In 1 Nephi 17, we have a comment about how they had to eat raw meat. Why did Nephi include that detail? They were apparently crossing the Empty Quarter (or, at least, the borders of the Empty Quarter), traveling nearly eastward through modern day Yemen to the coast of the Indian Ocean. What is out there? Virtually nothing. What can they burn? Very little. So, maybe they just could not cook anything at all. Perhaps they did not light fires because the smoke would have sent smoke signals, inviting others to attack them or to steal from them.
But more than that, the idea of eating raw meat must have been even more shocking and a reflection of extreme circumstances in another way, in light of the kosher law prohibiting the eating of blood found in raw meat. Under ancient Israelite law, one could not eat blood. To make meat kosher, they had to drain the blood as much as possible. Cooking it also helped get rid of the juices and the remaining blood, so for Nephi and his party to have eaten raw meat, they were likely in a truly desperate situation, perhaps on the brink of starvation. Saving life took precedence over obedience to lesser laws in the Torah.
I think what Nephi learned from their survival was not how self-sufficient they had become—Are we not clever? Look how we were able to get all the way down the coast of the Red Sea! I was able to fix my bow! No, he gave full credit to the Lord. Look at the things the Lord has done for us: "So great were the blessings of the Lord upon us" (1 Nephi 17:3).
Jeffrey R. Chadwick, "An Archeologist’s View," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 15, no. 2 (2006): 74.
Hugh Nibley, Lehi in the Desert/The World of the Jaredites/There Were Jaredites, The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Volume 5 (Provo and Salt Lake City, UT: FARMS and Deseret Book, 1988), 64–67.