Dehydrated Backcountry Pasta with Meat Sauce

hi I'm Kevin welcome to my channel I've done a whole bunch of videos about how to dehydrate food for backcountry camping and so today I thought I'd get back to the basics today I thought I'd do a very simple pasta with tomato sauce and meat and I'm gonna show you how I do that and at the end I'm gonna do a taste test featuring two different styles of dehydrating food so stay with me [Applause] so I get a lot of questions from people that are very new to this people of the day that are just learning how to dehydrate food and how to go back country camping and so today I thought I'd get back to the basics and make a recipe that very many people make on their first trip out and that is pasta with sauce I'm gonna make a version of my own pasta sauce that they make it home for my family and I'm gonna dehydrate that and show you the process but just for kicks I'm gonna try this recipe two different ways normally when I do hydrate a meal I've learned that if I D hydrate my meat separately from the rest of the meal it will rehydrate better that's because meat dehydrates optimally at a higher temperature than the rest of the meal and if I do it separately combine the two and rehydrate the meal it'll rehydrate better I find so I'm going to test that theory today I'm going to make the same sauce but one version is gonna have the sauce stewed for a little while with with meat and the other one is just gonna have the meat dehydrated separately from the sauce I'm going to try this because when I make pasta sauce at home I find that to simmering the meat in the sauce for a long time really let's the flavors meld and so I'm gonna see if that works today so let's get into the kitchen and I'm gonna show you how I make my sauce [Music] to make this dish you're gonna want some pasta some onions some diced tomatoes I like to use two cans and one can of crushed tomatoes and two cans of tomato paste you're gonna want some ground beef I've got about a kilogram here that's about a little more than two pounds you don't want some oregano and some basil and some thyme and a couple bay leaves and of course garlic let's start with the meat I'm gonna put a big pot of water on to boil when it does come to a boil I'm gonna add small pieces of meat I want the meat to thoroughly cook so I don't want any large clumps in there stir it around and break up any clumps that might exist we're going to cover that and let that cook for a good 10 or 15 minutes by boiling the meat we've removed a lot of the fat from the from the meat itself and the meat is nice and thoroughly cooked so we remove that from the heat and I'm gonna strain it in a colander this way a lot of the fat will simply wash away that looks really good there's almost no fat on there at all but to get rid of anything that's lingering I'm gonna pour some hot boiling water over the meat and let the fat drain away that looks great let's make some sauce [Music] let's start by dicing up some onions [Music] and we'll have to mince up about six cloves of garlic this is how I get the paper off my garlic cloves I slice off the root end and then I crush my garlic with a lot of the knife and the paper usually just comes right off let's do that again slice off the end smash and there's my garlic I want a nice fine mince on this garlic [Music] we need to open all the cans of tomatoes the diced tomatoes crushed Tomatoes [Music] and the tomato paste [Music] let's heat up a pan and a little bit of olive oil and the onions yeah they should sound like that your onions should always make that noise when they hit the pot stir those pinions nicely until they soften there those look pretty well done now we're going to add the tomato paste [Music] I had a viewer suggest that I tried cutting both ends of my tomato paste cans and pushing the tomato paste out like a plunger so I'm going to give that a shot today [Music] I guess that works now I'm going to stir the tomato paste in with the onions and I want them well mixed what I'm trying to do here is roast the tomato paste I want that tomato paste develop a really rich roasted flavor so spread that tomato paste out on the bottom of the pan and let it cook give it time to sit there and cook you'll have to stir it occasionally so that it doesn't burn but this will develop flavor after that's had about 5 or 10 minutes to cook we're gonna add the garlic and we're gonna stir that around and let that develop a little bit of flavor as well for about a minute then it's time for the diced tomatoes two cans worth and then the last can of crushed tomatoes [Music] that's the base of your sauce we're gonna let that simmer for about 30 minutes and we're gonna add some spices first we're going to add about a tablespoon of pepper and then two tablespoons of thyme about three of oregano and then two of basil and a couple of bay leaves now stir that in and let it simmer like I said for about thirty minutes longer if you have more time nothing wrong with that sauce but this is where I'm gonna split the batch for an experiment we're going to try and put some meat in half of this and leave the other half meat free so I've cut the batch in about half and I'm gonna add some of the previously cooked meat to my main pot here then I'm gonna stir it around and I'm gonna let it simmer with the meat and hopefully the flavors will develop a little bit better there's one more item to cook and that is the pasta so we're gonna put a pot of hot water on to boil when it does come to a boil we're gonna add a little bit of salt and then the pasta and we're going to cook that pasta according to the directions on the package that looks done let's drain this pasta and then spread it onto a dehydrator tray [Music] can add a drawing tray for liquids and I'm gonna pour out my sauce this is the sauce without meat it'll go in the same dehydrator as the pasta [Music] I'm going to set the temperature to 135 Fahrenheit and my other dehydrator I'm gonna spread out the meat [Music] another fruit rule tray will receive the pasta sauce this is the pasta sauce that I added the meat to while it's simmered on the stove and this one doesn't have a thermostat so I'm just going to turn it on so if you've watched a few of my trippin videos you may have seen me make this meal in the field it's pretty straightforward I just cover the meal with water and bring that pot to a boil and then I'll let it sit in a pot cozy for 10 or 15 minutes let's check out dinner I have before you some penne with a tomato and meat sauce it's come together really well give that a try it looks hot mmm perfect it looks really good so now for the experiment for the sake of simplicity and consistency I'm gonna make these meals in identical pots and I'm gonna do them inside my kitchen today on my stove just so it's identical so what I'm going to do is add equal amounts of pasta to both pots and in one pot I'm gonna put the dehydrated pasta sauce that includes meat and the other one I'm gonna put some dehydrated pasta sauce and some dehydrated meat separately I'm gonna cover both meals with just the right amount of water and then I'm gonna mark the lid of one of these pots with a bit of tape so that I can tell the two meals apart [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right let's get into this test first we're gonna do the one where the beef was dehydrated separately from the sauce let's grab some beef and sauce together that's good that's good that's happen what I expect that's how I usually do it the beef is nice and soft the sauce tastes great the sauce is rehydrated fairly well okay let's try the other one so this is the other one this is the one with the beef and the sauce mixed together before dehydration there's some beef here let's try this you know I can barely tell the difference I can barely tell the difference I can tell the difference but I can barely tell the difference and probably only because I know which is which I get a sense that the beef here is a little bit just a little bit chewier but not bad at all I would still I still eat this and I think it'd make it taste fine yeah yeah cut some beef there a subtle difference nothing wrong with this meal just dot version is a little little bit better thanks for watching guys I hope you got something out of this and I hope you have a great day [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Kevin Outdoors

Views: 7,714

Rating: 4.9730339 out of 5

Keywords: dehydrated food, camping food, backpacking food, backpacking meal, pasta, backcountry pasta, pasta and meat sauce, dehydrated pasta and meat sauce, canoe tripping, backpacking

Id: E7OIazOaGUs

Length: 12min 51sec (771 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 01 2019