Hiker Tip #8: Freezer Bag Cooking Demo

everybody I've had two subscribers that have very specifically asked me to do a demo on how exactly you do a freezer back cooking and so this is the demo that I'm going to do I've selected these this for cheese risotto here okay from noir okay for me the the pasta selects don't quite work real well so but this this cheese does and it's a very substantial meal for you I'm going to be using a the pouch here from anti-gravity gear and a ziplock bag by SC Johnson which is bpa-free okay for those of you worried about about chemically chi all right and I'm going to be using today my Soto stove that's a new stove that I have I'm gonna I'm not going to do a kind of a I guess a burn rate on it to see see how it takes to to heat up the water now one of my lessons learned on this is you know with with these dinners you need to look on it and see the cooking time okay and realize the longer you boil the more water evaporates so if you're gonna use a freezer about cooking where you can put the hot water in the in the pouch and it's not going to be boiling and simmering you need less water are you're gonna have soup in this particular case it says you need to do one and a half cups of water in a cup of milk so that is two and a half cups and then some olive oil so what I've done in the past so this one is about three about man let's see me 16 about maybe about 14 ounces of water the case of just under two cups seemed to work out pretty well and then however long it says to cook it for in this particular case ten minutes you got to go at least 20 okay on the rehydration cycle if it's ramen noodles you know it's only a three minutes so you're gonna do it for about six or seven a normal pasta side might be seven and a half so you're gonna go fourteen all right so let's get out yeah I've switched over to my action cam to get a little bit a little bit wider angle for those that run out of freezer bags on the trail or if you're really afraid about about the chemical eating you notice the inside of these nor some of them have a a metallic lining on the inside okay so you can you can use these although what I found is they've there you get them really full and it's really hard to stir without making a mess but you can but you can do that okay now you're also going to need to have something with it with the meal to be able to help complete it a little bit especially on a protein sign okay and to help balance things out you got you've got some options on the trail you've got spam you've got chicken and and the other favorite I can't quite reach it here is tuna okay I personally don't like mixing tuna in things but a lot of people do I just have an aversion to having tuna mix than anything so what I would judge just eat it I just want my money I'm heating up my water I'll just eat my tuna but if you're gonna do tuna I you know try and get some of this that's got the the oil in it okay I for example this is 180 calories if you look at the tuna packs that have water they're like 80 calories okay and you really need to have you really need to have the the calories while you're hiking great source of protein 18 grams of protein on that one that yellowfin 14 grams here on on whatever tuna is in this particular packet that so this one flavored you know on this chicken this is 3 ounces this protein wise it's got 17 grams of protein but it's a little light on the calories only 80 your spam light here it's about 130 calories so it's light on the calories because the fat is lower on this one and your you've got 11 grams of protein in your spam classic here though you've got this is like two and a half that's two and a half ounces same with the other light it's 210 calories because it's got a lot more fat in it and only nine grams of so this is of your selections here this is your highest calorie content it's got your worst protein content and it's got high sodium here there's a 830 milligrams of sodium on the light sodium is down to 610 and your chicken is down to 270 let's see the tuna fish sodium's our 360 and 200 okay so it kind of depends on where you're at if it's cold you haven't been sweating you might want to keep your sodium down fat content a little higher as you get further on the trail where you're burning you're burning a lot of your your body protein you're gonna just start really cranking up the the protein that you're you're taking in as you as you as you eat okay so for my burn consumption here let's see what we'll measure this with grams before we start and it's like it's sitting at 220 grams 229 grams okay so 229 you got to trust me on that you probably can't see that from there but 229 grams and for water here it's just kind of regular it's it took it out it's pretty cold here in Florida today it's it's about the same temperature as you get out of a spring and it's about four sitting right about 14 about 14 ounces and I will put that on there and bring this up get that started and then technique-wise I don't blast it you could blast it you know like this just crank it way up but I don't like to waste all that fuel on the sides of the cup so I'm gonna I'm gonna bring my gonna bring my flame down here and I'm gonna start a little timer see how long it takes to bring it up to the boil if you're gonna do mashed potatoes if you're going to do where all you need is just a hot water or like ramen noodles all I got to do is just get it to the point where it's got bottles of Bob boil bubbles on the bottom that's about 170 degrees but this because this is requires you do cook it for 10 minutes it's a little bit more substantial on the rice and so I would go ahead and bring this to a boil I leave my my little Z seat there that's typically what I would use for a windbreak though it might be a little bit of help normally I would just sit here and hold it but I'm going to do other things while we're talking all right so this is this is how you're going to find it when I go to the when I go do my resupply I will take all of my stuff and put it in the bags ahead of time okay because it's just it just cuts down on weight and it you're able to actually roll this up a lot easier than with here because there's air in here and it doesn't want a wall like this okay so you can you can you can be able to pack this down tight you can push the air out of it all right so we're gonna put it in the sleeve here and open this up and we're gonna choose we're gonna choose a meat and since I'm actually going to eat this for lunch I'm gonna go ahead and choose the I'm gonna go ahead and choose the the sweet suit here chicken so I'm just gonna open that up and we will dump that in all right now on the trail I'm gonna take a spoon I'm gonna dump a dig every little bit of that out of there something to think about and I've done this let's say let's say you're using a one of you spams here you don't like that little congealed you know yellow jelly stuff that's around here what you don't want to put it in your food just want to eat it out of here just start the in the in the side of the pouch okay down the side and while your foods rehydrating it'll actually heat this up okay just a thought okay so if that's going we are two and a half minutes into the into the into the heating process there and with that I'm going to ahead and just zip lock that up because I'm going to kind of shake it a little bit mix up that chicken so it's not all clumped up in there kind of get it mixed around a little bit that'll help spread out this sees you know a little bit better - okay alright put that back down on there at this point we're just kind of waiting and while we're doing that there are some other options let's say you're using I get a little of steam coming out of the top here let's check it out come on I'm almost boiling see if I can tip this over so you can see it I'm at a boil hey that's 3 minutes and 23 seconds okay all right open this back up now and we are just going to pour the water in try not to pour you need to boiling water on the on the I guess I'll call it this is the seal here up here at the top try not do that because I have to have them kind of mess up and warp and so they won't they won't seal properly okay so we're gonna make sure that this think this gets totally mixed up real well okay and then we're going to start I'm gonna let this we're just up you can lean this up against the rock and we're gonna start I'm going to start a timer and I'm gonna let it go cuz it said 10 minutes so we're gonna let it go 20 minutes and we're gonna check it out probably halfway through that I might open it back up and stir it I'll let you know have you joined me when we do that on the meantime here let's see what we use for gas be able to do that we said start of the 229 and we are at 222 so I used 7 grams a feel to bring that to a boil okay alright we'll see in a little bit ok everybody I did get ahead of myself just a little bit but it's ok it's it's we can recover I like to use the need Oh whole milk which is a powdered milk unfortunately every grocery store here where I live isn't carrying it right now so but it will work out without without any milk now until it talks about putting some olive oil in I'm not a big fan of olive oil when I'm hiking because honestly unless you're getting a really super high quality olive oil there's it's only a certain percentage of the oil it has to be olive oil to actually be called oil of olive oil and you're not really sure what you're getting so but I'm a big fan of butter and I like to go get something like this it's like an 8 ounce it's just like an Irish butter it's just a really super high quality butter ok and and this tends to do really really well I just put it in a ziploc bag and it travels you know at nighttime when that when it's when it's cool overnight you know your your your food your food and your food bags kind of cold anyway and you just bury this in the center of your food bag throw it in your pack and it works real well maybe towards you know July and August you'll have it start to get super soft and then leak a little bit then you just put it in a second ziploc bag when it gets to that point but you know butter does really well outside of refrigeration so because I think that risottos gonna taste a lot better with some butter I'm going to go ahead and put some in alright and actually typically I'd probably leave like one end kind of closed and just open it up like this and then kind of scoop out what I need okay like that I'm just gonna go ahead and put it in my in my mug go ahead and open this up real fast throw that butter in there and it'll melt and then when I do my stir here in about 5 minutes all right oh well make sure that I stir that butter around a roll well okay all right just wanted to add that back into the conversation and we're at about five minutes okay we've just gone past the the ten minute mark here I'm f ed about 11 minutes into this and still plenty of liquid in there still feels plenty hot just gonna stir it here yes it's definitely reconstituting it's gonna stir it a little bit and then close it back up and let it go a little bit longer one reason why I was doing that I also thought I might mention that you don't if you don't want to get one of these sleeves or make one of these sleeves this optimist heat here is something that I use in 2016 I would just cook in here okay and then put my hot food down in here like this put the lid on it have a piece of reflectix oh I've done in the hiker box that put on it and let it reconstitute that way excuse me get rid of this they one of the nice things about it get ready to eat it okay you can hold it lift a little little hand holds here keep your hands warm and then you could you could eat you eat it that way right out of the out of the container there or you could take your freezer bag literally and just and and I watch some people in the trail do this just put the put the freezer bag down in there and then they had a couple of those those paper clips it'll clamp and they just clamped it up and they use these for their for their hydration sleeve if you will another thing you can do if you're using the a pot cozy same thing you need to cook in it or you can take it out put your freezer bag down in there throw your griddle lid there on top of it and reconstitute it that way so if you know if you wanted to go with a little bit bigger solution where if you wanted to cook in something you have that option and you can also use it as a as a little cozy anyway so some options there and we'll be back in a bit okay everybody it's about about twenty two minutes here and let's check it out see what it looks like and yeah it looks like most of the water is gone it kind of has the consistency of kind of like tapioca pudding almost let's see here yeah water's pretty much all gone let me just do a sample here and see if it's cooked yes it is now um normally I would just eat it like this okay just you know go find yourself your log and you just gonna sit here and just gonna eat it this way okay I want to show you what the consistency kind of looks like here and it is it is hot this bag is hot okay now you might be able to see some steam coming up all right but it is it is still it is still pretty hot there now super hot hot enough to eat don't have to blow on it around there's still a very hot substantial meal just like the chicken is pretty much dispersed I'd like to put a bit of pepper on if I had it maybe Olympics I am sorry about the plane flying over but you know what it's good now I guarantee you I'm gonna have somebody make a comment about how awful and how irresponsible I am because of the environmental impact of all these these freezer bags on the trail and throwing them in garbage cans and all that's doing to the environment and somewhere along the line I'm gonna hear about all the chemical leaching that goes on well let me ask you a question look at look at look at the whole scheme of your life do you steam those vegetables and those those those birds I've bags that you get in the grocery store where you can you can steam the vegetables in the bag okay do you cook in a microwave okay do you use any kind of plastic we're in the microwave that you're cooking with how about the water bottles that you drink soda out of how about the water butters you bottles you drink water out of all those Kittrell petrochemicals are around us in our life okay and and yes we all we all try to minimize them but this is also this is also a hiking event okay if you want to go 30 miles over a weekend you can take whole food with you no problem at all it's just when you start doing the really long-distance stuff and weight really becomes an issue is when is when things that this become a practicality and you just have to weigh it you just have to weigh it in your life and go cave is it worth is it worth the risk or not I didn't want to I didn't want the petrochemical risk the first eight hundred and first nine hundred miles that I hiked in 2016 I thought I'd try it in 2017 and the the increased hygiene of using the zip the ziplock bags versus trying to continually clean out my pot and and contaminate streams with food particles and and have that be a an attractor to bears and things like that if I weight it and this is what I chose so all right so for the subscribers that was interested in how you do it this is how you do it and it tastes perfectly fine without in the milk it would be better if it have the milk but the butter does but the butter does add a richness to it so okay everybody I hope this helps and a go hike on and enjoy the woods

Channel: Soaring Eagle Outdoors

Views: 13,444

Rating: 4.9272728 out of 5

Keywords: Appalachian, Trail;, Bushcraft;, hiking;, backpacking;, Backcountry, Freezer bag cooking

Id: QIOYR938ux8

Length: 19min 33sec (1173 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 19 2018