We just returned from our trip and tried out some of the items I've been dehydrating since springtime. I promised to share some thoughts... and so here they are

First... what we didn't love/what didn't work:

Yogurt bites. This was something that was in the recipe book that came with my dehydrator. They tasted great fresh. A bit like taffy. I couldn't keep my 18 yr old away from them. After they had been sealed up and frozen for two months... not so good. WAY too hard and chewy. Not as flavorful. Glad I opened a pack and tried them before we left. They did not make the trip with us. And the 18 yr old didn't eat them while we were gone. I threw them out. If I do them again, it will be right before a trip so they can go in fresh.

Leftover Wild Rice Salad - nope, didn't work. Didn't think it would necessarily. But it was worth a try since I was going to have to toss it anyway. Just confirmed... if something has a lot of fat or oil in it, it doesn't really work. It had an olive oil based dressing on it. I didn't bring it along on the trip, i tried it for lunch one day first. Went out and got a sandwich instead.

What did work:

Refried beans, rice, fire roasted tomatoes. Beans and tomatoes were the canned brand we eat at home all the time. Rice was just leftover brown rice from dinner one night. Did all of them separately. Then re-hydrated/cooked the rice and tomatoes with foil pouch chicken. Did refried beans separately. Best soft chicken taco meal we've had on the trail!

Peppers, onions, pizza sauce. All great. Another one of our favorite meals - reflector oven pizza - got better this trip. The ingredients took less space and we had veggies. Re-hydrated them altogether and put on top of the pizza. Had a few too many onions but that's cook's error ;-) Also used the peppers and onions in hash browns.

Chili - didn't eat it on the trip but have tried it at lunchtime at work. It's homemade black bean/ground turkey chili. Very good. I just need to get better at knowing how much water to use for the portions I made.

Off the top of my head, I think that's all we tried so far. Oh... dried strawberries and peaches in our morning hot cereal. they were a great addition.

Traveling again soon... may try a few more things if we have time in the next ten days. For sure we will be doing more beans and rice. And some spaghetti sauce.

An alternative to dehydrating refried beans is using a black bean dried soup and not making it as watery,but making it more thick. We've done that. Also you can get dehydrated refried beans, I forget the brand that we got once before but they were really good.

Easy things to try on 10 days notice:

Dry a bag of frozen peas, a bag of frozen corn, and then make a chicken soup out of some bouillon cubes, thin spaghetti broken up on the trail into 1" pieces, and a bag or two or foil pack chicken. Or, buy a #10 can of freeze dried chicken at REI -use some and freeze the rest. The nice thing about this meal is not much clean up. It is tempting to use the frozen mixed vegetables - but I avoid that because dehydrated carrots release an overwhelming amount of carrot flavor when rehydrating.

Dry a couple cans of garbanzo beans, and a package of frozen spinach, and some tomato sauce. Mix the beans, spinach, tomato and add some curry powder and serve that mixture over rice. A 2 pot meal, and a bit more clean up. If you can find it, there is a premium version of minute rice that cooks fast but has a bit better texture than the normal minute rice. I was reading on some backpacker couples web page where they no longer heat up their dehydrated food. They just rehydrate in a twist top peanut butter jar for a few hours and eat at room temp. I tried this with just the garbanzos and tomato (no rice) and it was all right. Kind of like a salad. A good lunch food. I don't think I'd want to try no cook with everything (especially with meat), but it works for some things.

By the way, how small did you make the chunks or ground turkey? Did it rehydrate easily?

quote NotLight: "Dry a couple cans of garbanzo beans, and a package of frozen spinach, and some tomato sauce. Mix the beans, spinach, tomato and add some curry powder and serve that mixture over rice.
"

I eat a similar version of this all the time at home for lunch . I use stewed or fire roasted diced tomatoes.

For Wild Rice Salad you can always get it thru Cache Lake Foods. they have it with Italian Dressing or Ranch Dressing. We've had it before and really like it. Wild rice Salad

quote NotLight:



By the way, how small did you make the chunks or ground turkey? Did it rehydrate easily?


"

Sorry for the delayed response...

The turkey is about the size of small peas. OR smaller. We cooked it up in fairly small chunks before putting it in the crockpot chili. seemed to rehydrate just fine.

I also cooked some ground turkey separately and we will be using it in pasta next week. I smashed it with a fork after cooking it so some if it is smaller than peas. Hopefully that will work well too. plan to rehydrate it along with the pasta sauce, after removing some sauce for the picky eater among us (my daughter) who won't want meat in her red sauce.

quote OldFingers57: " Also you can get dehydrated refried beans, I forget the brand that we got once before but they were really good. "

For my money, Mexicali Rose Refried Beans is the best available. If you prefer, they also come in a Black Bean version.

And speaking of Tex-Mex foods ... anyone had any luck with dehydrating avocado? I'm going to give it another go soon. I'm close, but I think you'll need to get close to powder form for it to store well. Getting rid of the oil is the secret...and you can't slice it, you have to mash it out as a thin paste to get to a stage that is close. A little fruit fresh also seems to help. You can always add olive oil when you re-constitute.

I've made some acceptable guacamole from my present attempts, but I'm looking for something that would have a "shelf life" of about 2 weeks (minimum).

dd

I recall last year trying to dehydrate pesto...not the brightest move on my part!

I had successful batch of dehydrated pesto....tip picked up from hungry hammock hanger on YouTube. Trick is to 1) make fresh pesto but leaveing out the olive oil; 2) dehydrate, then run it thru blender. In
3) rehydrate at camp; 4) finally, addd the olive oil and mix w/pasta. Key workaround to the problem of dehydrating oily things..

quote Frenchy19: "I recall last year trying to dehydrate pesto...not the brightest move on my part! "

You do realize they have packets of dried pesto you can buy at the store or are you just looking to do it all yourself.

quote dentondoc: "

quote OldFingers57: " Also you can get dehydrated refried beans, I forget the brand that we got once before but they were really good. "

For my money, Mexicali Rose Refried Beans is the best available. If you prefer, they also come in a Black Bean version.

And speaking of Tex-Mex foods ... anyone had any luck with dehydrating avocado? I'm going to give it another go soon. I'm close, but I think you'll need to get close to powder form for it to store well. Getting rid of the oil is the secret...and you can't slice it, you have to mash it out as a thin paste to get to a stage that is close. A little fruit fresh also seems to help. You can always add olive oil when you re-constitute.

I've made some acceptable guacamole from my present attempts, but I'm looking for something that would have a "shelf life" of about 2 weeks (minimum).



Why not just take a couple of avocados along in your pack. Get the hard not yet ripe ones. They will then get ripe while out on your trip.

dd"

quote Twins87: "

quote NotLight:



By the way, how small did you make the chunks or ground turkey? Did it rehydrate easily?



"

Sorry for the delayed response...


The turkey is about the size of small peas. OR smaller. We cooked it up in fairly small chunks before putting it in the crockpot chili. seemed to rehydrate just fine.


I also cooked some ground turkey separately and we will be using it in pasta next week. I smashed it with a fork after cooking it so some if it is smaller than peas. Hopefully that will work well too. plan to rehydrate it along with the pasta sauce, after removing some sauce for the picky eater among us (my daughter) who won't want meat in her red sauce. "

Thanks for this thread Twins87! We just camped with another family and they had a wealth of great meals rehydrated....so we just bought a second-hand excalibur! Now I have a fall/winter project :) Great receipe ideas too on this thread.

IF you are looking for some other good recipes that include dehydrated items check out Trailcooking.com. Trailcooking.com

A report on our recent trip and meals.

The pasta meal turned out great. We rehydrated one jar of pasta sauce (I dehydrated it to a leather), a pound of ground turkey, onions and peppers. Used small rotini pasta that had a cook time of 4-5 minutes. To save on fuel we boiled water, added it to the pasta in a pot and covered with a cozy. By the time the rest of the meal was ready the pasta was done. We put the veggies and meat in with the sauce to rehydrate. Too many veggies for some of the group so next time I'll do those separately.

Still haven't tried the chili! We brought one extra/backup meal of soup and bread. Kids voted for that over the chili on our final night so we had that. I may have to try the chili at home this fall.

We are heading in for a very short trip over Labor Day and will do the chicken tacos and pasta meal again so not trying anything new this time.

Love to hear more about the meals you had HighnDry.

One of my goals this winter is to make more complete meals. I'd rather have a one pot meal than multiples. I may try some of Ripples recipes this winter and see how it goes.

quote Twins87: "A report on our recent trip and meals.


The pasta meal turned out great. We rehydrated one jar of pasta sauce (I dehydrated it to a leather), a pound of ground turkey, onions and peppers. Used small rotini pasta that had a cook time of 4-5 minutes. To save on fuel we boiled water, added it to the pasta in a pot and covered with a cozy. By the time the rest of the meal was ready the pasta was done. We put the veggies and meat in with the sauce to rehydrate. Too many veggies for some of the group so next time I'll do those separately.


Still haven't tried the chili! We brought one extra/backup meal of soup and bread. Kids voted for that over the chili on our final night so we had that. I may have to try the chili at home this fall.


We are heading in for a very short trip over Labor Day and will do the chicken tacos and pasta meal again so not trying anything new this time.


Love to hear more about the meals you had HighnDry.


One of my goals this winter is to make more complete meals. I'd rather have a one pot meal than multiples. I may try some of Ripples recipes this winter and see how it goes. "

Twins87,
I would love to report that we have broken new ground in our culinary adventures but sadly, we are a bit stuck in a rut -- which is why I'm reading through everyone else's recipes!

Our only real innovation has been "camp pizzas" which are nothing more than a grilled tortilla, fill half with grilled onions/broccoli florets or pepperoni (I'm the only veg in my group) then top with cheese. Let it melt, squeeze tomato sauce or pizza sauce over top, fold the other half of tortilla over. Flip a couple of times on your camp griddle....and then get out of the way so the next person can step up and do the same thing :). This was just recently given to me by others so I can't claim credit.

We ritually do our bananas/cinnamon pancakes for breakfasts which we love and have occasionally done the "cheesy-potatoes-in-the-fire" for dinner fare when we feel like voyageurs and want to carry the weight (not often). Other than that, dinner meals typically are a pasta package that everyone will eat (mac n cheese) or something similar, fresh vegetables and dip, and fish when we can get it.

Obviously that leaves lots of room for lighter dehydrated goodies! I'm still searching for a good blueberry crumbie recipe for a dessert that can be made in a skillet...quickly.

quote HighnDry: "

quote Twins87: "A report on our recent trip and meals.



The pasta meal turned out great. We rehydrated one jar of pasta sauce (I dehydrated it to a leather), a pound of ground turkey, onions and peppers. Used small rotini pasta that had a cook time of 4-5 minutes. To save on fuel we boiled water, added it to the pasta in a pot and covered with a cozy. By the time the rest of the meal was ready the pasta was done. We put the veggies and meat in with the sauce to rehydrate. Too many veggies for some of the group so next time I'll do those separately.



Still haven't tried the chili! We brought one extra/backup meal of soup and bread. Kids voted for that over the chili on our final night so we had that. I may have to try the chili at home this fall.



We are heading in for a very short trip over Labor Day and will do the chicken tacos and pasta meal again so not trying anything new this time.



Love to hear more about the meals you had HighnDry.



One of my goals this winter is to make more complete meals. I'd rather have a one pot meal than multiples. I may try some of Ripples recipes this winter and see how it goes. "

Twins87,
I would love to report that we have broken new ground in our culinary adventures but sadly, we are a bit stuck in a rut -- which is why I'm reading through everyone else's recipes!


Our only real innovation has been "camp pizzas" which are nothing more than a grilled tortilla, fill half with grilled onions/broccoli florets or pepperoni (I'm the only veg in my group) then top with cheese. Let it melt, squeeze tomato sauce or pizza sauce over top, fold the other half of tortilla over. Flip a couple of times on your camp griddle....and then get out of the way so the next person can step up and do the same thing :). This was just recently given to me by others so I can't claim credit.


We ritually do our bananas/cinnamon pancakes for breakfasts which we love and have occasionally done the "cheesy-potatoes-in-the-fire" for dinner fare when we feel like voyageurs and want to carry the weight (not often). Other than that, dinner meals typically are a pasta package that everyone will eat (mac n cheese) or something similar, fresh vegetables and dip, and fish when we can get it.


Obviously that leaves lots of room for lighter dehydrated goodies! I'm still searching for a good blueberry crumbie recipe for a dessert that can be made in a skillet...quickly.
"

Our dehydrator just arrived! :)

Dehydrated wild rice always makes its way on my trips. It hydrates quickly and can be mixed with many different meals or eaten alone. I enjoy a chicken stew with portioned Bear Creek Chicken Wild Rice soup mix, a bunch more wild rice and a foil pac of chicken. The label on the soup indicates no msg.