Backpacking Meal Ideas

[hikerbrian]

My family and I love pasta with meat sauce when we're backpacking. Dehydrate your favorite sauce - get the good stuff. It dehydrates into something similar to fruit leather. You need sauce trays - these. Lay out your favorite sauce so it's about 1/4" thick, dehydrate until it's sauce-leather; we usually do it overnight. Break it up into strips so it's easier to pack and rehydrate. If you dehydrate 12 oz sauce, assume you'll need 10 oz water to rehydrate it. An hour before you want to have dinner, add water to a freezer bag containing your sauce leather. Massage periodically. Cook your pasta, drain water, add rehydrated sauce (ok if it still has some chunks) and sausage crumbles like these, enjoy. A large, tasty and nutritious meal that weighs very little.

 

[Nessmuk]

I found a great calorie and flavor enhancement recipe to tomato sauce. Puree a large jar or two of sauce with a can of kidney beans and onions and peppers. You can either dehydrate it separately, or go ahead and pour it over cooked pasta snd dehydrate the whole business together. Tasty and filling.

 

[Summerset]

Check out the book Freezer Bag Cooking: Trail Food Made Simple by Sarah Kirkconnell. I think she has several books in the series. For long distance hiking, I make a good majority of my dinners, and then buy a few of the large cans of Mountain House like mentioned above, split them up (into larger thru-hiker portions) and add them to the mix for variety.

Ramen noodles, instant potatoes, stuffing mix all can be used to make various meals. I have had some success with instant rice, but I'm usually too hungry and not patient enough to let it rehydrate enough. None of these take boiling of the products, just boiling water and you don't have to use the ramen flavor packets that come with the ramen. I usually toss the packets away, and just use the noodles for things like chicken noodle casserole, chicken noodle alfredo, etc. The freezer bag cooking book has good recipes and ideas.

Here is one of my favorites and it is a hearty portion, I usually saved it for a big mileage day and was happy to have the larger meals months into an adventure when I was really hungry.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Place in a 1 quart freezer bag:

1 1/2 cups stuffing mix (like Stove Top)
1 packet of gravy mix (turkey, chicken, low sodium, whatever)
1/4 c. dried cranberries
1/2c. freeze dried chicken*

Add 1 to 1 1/2 c. (maybe more, depends) of boiling water, let sit for 10 minutes, enjoy. Be careful with how much water you add - start with the lower amount and add enough so that everything is hydrated, but not so much that you don't get soup. Either way, it still is tasty and calories.

*If you do not have or want to buy a large can of freeze dried chicken (Mountain House on Amazon), you can use a pouch of chicken. Do not put in freezer bag, carry it separately; add the chicken to the freezer bag ingredients after the boiling water, then wait and enjoy.

 

[DayTrip]

My family and I love pasta with meat sauce when we're backpacking. Dehydrate your favorite sauce - get the good stuff. It dehydrates into something similar to fruit leather. You need sauce trays - these. Lay out your favorite sauce so it's about 1/4" thick, dehydrate until it's sauce-leather; we usually do it overnight. Break it up into strips so it's easier to pack and rehydrate. If you dehydrate 12 oz sauce, assume you'll need 10 oz water to rehydrate it. An hour before you want to have dinner, add water to a freezer bag containing your sauce leather. Massage periodically. Cook your pasta, drain water, add rehydrated sauce (ok if it still has some chunks) and sausage crumbles like these, enjoy. A large, tasty and nutritious meal that weighs very little.

Excellent! How long do these "sauce leathers" last before they spoil? Is this strictly an overnight idea?

 

[DayTrip]

Lot of great ideas here. Thanks to everyone for your suggestions.

 

[Nessmuk]

Burritos.

Fresh tortillas, dehydrated salsa, dehydrated refried beans (very easy to dehydrate from cans and will rehydrate perfectly to original condition), dehydrated cooked ground beef (cooked with taco seasoning), A freshly chopped onion and grated cheese (both easy to carry fresh). Rehydrate the dehydrated items separately in freezer bags and combine all in the tortilla.

 

[DayTrip]

Does anyone use any kind of "meal powder" like Huel or any of these other new fangled powders on the market? Figured for the weight they could be a good way to get some dense nutrition in here and there to supplement calories and particularly vitamins and minerals that might be lacking in other foods. Lot of them are pricey though.

 

[hikerbrian]

Excellent! How long do these "sauce leathers" last before they spoil? Is this strictly an overnight idea?

The sauce leathers are quite stable. We've made them weeks in advance. In those cases, I store them in the freezer, just because, but we've also kept them in the car at ambient temp for several weeks when we've gone on extended road trips. I like to dehydrate the sauce some days or weeks in advance, well before I'm in last-minute packing/panicking mode. Last summer I made a few of these meals prior to a Wyoming trip. They were at ambient temp from the time we left MA, through the week we were in Yellowstone, and for the first half of the week we were in Grand Teton until we pulled one out in Alaska Basin. My goodness did it taste good. The sausage crumbles brought it to a new level. My kids still talk about that meal.

Rehydrating a dehydrated meal has a small learning curve - be aware. But the sauce-leathers are pretty easy. Just keep track of how much sauce you started with, because you'll be amazed at how little sauce-leather results after dehydrating. Use your original quantity to estimate how much water to add.

 

[Nessmuk]

The first Yukon 1000 mile canoe race rules required a ridiculous 20Kg (44 pounds!!) of food per person to be carried on board from the start of the race. Supposedly enough to last for 3 weeks. All had to go into bear resistant containers. The weight of water to make dehydrated or freeze dried food edible could not be counted. My voyageur canoe had a crew of 7 paddlers (do the math). I home dehydrated all main breakfast and dinner meals for the entire amount, minus individual lunches and snacks to be purchased in Whitehorse. I dehydrated over a period of several weeks and stored it in the freezer until ready to be transported in a van traveling from the east coast to Whitehorse (a week long trip) arriving several days before race start. We finished the race in just 6 days with 3/4 of the food left over. No one on my crew went hungry or lost weight during the race. The remainder was transported over road back home, where I put it back in the freezer. I gave some away and used the remainder during the following year. All remained fresh tasting and very edible. Thankfully the Y1K race officials realized how crazy the requirement was and dropped the food weight requirement for races in following years.

 

[s.e.charles]

i could not find a more recent thread to post this, but i know the popularity of the base product:

https://www.budgetbytes.com/spicy-p...l&utm_campaign=Spice+up+your+life! - 11325484

 

[hikeritz]

20 years ago I won REI's Camp Stove Cook Off with my Trail Tortellini Supreme! The recipe's in the link, and yes, I've made it on the trail twice. I've also made pizza and even baked a birthday cake on my trips. I'll second the burrito suggestion...easy, tasty, and filling.