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Squaw Corn
14 POUND SLAB BACON, CUBED SALT AND PEPPER I CAN CORN 3 EGGS Brown bacon cubes in your trusty, rusty, skillet, dump in corn and when hot scramble in the eggs and season everything well.
A three-ingredient camp skillet dish that comes together in about ten minutes. The only real skill is in the order of operations and knowing when to stop stirring.
- The bacon quantityThe printed figure reads as 14 pounds of slab bacon, which is a smokehouse order rather than a skillet's worth. For three eggs and one can of corn, a quarter pound of slab bacon, cut into half-inch cubes, is the sensible reading.
- Slab bacon vs. slicedSlab bacon is the unsliced side, sold with the rind on at butcher counters and some supermarkets. Trim the rind, cut into cubes, and render them slowly so the fat runs out before the outsides harden. Thick-cut sliced bacon chopped crosswise is an acceptable stand-in.
- Drain the cornA standard can is about 15 oz. Pour off the packing liquid or the skillet will steam rather than fry, and the eggs will end up watery. Frozen corn works equally well; thaw and pat dry first.
- Manage the fatA quarter pound of slab bacon can throw off more fat than the dish wants. Pour off all but a couple of tablespoons before the corn goes in, or the eggs will slide around in grease.
- The eggs are the hingeBeat them first, pour them over corn that is hot but not scorching, and pull the pan off the heat while they still look slightly underdone. Residual heat in a cast-iron skillet finishes them; left on the fire until they look set, they turn dry and squeaky.
- "Trusty, rusty skillet"Cast iron over a campfire runs far hotter at the center than a stovetop burner. Set the pan at the edge of the coals rather than over the flame, especially once the eggs go in.
- Seasoning and yieldSalt lightly at the end — cured slab bacon and canned corn both carry salt already. As written this feeds two generously or three alongside toast or fried potatoes.
Corn and pork fat is one of the oldest and steadiest pairings in North American cooking, and skillet dishes combining the two turn up under many names in camp and trail cookery. Cookbooks of this sort prized recipes that used shelf-stable canned goods, cured meat that traveled without refrigeration, and a single pan. The name is one of a number of period recipe titles that borrowed Native American imagery as shorthand for rustic or improvised cooking; such titles were common in American outdoor and community cookbooks, and it is recorded here as printed rather than as an endorsement of the usage.