Heart to Hearth Cookery

Eel on roasting stick

Today at the first day of Phillipsburg Manor’s Green Corn Festival, I used the “Indian” method of roasting eel that John Bartram (first American botanist) describes in his Observations on his journey from Pennsylvania to Onondaga in 1743.  He wrote:  Their way of roasting eels is thus:  they cut a stick about three foot long and as thick as one’s thumb, they split it about a foot down, and when the eel is gutted, they coil it between the two sides of the stick and bind the top close, which keeps the eel flat, and then stick one end in the ground before the fire.  Look carefully in the picture for that stick with the eel coiled between the split stick.  All that was required was to turn the stick in the ground to roast the eel evenly.  And the result-it was very tasty!

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The eel is roasted