Making Dehydated Foods

[DayTrip]

Can anyone recommend a comprehensive book, website or other resource for making your own dehydrated foods for hiking? Curious what foods do and don't work (i.e. is meat an option?), how much water it takes to prepare, etc. And if anyone has a favorite recipe out there (home made not a prepackaged meal) I'm all ears. Thanks.

 

[Will]

Curious what foods do and don't work (i.e. is meat an option?), how much water it takes to prepare, etc.

There are thousands of resources.

But it's a pretty simple body of knowledge. Just about any dish you like can be dried, just keep the "chunks", e.g the beef in beef stew, relatively small, and spread out the food in a thin layer on the dryer tray. I just cook meals, keeping that in mind, and dry. Das it.

To prepare in the field, it's pretty much just enough water to cover plus a little more. I soak in the pot for half an hour or so while setting up camp, bring to boil, then put in a cozy for another 15 minutes or so (or just simmer for a few more minutes if fuel is not an issue).

Meat dries fine if cut thin. My bulk staple is hamburger fried up with slivered onions, minced garlic, salt, pepper and bovril and then floured. Mixes in with any dried pasta dish like the Lipton sides, or whatever. Chicken doesn't dehydrate well, unless it's canned or pressure-cooked; frankly commercial freeze-dried chicken is a better choice than home-dehydrated.

Some vegetables need to be cooked first, "blanched", others can be dried raw.

If I were starting up, I would decide what I like to eat, and then do searches on drying that. Learn the food, and you'll learn some principles as you go, rather than trying to master the drying subject in the abstract.

 

[Nessmuk]

Can anyone recommend a comprehensive book, website or other resource for making your own dehydrated foods for hiking? Curious what foods do and don't work (i.e. is meat an option?), how much water it takes to prepare, etc. And if anyone has a favorite recipe out there (home made not a prepackaged meal) I'm all ears. Thanks.

For the basics to comprehensive understanding of general food dehydrating, you can't go wrong with Mary Bell's Complete Dehydrator Cookbook. It is an excellent place to start.

Getting into backpacking specific meals, I highly recommend Linda Yaffe's Backpack Gourmet: Good Hot Grub You Can Make at Home, dehydrate, and Pack for Quick, Easy and Healthy Eating on the Trail. Some recipes may look a little strange at first glance, but try them, they are very good. I've been using this book for years, and after a while you will learn enough to branch out to create your own recipes.

More recently, Glenn McAllister has come out with Recipes for Adventure: Healthy, Hearth and Homemade Backpacking Recipes. It has excellent reviews, and I have just ordered it a couple of days ago.

Just follow a few basic principles... primarily limit fat as much as possible (a very little is ok), and be sure single foods and food mixtures (such as cooked casseroles) contain small or thin pieces of relatively the same size.

 

[peakbagger]

A major hint is that unless you want to make prepared meals, you can buy bulk dehydrated foods for far less money and hassle. a number 10 tin can of dehydrated chicken will last for years unopened and with a vacuum sealer, once its open you can make up individual portions that will last for quite a while

I do admit that dehydrated spaghetti sauce is a luxury.

 

[Ignomer]

Chicken doesn't dehydrate well, unless it's canned or pressure-cooked;

This is very true. I tried dehydrating poached chicken once, I boiled it for half an hour, then let it sit in that water for a couple of days bringing it up to a boil every morning and afternoon in a vain attempt to make it easier to chew than boot leather.

Ground beef is a pretty good place to start, other than fruits. Get the leanest you can find, then dump off all the grease and rinse it before you dehydrate. Mine was done in about 3 hours. I have no idea what brand of dehydrator I have, and it doesn't have the fancy temperature control. My meat thermometer claims it gets up to about 125 to 135 depending on how many trays I have on it and whether or not the sun's shining in the window next to it.

I also use a scale when I'm drying my food. I weight the tray empty and write the weight in grams on the tray. Then, I can check the food every so often and see if the weight has dropped or not so I know when it's done. It also tells me how much water I need to rehydrate without making soup, and my sawyer squeeze filter came with a big ol' syringe thing (for back-flushing) that's marked in CC's, which are equal to grams of water.

There's tons of videos on YouTube, some worthless but most very helpful. This is a good starter, too: http://sectionhiker.com/trail-food-...kcountry-meals-and-snacks-by-kellie-connelly/

 

[Nessmuk]

Chicken doesn't dehydrate well.

If you shred cooked chicken before drying, it will be fine. Shredded BBQ pork is even better, really good in fact.

 

[Raven]

If you shred cooked chicken before drying, it will be fine. Shredded BBQ pork is even better, really good in fact.

This is the only way chicken has ever worked for me as well. A little extra soak time in water before cooking will help too. Shred it as fine as you can.

I ate mostly home prepared dehydrated meals on a thru hike and was very happy with the results as well as the meals that were mostly developed by my gourmet sister. At this point, I have joined Peakbagger's camp and buy trail food now. The effort (and more the time) required from preparing dehydrated meals is fairly intense, although if it's something you enjoy doing and have the time, the meals can be well worth it, and you can certainly better control what you are eating in terms of chemical additives that way. I had great luck with pastas with ground beef. Bacon can be purchased precooked for meals as can lasagna noodles - both of these work very well in trail dinners.

If I dig up my old recipes, that could make a worthwhile thread to start..."Dehydrated Meal Recipes"

People probably have some good ones.

 

[Nessmuk]

The effort (and more the time) required from preparing dehydrated meals is fairly intense, although if it's something you enjoy doing and have the time, the meals can be well worth it, and you can certainly better control what you are eating in terms of chemical additives that way.

Dehydrated meals for camping don't have to be any different than meals you might prepare for the regular dinner table at home. Especially casseroles of all types work well. Think about what you eat everyday, there is much that will fit the dehydrator as is. Just save a little from the dinner pot and put in the dehydrator. Very little additional work involved.

 

[DayTrip]

So if this is in fact a lot of work then what brand of food would you recommend (price, quality, quantity) and what stores/websites have the best price? For the volume of camping I do I could go either way. Just preferred the idea of controlling the meal's size and contents.

 

[Raven]

Just save a little from the dinner pot and put in the dehydrator. Very little additional work involved.

This is a great way to do it. It's also like the Chinese proverb asking about when is the best time to plant a tree (20 years ago). When's the best time to dehydrate meals? If not last year, then now so they are ready when you plan upcoming backpack trips.

Much of my dehydrating involved drying larger quantities of vegetables and meat ahead of time (6 trays of one vegetable at a time for example) and then keeping separate ingredients and using them to make different recipes. Sauces and such, I did tend to buy from stores since there are so many powdered options already available cheap.

 

[Snowflea]

So if this is in fact a lot of work then what brand of food would you recommend (price, quality, quantity) and what stores/websites have the best price? For the volume of camping I do I could go either way. Just preferred the idea of controlling the meal's size and contents.

My favorite is Mary Janes Farm http://shop.maryjanesfarm.org/store/c/40-Meals.aspx
Website is a bit goofy, but the food is organic and yummy. To prepare most meals, you merely add boiling water. You can save some $$$ by purchasing in bulk and repackaging. That way you can also control your own personal serving size. (Serving sizes are always too small!)

 

[Early Bird]

I don't find dehydrating a lot of work. I love it and I love a lot of the meals I make for backpacking. I just got a new dehydrator with adjustable timer and temp that makes it even easier. No more thinking things will over dry if I leave them on overnight, just set the timer to turn off after x number of hours.

I am a vegetarian so I can't chime in on meat so much, but I did make turkey jerky prior to 2002 when I gave up poultry. Now I make tofu jerky and add it to rice dishes. Trader Joe's sell it marinated, so it's tastier. A few stand by favorites are bags of frozen veggies- add to every or any dinner. "Fruit" roll ups- mix banana and your favorite yogurt. My picky non-oatmeal eating daughter has this for breakfast on backpacking trips. I dehydrate hummus, spaghetti sauce, apple slices, canned pineapples, mandarin oranges and pears. I always precook brown rice and pasta then dehydrate those to cut down on cook time and fuel use in the woods. Those are my favorites. I also dehydrate homemade bean soups- black bean, kidney, and lentils. Rehydrate, heat and serve with rice. Mmmm.

Last week I went to B&N for a dehydrating cookbook. They had a poor selection, two books. I bought The Idiot's Guide to Dehydrating Foods and don't really recommend it.

 

[hikerbrian]

I also have not found dehydrating to be a lot of work, but then again I really enjoy the process and YMMV. On that note, chicken dehydrates really well, as long as you get the canned stuff and pull it into small flakes. I've tried numerous ways of cooking the chicken myself and never had good results dehydrating it, but the cannes stuff works great. I have a $49 dehydrator from Walmart (actually the internet tubes tell me it's more like $65 now), and I bought a bunch of extra racks to be able to dehydrate a lot of stuff at a time. About the only thing I haven't successfully dehydrated is scrambled eggs. Mine have consistently turned into chunks of yellow rubber, which rehydrate exactly as you'd expect yellow rubber to.