoa completely.)
• pinch salt
• 1/4 tsp. cinnamon *optional
• handful of pecans or walnuts *optional
• 1 T. shredded coconut *optional
• Fruit of your choice *optional
• Sweetener to taste (I used to use stevia but I’ve switched to honey — yum!)

After rinsing and draining the quinoa, add the water and other ingredients (except nuts if you like them crunchy, and fruit), and bring to a hard boil.

While it’s heating up, prepare your “hay box.” It can be any kind of box big enough to hold both your pot and insulation — even a cardboard box. Some people use coolers, which I think is brilliant (and plan to do IF I can find room for an extra cooler — or I might just get this instead.)

But since quinoa has such a short cooking time, I skip the box and just wrap the pot up in towels and blankets, and then close La Vanne’s back door to prevent the breeze from cooling the pot down too fast. You want to keep it as hot as possible for as long as it takes to cook. (Parking the van so the sun is shining directly on the back window takes advantage of solar heat too.)

The bottom layer is simple folded blanket, scrunched around the boiling pot.

Piling on the towels

My makeshift haybox

Go do something else for half an hour or so. When you come back, breakfast is ready. Add fruit, nuts, milk, and sweeten to taste.

Hot quinoa with cinnamon, shredded coconut, and walnuts

Enjoy!

For more info about haybox cooking, check out this Instructable and this Mother Earth News article.

p.s. You don’t need to be camping or living in a van to use haybox cooking. I started doing this several years ago at home to save on my utility bills, and fell in love with the convenience.