HOW TO DEHYDRATE YOUR OWN BACKPACKING FOOD: DIY Backpacking Meals (how I do it!)

what's up guys welcome to my kitchen today i'm going to show you how to dehydrate your own backpacking food if you've seen some of my what i eat in a day backpacking videos you know that i love to make my own backpacking food it's really simple it's fun and i love being able to just control the quality of ingredients the serving size and honestly it just ends up being a lot cheaper so i have my dehydrator behind me which we'll talk about in a second but i'm going to show you how to make one of my favorite backpacking meals which is also the easiest and most basic meal which is just spaghetti and marinara sauce so that's we're going to go over today as an example of how to dehydrate food for backpacking i'm going to show you the entire process from cooking to dehydrating to packaging to rehydrating what you're going to need for this video is your favorite pasta sauce here so i just have a jar of tomato basil you can make your own sauce you can get whatever brand or flavor that you like and then you're also going to need some spaghetti so this is just classic spaghetti here make sure you get the spaghetti size there's like a million different types of pasta shapes now and i found that spaghetti actually works the best if you need a gluten-free option this brand is really great this is a hundred percent brown rice pasta and i will link to this one below i wouldn't recommend doing any other like corn or quinoa or there's like weird bean pastas they don't really work as well so stick to the brown rice pasta if you need a gluten-free option let's dive right into the process so step one is actually to make sure that you start with a clean kitchen so make sure your countertops are clean make sure your pots and your mixing spoons and all the equipment you're going to need is just clean and dry ready to go and then make sure that your dehydrator is free of any food debris from other batches that you've made so really just want to start with a nice clean space for this meal i'm going to need to boil some water and then i like to salt my water pretty heavily here while the water is coming up to boil let's talk about the dehydrator so this is the dehydrator that i use it's by a brand called kosari and i will link to it below i've tried a few different dehydrators and this is by far my favorite it's a great price i really don't think you need to go out and spend 500 on a dehydrator this one is awesome it's made of stainless steel and the front is glass and it has a little magnetic closure here when you are looking for a dehydrator for backpacking food you really want to make sure that it has the ability to set different temperatures and also to set a timer because not all food dehydrates at the same time and at the same temperature so this one has those capabilities it's the perfect size for dehydrating at home it has six trays so if you are looking for a dehydrator make sure to check the description box because this one is great the water is just about boiling so i'm about to put the pasta in you want to cook the pasta al dente for this because you're going to dehydrate it and then rehydrate it at camp and so it's going to kind of sit in hot water again so al dente is really the best and then instead of cooking the whole spaghetti like this you're actually going to break it in half and then put it in the water and that will actually just help it rehydrate a little bit better and be easier to spread on the dehydrator trays which we'll talk about in a minute give it a mix [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so you strain the pasta return it to your pot and add in your sauce give it a mix so i'm going to let this cool for just like five minutes as i get the dehydrator ready i just don't want it to be piping hot when i put it in the dehydrator i'm gonna set this aside to my dehydrator like i was talking about earlier you can set the temperature and the time so i'm just gonna set to 145 and hit start then i'm also going to set my time i'm going to set mine for nine hours this meal typically takes anywhere between 8 and 12 hours there are a lot of things that factor into the time one being the specific dehydrator that you have how much you actually load the trays the humidity in your air and so it's really hard to give an exact time but what i typically do is i actually start this in the evening and then i run it overnight when i go to bed and i wake up and it's done so anywhere between 8 to 12 hours at 145 fahrenheit i also like to actually start my dehydrator before i load it sort of like a preheating and just get the air circulating so as i'm putting trays in there's no condensation that builds up in the dehydrator now we're ready to talk about loading the dehydrator mine comes with six metal trays like this and obviously there's holes here we can't put the pasta directly on this it's going to fall right through there are a couple options for actually putting something on top of the metal option number one that comes with my dehydrator are these plastic trays and you put your food on here and then you put it on top of the middle and into the dehydrator this is great if you have like a really saucy pasta these trays would be great if you don't have these trays do not worry i got another option parchment paper now my dehydrator actually only came with two of these i think and so that's obviously not enough for a full batch of pasta and so for a long time i actually just took parchment paper and cut it out to the size of this square and put the pasta directly on parchment paper so that's another great option lastly are these little silicone mats and these are really great for making fruit leather if you want to start experimenting with other things to dehydrate these come in handy so today for loading this dehydrator i'm going to use all three of these methods this next step is one of the most important steps when you are loading the trays for the dehydrator it doesn't matter what meal you're making you really want to make sure that you don't over pack these trays meaning putting a big layer of food on here because it's just not going to dehydrate properly it's going to take a really long time and then it might not really rehydrate that well especially with the spaghetti it tends to clump together if you put too much on the tray so you really want to make sure that there's space as best you can between the pasta and that's one of the reasons we broke in half in the beginning because it makes it a little bit easier to spread on the tray i'm just going to take one scoop and spread it as best i can doesn't have to be perfect here you just really want to try and create a little bit of air and space for them to dehydrate well okay and then we're done with this tray and so i'm just gonna put them in the dehydrator as i finish them the next one we'll do the parchment paper this one is probably the most annoying just because you have to cut it to fit the the sheet but it's actually the easiest when it comes to packaging it up yeah in it goes this is kind of the max that i would go for loading a tray as you can see there's like a lot of little space in here and there's plenty of room for the air to come through and dehydrate things nice and evenly this is an example of what you don't want to do this is a tray that's way too packed i will see you in nine hours welcome back our pasta is done dehydrating usually i can pick it up in a little clump like this when it's done it should actually snap when you break it and it shouldn't be wet anywhere so when i'm taking out these trays i'm actually inspecting each and every tray looking for any spots that might still be wet and that need to stay in longer all my trays here are done and they are at room temperature so that's the next step is you actually want this to cool completely down to room temperature you don't want to store food that's warm or hot because it's going to create condensation in the bag that's moisture and that's what we do not want so at this point you want to make sure that your space is clean and dry and that your hands are clean and completely dry when you're handling and packaging the food let's talk about the storage options the first option that you might have seen people using is a ziploc freezer bag now this is an okay option for short-term storage only just a few days if you live in a really humid climate it might be even less with the pasta with this specific meal i found that the pasta actually pierces right through these bags and they're not really that useful at all for this meal so just be careful of that if you do use these you might want to double bag it because these pasta things can be kind of sharp what i prefer to use and what you see in a lot of my videos are mylar bags and i will link to this specific one that i use in the description below because it's the only bag that i've tried and then i use the mylar bag with an oxygen absorber and then heat seal it and that is a really really great long-term storage option so this is pretty much my go-to method because it's really easy and it's really cheap the third option is a vacuum sealer so if you have a vacuum sealer at home you can put the food in those bags and remove all the oxygen that way let's package it up i'm gonna use the mylar bag today again food is already at room temperature and since i can't put this in the bag i'm actually gonna just carefully break it apart and pour it into the bag one of the great things about making your own backpacking meals is you control the serving sizes so you can add as much or as little food as you want to these bags when i make meals for me and nick i typically put a little bit more food in the meals that i make for nick just because he eats a lot more so it's really nice that you can kind of customize that and pack exactly what you want all right so i'm pretty happy with how full this is i like to kind of shake it a little bit get all the spaghetti down in there and kind of remove as many of the air pockets as i can what i typically do is i fill all of the bags with spaghetti first and then i create a little bit of assembly line when it comes to sealing these bags the next step is to add the oxygen absorbers and then seal them up you want to limit the amount of exposure to air that the oxygen absorbers get put the oxygen absorber in and then heat seal it you want to make sure that whatever surface you are doing the heat sealing on that it can withstand the heat and then i have an iron set to about a medium medium-high heat and all you're going to do is just fold over obviously all the food is down there oxygen absorber is in and then just take your iron and slide it carefully across to seal the bag there we go we have four meals all sealed and ready to go like i said if you have a vacuum sealer you can do that as well i would definitely recommend that you actually label your bags with what is in it and the day that you made it just so that you can make sure you eat the oldest food first next up i will meet you at camp and we will get to rehydrating and eating we are at camp it is time to finally rehydrate and eat our backpacking meal and there are two ways that you can rehydrate your meal depending on the storage option that you chose the manufacturer of these specific mylar bags that i will link to in the description below says that it is okay to add boiling water to the bags and that is what i've been doing for years now it works great there's minimal cleanup so all you do is just boil water with your camp stove add enough water to the bag that the pasta is just barely covered i don't really measure it here because that's just like another stuff in the backcountry that's kind of difficult so just enough water to barely cover the noodles give it a stir and then let it sit for about 10 minutes open it up stir it one more time and then let it sit for another five to ten minutes with dehydrated food it does take a little bit longer to rehydrate than food that's been freeze dried so you're really gonna expect to wait at least 15 probably 20 minutes for this meal to fully rehydrate now the other option is to pour the food into your camping pot and cook it directly so that's really easy just again fill it with water just until it's barely covered bring it to a boil let it boil for a minute or two and then let it sit for 10 15 minutes you can always bring it back to a boil if it gets cooled down or if it needs more time to heat up so that's the way that you would reheat it if you vacuum sealed it or if you use a ziploc bag like we talked about earlier the ziploc bags tend to puncture and so i wouldn't recommend pouring boiling water into them now you know how to make your own backpacking food from start to finish if you have any questions about this process make sure to comment below with any questions that you have or just things that you want to see me make next i love hearing from you and make sure to check the description box below for some more resources for dehydrating for backpackers all the things have an awesome day and i will see you in the next video

Channel: amandaoutside

Views: 76,322

Rating: 4.9409709 out of 5

Keywords: how to dehydrate your own backpacking food, dehydrating food for backpacking, diy backpacking meals, dehydrated meals for backpacking, dehydrating food for camping, homemade backpacking meals, dehydrating food, backpacker food ideas, how to dehydrate food, amanda outside

Id: rfXWUjUMYFs

Length: 13min 47sec (827 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 02 2020