LYL Part 2: Eating Light in the Backcountry

Why dehydrated food?

A Dehydrator is handy for the backpacker

I love to eat, and I like to eat a variety of food. I don’t like to limit myself, even when I’m backpacking. By dehydrating my meals, I can eat the same food in the woods as I can at home or at a restaurant. Dehydrated foods are super light, and take up little space in a backpack. All you need is a dehydrator, some food, and just a few minutes to prep your own dehydrated meal. There’s nothing like coming back to camp for a dinner of spaghetti or stroganoff after a long day of hiking.

My history of backpacking food

Before my father and I started dehydrating our meals, the two of us carried packaged noodles and pre-mixed foods. This eventually became expensive, and our options of what we could eat were limited. Plus we didn’t think that all of the sodium and extra ingredients were very healthy, and the weight of the packages added up quickly.

Prep for dehydrating your food

Spreading spaghetti over a tray before going into the dehydrator

You don’t need to change your cooking style if you’re planning on dehydrating food. You can cook whatever meals you want just as you would for eating at home. The only thing you might add is some extra oil to help re-fuel the body after a day of hiking. When cooking meals such as spaghetti or stroganoff, you will NOT need to cook and dehydrate noodles or rice. My father and I use instant rice to add to our mix AFTER the dehydration process. Instant rice hydrates quickly, is cheap, and is super light and packable. It is better to use this than steamed rice or noodles you might use at home, as it will take too much water and time to rehydrate in camp.

Tip: You don’t necessarily have to make meals specifically for your backpacking trip. If you have leftovers, you can throw those in the dehydrator and store them for your next trip. That way you get rid of those leftovers that just sit around in your fridge for weeks AND have a meal ready to go next time you hit the woods.

The dehydrating process

Filling trays of the dehydrator with spaghetti

You will need a dehydrator for this. There are various styles of dehydrators, so each one may function a little different. In this article, I will explain how we use ours. Once we have a meal cooked, we spread it out evenly over the four trays of the dehydrator. We use parchment paper to keep the trays clean, and spread out the food as thin as possible to ensure that the food will dehydrate evenly and in a timely manner. The trays are placed back into the dehydrator, which is then plugged in and left to dehydrate for about 24-hours. The trays must be shuffled occasionally to make sure that the food is drying-out evenly. Once the food is fully dehydrated, we’re ready to package it.

What we use for packaging our meals

All of the meals are dehydrated (I mean, that’s what we’ve been talking about, right?), so they need to to be rehydrated before consumption. This requires boiling water to be mixed with the dehydrated food. In order to cut down on weight and keep our foods separated, we mix our meals in pint-size freezer bags. The freezer bags resist melting from the boiling water and serve as “bowls” to eat out of. When cooking a meal in camp, we can simply pour the water straight into the bag with the dehydrated meal in it. We carry lightweight, yet durable, plastic spoons for utensils. When we are done, we simply squeeze the air from the dirty freezer bag, zip it shut, and put it back in the food bag to carry out and throw away when we get home.

Tip: You can add extra food to your meals, such as dehydrated chicken to mashed potatoes, olive oil to couscous, or dried apples and raisins to oatmeal. These add flavor, protein, and extra calories the you will surely need on a backpacking trip.

Storage

Dehydrated foods are not only lightweight and packable, but also easy to store. When everything is packaged in the freezer bags, the meals are kept together and then kept in the freezer. They should last for a long time (years?) that way, and stay good for several seasons if you don’t eat all of them. We haven’t had anything go bad yet, so until we do, we will continue freezing our dehydrated meals.

The rehydrating process

When it’s mealtime, we pick out which food we want to eat from our food bag. We then boil water and mix it with our meals. The food requires some kneading to make sure that the liquid reaches throughout the bag. Once the liquid SEEMS to be mixed with the food, we then place the CLOSED bag in a stocking cap or other similar insulator to fully rehydrate the the mix for several minutes before eating. If you try to eat it too soon, some parts of the bag may still have dry food. You can also add more water as you see fit. Also, be aware of holes in your freezer bag. If your meal begins to leak, double bag it if you can or find some way to cover the hole. Mashed potatoes stay in a stocking cap for the rest of a trip!

Caution: You are dealing with boiling water here. Don’t burn yourself.

My favorite dehydrated meals/snacks

A sample of snacks, breakfasts, and dinners we carry throughout the season

What follows is a list of the meals I look forward to rehydrating and scarfing down after a long day on the trail. Those marked with an (*) are purchased dehydrated and remixed by us before packaging them in pint-size freezer bags.

• Spaghetti and instant rice
• Mediterranean couscous w/ chicken*
• Mashed Potatoes w/ chicken, peas, and carrots*
• Stroganoff and instant rice (new to the menu this year)
• Apples
• Apricots
• Pears
• Oatmeal w/ apples, raisins, pears*
• Breakfast scramble* (we’ve purchased pre-mixed breakfast mixes and made them ourselves)
• Peas
• Carrots
• Peanutbutter*
• Bagels

Dehydrating can lead to addiction

Once you begin dehydrating foods, you start to think of all the things that you could potentially dehydrate. I wish you luck on your journey dehydrating food, and look forward to hearing about what recipes you come up with!

The BackpackingChef.com website provides some more great tips on dehydrating meals for the backcountry and goes into more detail than I do here. They provide recipes, information on utensils and cooking accessories, and tips on how to dehydrate effectively.