Is It Safe To Heat Canned Food In The Can?

Family camping tours are the best times to indulge in various adventure activities. It’s a great time to experience life with nature while doing things that matter for survival. The only thing is that you cannot create a complete kitchen when you are at the camping site.

Heating your canned food in the cans is one way you can still have delicious food. Most people love recipes that have a smoky flavor but you need to follow some safety precautions before you get involved in can heating.

How safe is it to heat canned food?

Food cans are manufactured using steel while beverage cans are made up of aluminum. This makes a huge difference if you intend to heat your food in a can over an open flame. Cans made of steel might release negligible amounts of nickel and chromium when you heat them but aluminum is released quite easily.

Aluminum is considered toxic, making it not ideal for heating canned food. Besides this, already used cans that had been heated over an open fire are not suitable because they might not be in perfect condition. Instead, you should heat your food while it’s still inside its can. Here is what you need to do if you want to heat canned food in the can:

  • You should first remove the outside paper label if the can is having a paper label.

  • Remove the top of the food can so that the pressure can be released.

  • You should also use a can opener to punch one or two holes in the top of the food can to prevent the campfire ashes from entering into the food.

The only challenge with punching holes in the top of the food can comes when you need to remove the lid from the can after heating it at a high temperature. The food can gets very hot, and you need to be careful when handling it to avoid getting injured.

The best thing about heating canned food is that the food doesn’t leaven to leave you with food that is not delicious.

How to heat canned food?

If you have a wood-burning fireplace, you can make a very small fire and heat your food right there. It’s important to remember that you need to heat the food so that it’s in perfect condition to eat it.

A small flame is all that you require for the food to get warm. You also don’t have to wait for the wood to burn down to become red hot coal for your food to be ready for consumption. This is one of the differences between cooking food from scratch and heating food in the fireplace at the campsite.

During the cold winter and summer months, the fire is going to create smoke that will attract the attention of people. Some people might conclude that you are probably cooking something during the summer months whereas, during the winter period, others might have problems figuring out exactly what’s going on at the campsite as few people go out for camping during the cold months.

One-time heating

Once you have heated the food can, you can get rid of the can. These cans should not be reused because they get damaged by the fire. It’s always best to use the cans and recycle them. Some cans are well-oiled inside to ensure food doesn’t stick in its seams.

This helps you to heat your food that will taste even better if you toss in some ingredients. You can opt to heat the canned food over the fire about four inches above the flame for a couple of minutes until you see that the food is warm.

Charcoal grill

Another great method of heating canned food while outdoors is what is called charcoal grill. You can use a small portable charcoal grill to heat your food but you should line the bottom of the grill with a thin layer of dirt, sand, or small gravel before you consider to lit the fire.

Charcoal briquettes are excellent objects you can use to start the fire. However, if you don’t have charcoal briquettes, you can look for some small sticks in a nearby woods and use them to start your fire in the charcoal grill.

If you want to use sticks, look and collect sticks that have fallen off from the trees. Some of these sticks will be caught in some vegetation or you will find others leaning against the bushes. These sticks are suitable for starting the fire because they are extremely dry and they usually burn well.

Most of the sticks that are lying on the ground are mostly damp, rotten, or moldy and they will give you problems as they don’t burn well. Charcoal and sticks make a great campsite fire when you need to heat canned food. They also release smoke and odor that will attract some attention to the food you are heating.

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