Oatmeal skillet biscuits using shelf-stable ingredients

When you have to live off of your shelf-stable storage foods, breads will be a very basic food you need to adapt to your available ingredients.

You may also find yourself without access to an oven, so it’s important to know how to cook as many foods as possible over a camp fire or on top of a wood stove.

My oatmeal biscuit recipe is adapted from the 1918 book,  Two Hundred and Seventy-Five War-Time Recipes, to use readily available shelf-stable ingredients.

Ingredients

1 cup flour
1 cup oatmeal (quick oats is better)
3 tbsp dry milk
1 cup water
6 tbsp coconut oil (or butter, shortening)
3/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp baking powder
1-2 tbsp ghee or butter

Use “quick oats” if you can, or grind down your oatmeal a little.  You can use regular rolled oats if you want, you’ll just have a denser bread.

For the coconut oil, you can substitute butter or shortening if you have them.

For the ghee, you can substitute butter, coconut oil, shortening, or vegetable oil, depending what you have.

Instead of using the dry milk, you can use 1 cup of fresh milk in place of the water.

Directions

Mix flour, oatmeal, dry milk, coconut oil, salt, and baking powder.

Add the water and mix it into the dry ingredients. Do not over mix.

Form dough into 3 or 4 balls, depending on how big you want the biscuits. Flatten the balls to about 3/4 to 1-inch thick disks.

Put skillet on low-medium heat. On stove top, set the heat to around “4”.  Add ghee (or butter or other fat) to the skillet.  Let the pan heat for a few minutes.

Place the disks of dough into the hot skillet, leaving about 1 inch space between them.  Cook about 8-10 minutes per side, until each side is golden brown and the middle is cooked.  Cut one open or stick a toothpick into it, if unsure whether it is done.

This easy recipe makes a very hearty, very bready, very gratifying biscuit using shelf stable ingredients.

Mine came out perfectly on the first try using these ingredients.  If I can do it, anyone can.  I chopped up a pickled egg and made egg salad to turn one biscuit into a sandwich, and that one sandwich was a complete, filling lunch by itself.

Watch the video: