Home-made Hay Box — Pats' Food

A hay box would have been a box lined thickly with hay along the bottom, and side, a hot pot of food would be added and more hay put on top to insulate it.

The food then continues to cook in the residual heat of the pot and will do this for many hours with no power needed.

My modern-day hay box is actually a stool, ottoman type with a lid. I’ve now lined this out with an insulating board and made a little inner lid. This acts like an insulated flask or in the same way as your freezer box. Some people do use old freezer boxes for this.

You really need high liquid dishes for this, so a big pan of root veg, all in one pan is ideal. I’ve also cooked chicken pieces in it.

Method

Choose a pan with small side handles if you have a square box. A pan with a well-insulated bottom is good as it retains more heat.

Boil up your pan of food on your stove until it is boiling and cook for 5-10 mins. You want the contents to be boiling hot and the pan to have built up all-over heat.

Remove the pan from your stove and pop it in your box. Cover with towels, insulation on the bottom, top, and side,s then leave it to cook.

No worrying about electrical items being left on. Your food will slow cook while you do the housework, go shopping or do your normal job.

I’ve even tried this overnight with a vegetable stew. The contents were hot about 9 hrs later. the handles of the pan were also very hot. I’d want it a bit hotter to serve it but this works.

Why bother? How can this be used?

Well instead of maybe 40 mins cooking you can use only 10 mins of gas/electricity. You can do simpler versions based on the same principle by just removing your pan, with a lid, wrapping it in towels or a blanket, and placing it somewhere safe. It won’t retain heat as long but for things like rice and pasta works perfectly well.

This is also good for camping or transporting a hot meal on a journey.

If you only had one pan on a camping stove or you live in a small bedsit, with little cooking space, you can cook some of your food and set it aside, keeping it hot. Then you have your cooking ring to continue coking other foods.

If you need to take a hot meal to someone maybe in the next county, it will still be piping hot in a couple of hours from when you popped it into the hay box. Ideal to transport food to family feasts, keep hot BBQ food, take food to vulnerable people, and many more uses.

You could of course use it as a cool box! It is an insulated box so whatever you put in it will retain its temperature for a long time. You could make yogurt in any container and cover it, add it to the box and leave it overnight.

How many ways it can be used is really a matter of how imaginative you are.

I made this initially using towels and a car sunblind. That worked perfectly but I wanted my towels back. Two photos show this, with the silver sun blind used as an insulator around the box. I made a makeshift cover also from the same materials.

I then acquired some insulated board and lined out the box. The panels were cut to measure and are just sat neatly together, no need for fixing.

With the offcut, I made a little cover to add on top of my pan to help retain more heat.

Then I have the lid of this ottoman box also.