Dehydrating Meals for Backcountry Camping

hi there I thought I'd show you how I put together dehydrated meals for backcountry camping my daughter is going to help so stay tuned so I'm going to show you how I D hydrate three different meals but more importantly I'm going to try and demonstrate a generic process that you can apply to almost any meal that you have at home I find this techniques work works really great for soups stews casseroles pasta dishes chili you name it if you have a recipe you like at home you can probably make a dehydrated meal using this method so I own a pile of books about backcountry camping and cooking in the backcountry and how to dehydrate meals for the backcountry and I've noticed that the books fall into one of two camp the authors of the books on the Left advocate dehydrating all the ingredients separately so everything in your meal you dehydrate separately and then you assemble the meal by adding all these ingredients together later the books on the right generally have you cook the whole meal and dehydrate the whole meal at once so I've tried both methods and both work however I find you get best results when you dehydrate the meats separately from the rest of the meal meats will dehydrate optimally at 160 degrees Fahrenheit and the rest of the ingredients fruits and vegetables will will dehydrate at 135 degrees Fahrenheit I find when you dehydrate at these temperatures you get the best rehydration so here's the process that I follow number one I dehydrate the meat at 160 degrees Fahrenheit I have a completely separate video on this so go check that out number two I pre cook some ingredients this includes any of the starches rice pasta potatoes or vegetables that taste better after they've been sauteed awhile such as onions and mushrooms step 3 I assemble the meal without the meat so basically I'm taking all these ingredients and cooked and uncooked ingredients mixing them up step 4 I D hydrate the meal at 135 degrees Fahrenheit step 5 i package the meal this is when I add the meat and any extras such as egg and dairy substitutes and spices so I'm going to demonstrate by making a couple of meals for chicken curry so what I've got here is a couple of cups of cooked brown rice almost a cup of coconut milk some sauteed mushrooms and red peppers and about a half a cup of frozen peas next let's do one of my favorites Spanish chicken start with a couple cups of cooked brown rice about a third of a cup of salsa one can of cream of chicken soup about a cup of black beans and about a half a cup of frozen corn you let's do one more as an example beef and macaroni this is a really simple one we've got a couple cups of cooked macaroni elbows about a cup of chopped up yellow peppers about a cup of sauteed onions and a cup of canned diced tomatoes we've got all 12 of our trays here stacked up we're going to load the dehydrator we're going to set it to 135 degrees Fahrenheit because that's a good temperature for fruits and vegetables and we're going to plug her in probably take 8 or 12 hours maybe overnight we'll see all right I'm going to start assembling some meals go start with some chicken I know that my target for a meal in the backcountry is a hundred and fifty grams so I'm going to try and have about a third of that weight 50 grams as chicken that's close enough all right so here's the Spanish chicken that I've dehydrated I bring that up to about a hundred and twenty or 130 grams that's good and then I'm going to add the spices so about half a teaspoon of chili and then about another half a teaspoon of smoked paprika let these make for 130 grams just going to top it up bring it up to about 150 there we go and a little bit of pepper that's one meal ready to go next meal I'm gonna do is chicken curry and do the same process bring my whoops bring my meal to about 50 grams of meat then I'm going to add my chicken curry you saw me dehydrate earlier that's 30 now I'm going to add some spices I'm going to start with a half a teaspoon of freeze dried garlic own half a teaspoon of chilli and three quarters of a teaspoon of curry oh let's just add a little bit more I like curry right that's almost 150 grams I'm going to top it up there we go and just a little sprinkling of freeze dried parsley and a little bit of pepper beef mac and cheese can add up same process I'm going to add about 50 grams of dehydrated beef going to add the macaroni with I dehydrated bringing it up to almost 150 grams now I want this to be like a macaroni and cheese so I'm going to add a heaping tablespoon so almost two tablespoons of powdered milk and I'm going to add two tablespoons of cheese powder actually I have a little bit more there we go so I don't always vacuum seal my bags but if I'm not going on a trip for a long time if it's going to be a longer trip I certainly will ready to go I'll keep that in the freezer till I'm ready for my trip

Channel: Kevin Outdoors

Views: 322,053

Rating: 4.9291124 out of 5

Keywords: Dehydrating, Dehydrating food, camping, backcountry, chicken curry, mac and cheese, macaroni and cheese, spanish chicken, backpacking food, camping food, how to dehydrate food, dehydrated meals, trail food, dehydrated food, ultralight backpacking, spanish chicken recipe, dehydrating food recipes, dehydrating food for camping, backpacking food ideas, backpacking food for 5 days, backpacking food for 3 days, backpacking food for 7 days, backpacking food dehydrator recipes

Id: v8QyEIvlgps

Length: 10min 17sec (617 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 20 2016