The M52 French Army Mess Kit and Eggs In A Hole.

hello ever'one thanks for joining me today we're going to be talking about this guy the m-52 french mess kit and we'll show you a few things here on the tabletop and then we're gone go take it out to the woods and cook a little bit out there so sit back and enjoy this review [Music] [Music] okay so to bring you a little history about this these French mess kits this is the m35 which was the older mess kit that was before this one pretty nice design kind of like a very much like the German Russian type kid except it's rectangular shaped here and not not kidney shaped like those but they cease production of these during World War two and then after the war around 1952 is whenever the army was outfitted with these mess kits this particular one was made by famous and there's no date on it anywhere it just says aluminum pure is what I'm guessing the ALU and the PU are is that's made of pure aluminum byph a Mont I've heard that they've made these up until the turn of the century and and then it was replaced by the disparate this one was replaced by the kit that they currently use in the French army okay now for a little bit more of the features on the outside here is a nice handle fit two fingers through it and I would assume that's for attaching it to the soldiers pack or or hanging it up somewhere in camp to keep it out of the way and that's a nice little feature take a few measurements here including a little side handle here that sticks out on the end it's about a little less than seven inches long by five and 1/8 inches wide okay it gives you a little bit of an idea of the basic kit size okay it weighs I use my my scale here and it weighs the full thing is 19 ounces or 541 grams that's the whole kit okay so it's a little bit heavy for those distant hikers but it's very durable for car camping or you know little short trips that you're not be walking for days okay so it has a handle that unfolds notice the hole here that matches up with this one that's pretty cool keeps it latched from pop and loose on you okay open it up turn it over and you get you get a nice deep fry pan and it's about an inch and 3/4 deep measured on the outside okay yeah about the same on the inside okay really nice little pan it's the gauge I can't tell you the thickness but you can see there it's a it's a nice gauge metal about sixteenth of an inch I'm guessing just trying to hold that up there and down this okay so that's the first part the second part is another pan that is actually deeper than that one that one's two inches deep and slightly smaller it's six inches long by about four and a half and it also has its own handle that folds out okay nice nice gage of aluminum also okay so it's pretty heavy-duty you can see it's been used and there's not very many dents in these things got a nice gage of aluminum then lastly you left with this pan which could be an additional cooking pan or something to prepare food in or you could eat out of it as your plate also it's got this indentation here made into it so it fits the little pan like that it's a lid for this smaller pan which is very nice okay so that's all three pieces of the kit okay so for just one more little thing to try to help you here is a u.s. GI we can when I use a lot and it just kind of gives you a reference loose on this outlay here's the US GI and here's the larger pan beside it so you can kind of see in size comparison the difference between the two okay then here's the smaller pan which basically fits inside the larger pan but it's definitely not as tall look at the difference in thickness so you can fit a lot more into this print kit then the American GI one so let's go out I'm gonna take you to the woods now with me and we're going to cook up a little something over to fire so I hope you enjoy okay so to reveal when I'm going to be making today first off I'm gonna be using the 1952 I think it is the M 1952 French mess kit and I've already talked about and we're going to be making a childhood favorite especially at my wife's when she was growing up it's called hole-in-ones or egg in a hole I've also heard called that before basically what we're going to do is take a piece of bread take out the center and butter like we're going to use toast like we're going toasted in this pan but as it's toasting we're going to drop an egg right in the middle and that's what it's called a egg in a hole or hole in one which are you grew learning about okay so let me get this all ready to go and we'll get started okay so I was looking I forgot to bring something to cut the hole in the bread so my brother-in-law had one of his diet coke cans he was about to pack out in this pack I thought well let me use this rim for this so basically what you need to do is such a bread down take your cutter which in this case is a diet coke can top and remove the center just like this okay save this piece my wife says that's the best piece because you can toast that along with the rest of it they want to take some margarine I brought from home and want to butter one side of it okay and dirt out of this I'm going to put it here on the fire get our skillet warm I'm going to add I'm going to use a little bit of olive oil after I drop the egg in so it doesn't stick so let me get this going here let the skillet warm up and it will drop it in okay so here we go oiled the bottom of the pan a little bit I'm just going to add in just a little bit we'll just keep it from sticking to this mess kit not much when I drop the egg in here we go okay so I can see now I didn't cut the hole big enough around this large egg you can see it's soaking into the bread hopefully that won't affect it but we'll see okay so you can see that the egg now getting pre well done on the bottom and I put my other little piece I cut out in there also a salt and peppered it off camera let's see if we can flip this thing over without making a mess I think I'm going to drop a little bit more oil in there when I pick it up just to make sure the egg doesn't stick okay now you you oh man that looks good and look at that that's awesome with a little pieces Brown it up too good yeah and that's cool okay so we're going keep it cooking I'll show you what it looks like when I take it off all right so let's take a look here it is sticking a little bit on the bottom but not too bad okay we could probably cook it a little bit more but the egg seems done so we're going to call it done okay and our little piece here turned out really good okay so what I'm gonna do now is I brought some extras and we're going to change it up just a little bit I've got some more bread I've got some instant grits and then so what we're going to do here is I'm gonna see about making an omelet my wife's like sit with the egg hole in the middle because she says whenever you cut it the yolk runs and you can dip the bread in it so I thought I would try making an omelet with some peppers and onions and a little bit of bacon I got over here for the next one so let me get it going and see how it turns out okay so here is the next piece notice I made the holes a little bigger because I got extra stuff to go in there mmm some onions some peppers and some bacon pieces and a little bit of sticks so we're going to put this in here we're going to drop a little bit more oil right there in the middle there we go here we go another stick right there oh my goodness it's not good at ought to be I'm just going to add a little pepper a little bit of salt here I've got the butter that side so I want to do that after the fact I'll probably wait until this gets up cooked a little bit more now butter to edge this bread that's going to be good okay so now we're going to try to flip this thing over oh I don't know how it's gonna look on the bottom because I didn't quite get it over but we'll see let's flip this thing ever see looks like all Sun that's going to be good alright so here we are eggs in a hole I'm going to try out the saw one where it has that solid egg and then also with my omelet style with bacon onions and peppers in there I got some instant grits and finally some instant coffee in my canteen cup so here's the end of the review for the French mess kit I think it's a really good kit that's its if you're going to be going out and doing a lot of frying I grind up some bacon or things like that this thing is perfect for that because you get a plate or an extra cooking utensil you get the smaller skillet and Jonathan can you hand me that one back there it should be cooled off the one I was cooking the actual eggs and bread in right here so my bottom is pretty smothered up that's okay so anyways I appreciate you taking time to watch if you don't mind if you like what you seen click subscribe and give me a thumbs up for this video I really would appreciate it it helps me feel good about what I'm doing and if you got any comments about what I showed today what I talked about just leave it there below the video and I try to answer everyone's comments so thanks and have a great day

Channel: John Sherwood

Views: 36,489

Rating: 4.8648973 out of 5

Keywords: French mess kit, mess kit, military surplus, m52, m35, outdoor cooking, bushcraft, hiking, camping, eggs in a hole, hole in one, fried egg, survival, bob, bug out, go bag, m-52, m 52, army, woodcraft, backpacking, campfire cooking, france

Id: VMBvlQXo9ck

Length: 16min 48sec (1008 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 04 2017