Dehydrating meals, Back country meals, What do y'all do for food? Help appreciated !

[MissHighcountry_Hellrazor]

I just got a dehydrator so that I could make backpacking meals lighter and more functional for the backcountry. Mountain house meals, although super tasty, are an expensive endeavor in the long run, and not within my budget. I want to make dinners, jerky etc but don't have any recipes and learning the hard way could be a disaster. Anyone have any ideas, recipes etc that are perfect for the backcountry bow trips ? What do y'all do for meals during your hunting trips ?

 

[pacific-23]

Just getting started myself. A quick google search turns up a lot of results from some of the back packing forums. Just pulled a batch of elk jerky last night. Yoshida's, garlic, Morton tender quick, sambal oelek (chili garlic paste), a few shots of rum, fresh cracked pepper, thinned a little with water turned out great. Sorry I don't really measure so it's kind of hard to pass on an accurate recipe. Lots of jerky recipes online as well but I usually go the simple route with a soy, ginger, garlic, pepper, sugar marinade. Really only limited by your imagination.

 

[tipsntails7]

Besides mountain house the only thing that has gone on every trip with me is jerky, trail mix and those idahoan potato packets that just need water... Those bad boys are awesome and take up zero space. A candy bar always works it's way in there at some point as well. I'm interested to see some recipies as well though.

 

[Hunt'nFish]

Here my Knifong Family Jerky recipe:

Here is our recipe for jerkey, using a dehydrator.
It is ment to be simple, using everday household stuff.
No MSG, other flaver enhancers or meat tenderizers.

1. 4-5 pounds of meat cut 1/4" thick.
2. 2 Cups Teriyaki sauce, you may use plain soy sauce also.
3. 1/8 Cup table salt.
4. 2-3 Tablespoons liquid smoke.
5. 1 teaspoon course black pepper, you may use some red peppers
if you like it hot.
6. 1/4 cup sugar.

Marinate the meat for 24 hrs or so, in a covered container,
stirring regularly.
Meat should absorb most of the liquid after the full 24 hrs..
Place marinated meat strips on the drying racks, leaving room
between them for air flow.
Dry at 135-145 degrees F, untill dry. With good air flow
it should take about 10-16 hrs. Rotate racks if air flow is
not so good.

Store in ziplock bags. No need to refrigerate, as the salt and drying
keeps it from spoiling.

Tip: Take three bags of dryied jerkey and put them in with
your hunting stuff right now!!, before the kids eat it all up!!

Another Tip: A good dryer makes a the differance in drying time.
As I said before the American Harvest Snackmaster and Gardenmaster
dehydrators are very good. They have temp. controls, 90-145 degrees,
and have very good air flow. I don't have rotate racks, and jerkey
drys over night. The snackmaster costs about $60 and extra trays are $20.

Remember, use your dehydrator for fruits also. My hunting fannypack
always has dried food in it, as well as my other survival stuff.

Have fun, and experiment with the recipe. Tweek it to to your tastes.
It's now YOUR recipe!!
Hunt'nFish

 

[Hunt'nFish]

For my dehydrated meals, I just dry dinner left-overs.
My favorite are beef stew, Vindaloo over rice, Chili mac, spaghetti, teriyaki stir-fry & rice.
Options are limitless.
Hunt'nFish

 

[7mag.]

How do you know how much water to add when re-hydrating your meals?

 

[colonel00]

There are a couple tricks to get some foods to rehydrate easier. First, check out the site below. There is a ton of info and you can pay the nominal fee for all of the recipes. One of his tricks is to mix bread crumbs with ground beef to help it rehydrate better. I tried several of his recipes and they are decent but I found I liked them as a start but I wanted to modify them. I can't find it specifically but I remember that these meals weren't very high in calories. Still, it is a good source of basic info.

http://www.backpackingchef.com/

I made a lot of ramen and macaroni based meals which were decent for quick, warm lunches. I also made up some chili, spaghetti, "Thanksgiving Dinner", and a couple other heartier meals. The barks on his site are pretty good too.

 

[7mag.]

Thanks for the link. That looks way better than Mountain House.

 

[colonel00]

One other thought that I plan to try but haven't as of yet. I was going to get some of the MH stuff in bulk and then add my own meat or spices to enhance the meals. Then just portion and seal it up myself.

 

[Hunt'nFish]

How do you know how much water to add when re-hydrating your meals?

Trial & error, but for most of my meals I find that a 50/50 ratio of dry to water seems about right. IMO, I'd error on a tad more, than not enough. Also, dehydrating can loose some of the flavor, so I like to add a touch more dry spice powder as I package my meals up. You know, an extra 1/2tsp of chili spice to the chili mac, extra sweet curry to the Vindaloo, extra beef bullion powder to the stew, chicken bullion to the chicken noodle soup, etc, etc.

I too like to repackage ramen and yaki-soba meals. I spike them w/ slow cooked crock pot chicken and extra dried veggies.
This is one thing I need to do this off season.....is get some veggies steamed & dried for next year.
Hunt'nFish

 

[Ray]

I just got a dehydrator so that I could make backpacking meals lighter and more functional for the backcountry. Mountain house meals, although super tasty, are an expensive endeavor in the long run, and not within my budget. I want to make dinners, jerky etc but don't have any recipes and learning the hard way could be a disaster. Anyone have any ideas, recipes etc that are perfect for the backcountry bow trips ? What do y'all do for meals during your hunting trips ?

Check out the Cooking in the Wild sub forum down near the bottom of the main forum page. There is a freezer bag cooking sticky that has collected lots of information.

For best field use you will wanto use a decent food processor to grind up dried stuff so that it rehydrates easier. You give up visual aspects of food and some mouth feel, but I just don't care when deep in the back country. I want to eat, eat fast, and go to sleep. I do not need a clone to what I get on my plate in a resturant.

On line resources abound for dehyrdating food. The website Trail Cooking contains a lot of info, and recipes for making meals ahead.

Keep in mind that many traditional backpacking DIY foods require in pot cooking, which in turn requires dish washing. For some back country trips there will not be enough water to wash dishes. I have read that some guys wash their jet boil pot by making an after meal coffee and then wiping the pot out with a rag. I just don't know what to make of that. The water issue requires careful food choices. You will need to look for food bases that start off with just add boiling water. There are decent bulk mashed potato at costco that work. Then there are Thai rice based noodles that do not need cooking. You will spend time reading lables to figure out the end result.

I add fat back into my meals by using olive oil in packettes or a squeeze bottle. You can buy the packettes in bulk from amazon vendors. I also use coconut oil or paste for added fat. These are both MCT fats and high calories per ounce. Well worth packing. I have tried coconut oil in a jar, but in hot weather it just gets messy. There are on line sources for coconut oil and butter in small packs.

Jerky
You will find many - if not most - published jerky dehyrdator recipes call for cooking the meat first. You will find that quite a few of us DIY dehydrator users do not cook the meat before dehydrating. I think the publishers have a liablity issue and don't want the FDA to come down on them.

One my now favorite trail foods is dried caribou. Its extra lean meat and the drying process takes out the tundra flavor. Add some traditional jerky "cure" of salt,sugar, and pepper and its hard to stop nibbling all day. I would not feed uncooked game meat to a dog and dehydrating is not cooking.

For your protein sources in your meals you will want as lean as you can go to prevent rancidness during storage in the freezer or on the trip in hot weather. For my meals I use either ground turkey or game meat, cooked in spices to create a meal system like Italian or Mexican. Once dehydrated I put the meat into a food processor and grind it into a dust. Same with my vegetables which are mushed, dried, and then ground into dust. Rather than cooking for 15 minutes to rehydrate, it just takes 10 to 15 minutes of soaking in boiled water in the ziploc in a cozy made out of an old foam pad.

 

[Ridge Ghost]

I started making my own dehydrated meals last year. Stir fry, pot roast and pasta all worked well for me.

 

[Pancho Villa]

What dehydrators do you guys use?

 

[5MilesBack]

How do you know how much water to add when re-hydrating your meals?

I've never said no to "soup".......I don't mind runny lasagna or any of the other meals I've had.

 

[Ray]

What dehydrators do you guys use?

Excaliber 3526TB with a timer and thermostat. The timer is really handy for monitoring the process and you have to be able to control the temperature for different foods. There have been only a few days that I wanted more than 5 trays. If I was doing a lot of vegetation and fruits the 9 tray would be the way to go. Always get some fruit leather sheets for drying wet mush stuff. The cheap ones work well. Buy a large batch of them and store the ones not actively in use.

 

[Hunt'nFish]

What dehydrators do you guys use?

I use a Gardenmaster. Had it for like 20yrs. Works great. I have about 8 trays for it w/ 4 of the fruit leather tray liners. The liners work awesome for drying liquidy things like stews. However when I dry left over stews, I like to add some dehydrated mashed potato's to thicken up the liquid.
Hunt'nFish

 

[2ski]

What dehydrators do you guys use?

Excaliber is the only answer I've received when I ask the same question. No experience with one but I suspect I'm getting one for Christmas.

 

[colonel00]

We (my buddy and I) use this one from Cabelas. However, it is a beast and eats power. Great when you need the space but I hear great things about the Excaliber ones.

http://www.cabelas.com/product/Cabe...gclid=COP69NrWrrsCFTNp7AodfV4Azg&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

[Darren Best]

www.trailcooking.com

 

[Renoit24]

Welcome to the dehydrating club. I found a guy on YouTube named Hungry Hammock Hanger. He walks you through different recipes and explains how to prepare the meals. He is from Texas like me and he likes spicy meals but he has several different varieties. He goes over the grocery list, prep, cooking method, dehydrating time, and rehydration suggestions. His videos are entertaining and I usually just make up my own recipes from the meals he preps. There's nothing like eating meals that are spiced and flavored to your own liking. I try to come up with new recipes every year and use my wife and mother as quality assurance. . It's a fun task and you can even make meals in bulk and sell them to your fellow hunting buddies for more spending money. Do you already have a vacuum sealer as well?