Backpacker Attempts to Make Homemade Mountain House Chili Mac (diy backpacking meal)

what's up guys welcome to my channel if you're new here I make videos all about camping hiking and backpacking but today we are in my kitchen because I'm challenging myself to make a homemade version of this mountain house backpacking meal so Mountain House is like one of the bigger backpacking meal companies there at like most of the gear shops so it's something that probably a lot of you guys are familiar with these are freeze-dried and I honestly never buy them I wanted to try this one and then challenge myself to make a better version at home using my dehydrator and I want to create a meal that I can actually take backpacking and reheat and eat in the backcountry so that's kind of the challenge for today I picked this chili mac with beef to try out never had this and I really have no idea how this is gonna go when I bought this I thought that this was a mac and cheese with chili and beef is that thing because I don't see any cheesy stuff in here the main ingredients are cooked beef macaroni and then basically like a chili with beans and spices and onion you know that kind of stuff so my initial thoughts would be to keep things separate like we have the beef component the macaroni and then the chili so I have all these like components so I think I'm gonna keep separate and then hope they come together at the end it doesn't really seem like a good strategy for anything actually but I think that's gonna be my plan the only thing that I can think of that might be a challenge is just keeping the fat to a minimum especially with the beef I love fat and meals it's important but with dehydrating stuff it actually can inhibit the dehydration and go Rance it a little bit faster and so it's just something that I need to kind of consider when I'm putting this meal together [Music] my initial impression is I don't leave this is gonna be that hard okay so this is all the stuff that I have for the chili and I'm just gonna kind of wing it I've made chili so many times so I think I have a good handle on that and I'm gonna do that first because I want it to cook for quite a while so that it just gets more and more flavorful before I D hydrate it and I guess before I'm gonna cook I should give this a try just so I know what I'm competing against a little some water okay all right so let's take a look at it just before we hydrate it okay it is very very like chili smelling it looks like there's a ton of seasoning on here and it looks very powdery so I don't know if you can see this see if it cracks and I see if you can hear it yeah so it feels very crumbly like I could just sort of crumpled it crumple maybe not crumple word anyway oh I don't know about this bean fair what I am gathering is that this is a massive serving so I am just gonna cook half of it because I definitely am not gonna want to eat this whole thing right now or possibly ever I don't love the way it smells boiling okay adding one cup of water [Applause] [Music] let's wait the full time before I really dive in eight to nine minutes it smells like chili can you see it here we go there is a lot of things that I think we can improve on one is just the texture anything freeze-dried I think doesn't have as good or as a real of a texture as something that's dehydrated so I think just the different preservation methods are gonna create a better meal the pasta doesn't taste like pasta it has a really weird texture where I guess the macaroni it just it's just very rubbery and then the sauce flavor-wise it's very thick tomato based and I'm not really getting like a ton of other flavors let me try again yeah just it tastes a little bit more fake like there's more preservatives and the texture is weird having it tasted this now I am so excited for this challenge starting point so my first step is going to be to actually cut my pepper and my onion and my garlic I'm gonna finely dice the peppers and onions because I want them to dehydrate well so I really don't want huge pieces of peppers and onions in the chili no the tears are coming no power through never quit oh wow making chili is [Music] so sad I'm just kidding we will continue on I need some garlic let go with like four cloves of garlic at least and then for garlic I have a little garlic hack here I just take a little microplane and just carefully grate it like this and then you get finely grated garlic without potentially cutting your fingers off and it's just a lot faster to do it like this I hate mincing garlic by hand because it just takes so long oh yeah now I have my garlic minced and then my onions and my peppers diced so we are ready to start cooking chili is gonna go on a medium-high heat I think actually why I'm waiting I'm gonna get out all of my spices today I'm filming by myself it takes so long add in a little bit of olive oil I've got all of this stuff I'm gonna not put the garlic in yet so I'm just gonna put in the peppers and the onions give this a mix sprinkle in little salt so I'm gonna mix this and let these cook until the onions become translucent there's maybe a little bit of color on the peppers and the onions and then add in the garlic add in all the spices I'm gonna stir that around and then basically throw everything else into the pot I'm not gonna deal with the beef yet actually I think gonna leave that separate my garlic oh my gosh it smells so good alright I'm gonna add in my spices right now so I'm just kind of winging it I knew these things are impossible to open do at least a teaspoon of cumin probably come back and add more yeah you know what just add more new pinch of cayenne fourth a teaspoon or so mmm some paprika onion powder garlic powder coriander I love coriander oh yeah so I might add some more spices in in a little while we'll see how this goes pretty happy with the smell of it at least oh maybe I'll add a little bit more salt too because why not and pepper I'm going to add in a can of crushed tomatoes well actually maybe I'll do the beef broth first open my beans black beans kidney beans I really hope this is good because I am making a lot of it all right things are looking good still not done though if you do more beef broth one cup of that and I have some tomato paste which I'm also gonna put in there get this cranking up this is looking pretty good I need to try it mmm that's good it's got a kick to it I think it needs like more we had a quite a bit more of this in there means a little bit more salt a little bit more pepper no no I'm pretty happy with this right now I'm gonna let this cook down thicken up a little bit and just let all those flavors kind of come together so far looking pretty good I'm gonna clean all this up and then we're gonna do the beef next to be honest with you I'm kind of weird about chili like when I'm eating it I'm like oh this is so good but then like the idea of it never really appeals to me one time I got food poisoning when I was a kid after I ate chili and so I think I'm kind of like haunted by that time for the beef so the reason I'm doing in this separately is because I'm gonna actually blot some of the fat off of the beef and then maybe dehydrate it separately or I might just throw it in here at the end we'll see it's all just a experiment this is like really good grass-fed beef grass-fed beef is usually leaner anyway and then I got the the leanest one that they had of the grass-fed ah I have a cramp you see this it's like so weird oh do this left-handed I'm trying to break this apart to get small small little clumps that's really the name of the game with dehydration is you don't want big huge pieces of things in a dehydrator cuz it's just not gonna dehydrate well it's not gonna rehydrate well I think we're really off to a good start here we got grass-fed beef homemade chili I mean it's just like a world of difference when you make stuff at home and you package it up for backpacking it's like so satisfying and kind of cool and it's just like a lot of fun to be able to make your own meals like this and so if you are watching this and you're like oh I want to start dehydrating my own backpacking meals too then this probably is in the video for instructions but I did make another one a few weeks ago so link to that right here that one is like a full-on instructional video on the basics and the things that you need to know to make your own backpacking food definitely check that video out if you want to make your own backpacking food but don't I am pretty amazed right that I have nothing on my sweater I was really thinking I was gonna spill sauce on it I almost wore a white sweatshirt for this video and then I was just like that is not a good idea what was I saying I think I'm gonna abandon my original plan of like keeping things separate that wasn't really a good idea to begin with it's probably wise that I abandon it but I think I'm actually going to add the meat to the chili once I've sort of gotten some of the fat off of this I think this is good and done this really pains me to do but I need to remove some of the fat on this meat that is so much flavor here and I would love to pour it into the chili but I think just to maximize the success potential of this meal I think I'm going to Pat it dry and get some of that oil off of it I'm using some paper towel to blot the fat off of this so my chili here has been simmering cooking for almost an hour now it's looking really good I'm gonna just let this continue to cook because it's not I mean it's only gonna make it better but I am gonna add the meat into it I've decided I think I might add in just a little bit more broth because I'm gonna let this cook down quite a bit more and I just don't want this go to waste mmm that's really good feel like it needs to say hint more salt more chili powder I guess a little bit more of everything why the heck not not yet so the last thing that I need to do is get the macaroni component so that I am going to definitely keep separate because I don't think it matters either way and then I can have the option to make some meals that are just chilly and some meals that are a chili mac and so it will just give me a little bit more variety when I go to package it up that's my next step get this going salty water just go for it with the salt why not I'm not to boil I just have a bunch of elbow pasta right here macaroni Prada I think I'm gonna cook half of this I have my pasta here oops and on the ground at this point we have the beef component the chili component and the macaroni component I don't know the chili cook for quite a bit longer just cuz I have the time and the longer that it cooks the better it's gonna be so I'm gonna let it cook for at least another hour or two I want to be able to maximise the dehydrator and put stuff on all six trays I think if I reduce it down a little bit it will be not as saucy and a little bit easier to put on the trays so I'm eating back here in a few hours I think that's it I have the macaroni here ready to go in the dehydrator let's get the dehydrator started I'm gonna set that for twelve and a half hours now is a great time to subscribe hit the like button comment below it is taking me like all day to film this video and I feel like I've just been standing around the chili for hours that I'm starting to smell like chili I'm gonna put these in the dehydrator now get them going it does not look super appetizing when you start spreading it on a tray you just got it all over me in the morning I'm gonna package it all up and then we'll do the final taste test I just wash this sweater and I am not washing it again are you laughing at me how dare you is this noticeable good morning everything is done dehydrating it looks like everything worked great I'm so excited to try this and so I'm gonna take this meal and we'll do like a side-by-side comparison so this side here is the original Mountain House version and then this side here is the version that I made so the only step that I have left to do is package it up and I'm just going to vacuum seal it our water is boiling so I have this backpackers chili here that I put in the vacuum sealer and it basically pierced through this bag and is no longer vacuum sealed so next time I'd have to like wrap it in something and then seal it but I also put some in a mylar bag and this is the way that I would prefer to rehydrate food in the backcountry because it's just really really simple so we're gonna try and rehydrate it in this bag first and see how it goes so I'm adding just enough boiling water here to just barely cover the chili this is a pretty small serving so it's not much now I'll give it a mix the hotter that I can keep this for longer the better it's going to rehydrate I think I'm gonna wait like ten minutes or so give it another mix and then probably wait another ten minutes meanwhile I also have a little bit more of the mountain house version which I'm gonna rehydrate just so that we can get a really good taste comparison going I think it's done let's do the official taste test I have the mountain house one right here this is the difference here this is the mountain house one and then the homemade one the Mount House one just tastes like tomato soup basically so this one's mine I'm gonna give it mmm the meat isn't quite rehydrated kind of like I was worrying that it was gonna take a lot longer to rehydrate and it is still a little bit hard but the macaroni is really good the beans are good I would say like flavor-wise it's delicious and so like the other option would be to boil it in a pot and that might help them meat rehydrate a little bit better and just keep it hotter longer what do you think he's eating it all this is something that I will definitely take back packing I would make it again there's nothing I would change it's delicious mmm alright that wraps up this video I would say it was a huge success comment below with what you want to see me make next and I'll see you in the next video done [Music]

Channel: amandaoutside

Views: 16,051

Rating: 4.9223881 out of 5

Keywords: mountain house freeze dried food, mountain house food taste test, dehydrating food for backpacking, dehydrating food for camping, mountain house chili mac with beef, mountain house food review, homemade backpacking meals, how to make your own backpacking food, backpacking chili recipe, backpacker meal ideas, diy backpacking meals, dehydrating food, amanda outside

Id: 1B24g7FdfoU

Length: 18min 27sec (1107 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 06 2020