044Hardtack (also known as pilot bread, pilot crackers, ships biscuits, sea bread, and sometimes less nicely as molar breakers, tooth dullers, sheet iron, or dog biscuits) is one of the most notorious foods in history. Because the ingredients are so basic and it lasts so long, it has been a food of choice (well, or at least of practicality) for the military and others who need food that keeps well.

Basically, hardtack is a very dry, thick cracker made from flour, water, and salt mixed together and baked over and over again until there’s no moisture left. Because it’s so dry, it will keep almost forever – during the Civil War, soldiers ate hardtack left over from the last war (the Mexican-American War) almost twenty years earlier! They would dunk the biscuits in coffee or water and wait for the bugs to float to the surface, skim them off, and proceed to eat the moistened bread.

(Fatman wonders why they didn’t eat the bugs – they’re good protein!)

There was even a song about hardtack (sung to the tune of “Hard Times, Come Again No More”)

Let us close our game of poker, take our tin cups in our hand
As we all stand by the cook’s tent door
As dried monies of hard crackers are handed to each man.
O, hard tack, come again no more!

CHORUS: ‘Tis the song, the sigh of the hungry:
“Hard tack, hard tack, come again no more.”
Many days you have lingered upon our stomachs sore.
O, hard tack, come again no more!

‘Tis a hungry, thirsty soldier who wears his life away
In torn clothes—his better days are o’er.
And he’s sighing now for whiskey in a voice as dry as hay,
“O, hard tack, come again no more!”

— CHORUS

‘Tis the wail that is heard in camp both night and day,
‘Tis the murmur that’s mingled with each snore.
‘Tis the sighing of the soul for spring chickens far away,
“O, hard tack, come again no more!”

— CHORUS

But to all these cries and murmurs, there comes a sudden hush
As frail forms are fainting by the door,
For they feed us now on horse feed that the cooks call mush!
O, hard tack, come again once more!

FINAL CHORUS: ‘Tis the dying wail of the starving:
“O, hard tack, hard tack, come again once more!”
You were old and very wormy, but we pass your failings o’er.
O, hard tack, come again once more!

Almost nobody in America eats hardtack much anymore (except Alaska) but it’s a common snack now in Korea! American soldiers brought it with them as rations at the end of World War II and during the Korean War. Next time you’re in the grocery store, pick up a piece of history and enjoy some 건빵 geonbbang! Or you can make your own at home:

Hardtack Recipe