I feel like our food for the 8 day trip w/ 4 people is getting heavy. Our meals are mostly dehydrated components. We will bring fresh cheese for our lunch, but I feel like we could save a noticeable amount of weight if we dehydrate cheese that will be used for making cheesy biscuits, cheesy tortillas, and other such meals.

What advice do people have?
Does it work to use the pre-grated cheese? Or should I start by grating my own?
Does sharp cheddar work? How about Queso Fresco?
Should I use the lowest setting (95 degrees) on the dehydrator?
How about when I rehydrate? Will it rehydrate if I just add it to the wet mix for biscuits? Or should I rehydrate it separately before adding it to the tortillas or biscuits?

I've never tried it, mostly because the weight savings would not be worth it to me. I eat most or all of my cheese sliced on crackers or the like, and I don't see rehydrated cheese working for that. To use it in recipes, I believe with something like cheese you would need to powder it after you dehydrate it, and you can buy cheese powder online or even buy boxes of mac and cheese and use the cheese packets.

But if you try it and it works, let us know! Always looking for something new.

Google dehydrate cheese. I was skeptical but a lot of how tos. Ultimately, chese powders would do same I feel. Just add to mixes or sprinkle on food.

billconner: "Google dehydrate cheese. I was skeptical but a lot of how tos. Ultimately, chese powders would do same I feel. Just add to mixes or sprinkle on food."

I did do a search, but I was hoping someone has actually tried it. I like having small chunks or grated cheese in the various breaded goods so cheese powder is not high on my list. We do already have cheese powder for the mac 'n cheese night.

we tried doing cheddar and decided it sucked
We use the cheese powder you buy in some dishes, but for lunch we pack the real thing

Hammer, what did you use it for and what was it that sucked?

First we tried some of the softer cheeses and those ended up grainy and took forever to get "dry" and had a off taste.
Then we tried the harder cheeses and while that didn't take as long the taste and texture was really lacking. Trying to bring it back after drying was another issue and it ended up a mess. We ended up with a sort of cheese goo that we poured over potatos and decided we weren't going to ever do that again.
We have had some "freeze dried" cheeses that were ok(leaps and bounds above our attempts) but these days we pack hard cheeses and cheese powder for cooking dishes.

Every time i prep a wilderness trip I say I am going to get some of this stuff to try it

Hoosier Hill powered dairy

I have yet to do so but others have recommended it and it gets good reviews everywhere.

goaljohnbill: "Every time i prep a wilderness trip I say I am going to get some of this stuff to try it


Hoosier Hill powered dairy


I have yet to do so but others have recommended it and it gets good reviews everywhere."

we used Hooiser for cooking and everything we tried is awesome
Add some powdered milk to the powdered cheese and you have a great cheese base or soup.
We love the mix with dried potato slices and a bit of dried herbs