I have been backpacking for many years but never opted to spend money on the freeze dried meals. Back in the 70s and 80s, they were not very good anyway. I like cooking and have always bright fresh ingredients on the trail. Recently doing more canoe and kayak camping and . looking to cut down on weight. Mother in law had a Excalibur dehydrator from the 70s and it works great.

I started slow with just peas, corn, strawberries ,apples, etc.
Watching KevinOutdoors on YouTube made me want to do my own full meals.
It's really fun and really satisfying to make your own meals the way you like and take them outdoors as super lightweight food.

Favorites so far:
Gumbo with shrimp, Andouille sausage and chicken.
Red beans and rice
Spaghetti carbonara
Lasagna
Dried pineapple slices are awesome!

Many meals can be made just as if you were eating them right then....just dry them out. 150 grams of dried food is a large size serving. It works really well to double or triple your dinner recipe and then dry all th extra as individual meals.
I vacuum pack them individually...but it's sufficient to put them in ziplocs. Sharp edges if pasta and other foods can puncture the vacuum bags so check before storing them away.

It's well worth exploring dehydrating.

What type of dehydrator do you use?

I've been dehydrating for about 4-5 years now and it now makes up most of my trip meals. I have to second Kevin Outdoors videos. His lasagna recipe really was a hit for me and instantly became one of my standard meals. I think I am going to start applying his "dehydrate the meat separately at higher temperature" idea more across my other meals like stew, chili, and sheperd's pie.

Jaywalker: "I've been dehydrating for about 4-5 years now and it now makes up most of my trip meals. I have to second Kevin Outdoors videos. His lasagna recipe really was a hit for me and instantly became one of my standard meals. I think I am going to start applying his "dehydrate the meat separately at higher temperature" idea more across my other meals like stew, chili, and sheperd's pie. "

Yup,. definitely. Any meat, dry separately at 165°F. Stuff like hamburger and sausage, use lean meat, and after cooking, put in a collander and pour boiling water over it to rinse out any fats. The fats will go rancid and ruin the food.

Mostly the rest can be dried as complete food. That is, if you make a beef stew, keep the meat separate but the rest of the stew can all be cooked as a stew and then dried. Add dried beef to the mix at the end. Now as any decent cook knows, especially in something like a stew, the meat flavor mixing with everything else is a big part of the dish's appeal and flavor-flav.

You will start to suss out your own methodologies. For example, with the stew, it might taste far better to make the complete stew, take out the beef pieces at the end and dry them without rinsing. Dry the remaining stew and then mix the two dried components.

I use a five-tray Excalibur manual. You don't need an automatic timer. Most drying operations are 6-12 hours so it's pretty darn easy to just check it in the morning. You can't really "overdry".

The square trays seem much more efficient to me. A lot of people cut circles out of parchment paper as a trayliner and it seems.like a PITA tondo that with the circles all the time. But the round ones are super inexpensive.

You don't need digital anything. Complete waste of money and one more thing to break.

Chili is a fantastic meal. Red beans and rice with sausage or shrimp is good.
KevinOutdoors lasagna is good. This is one of the few meals he recommends dehydrating all components separately.and then mixing them up.at the end when dried. I did that and it's fine. Flavors are good and it mixes together pretty well when rehydrating. But it's like a casserole....all mixed up. The flavors are there but....

I started experimenting with 3D lasagna. Everything separate but the cheese in small squares same size as the lasagna noodle pieces. Dehydrated sauce is like quarter-size flakes. Rehydrates awesome. Sausage and meat stacked up, then wrap in aluminum foil and then vacuum pack. It comes out just like real.lasagna as a square stacked up serving.

Recent I tried another version where I assembled all the dried layers using fresh wet sauce as the "glue" to hold it together and dried it like that. There are plenty of air gaps to let the sauce dry. Again, wrap in foil.and ten vacuum pack. The foil helps to cover sharp noodle edges, which pike thru the bag and ruin the vacuum seal. Also the foil.can act as a mini-pan... holding a smaller amount of water to rehydrate the lasagna than if you just filled up the pit to the tip.ofntje food with water. That would be way too soupy.

Also...make a pot cozy...an insulated cover for your pot...because it usually takes 15-25 minutes to fully rehydrate the food. You don't want it to be cool by the time it's ready. Plenty of YouTube on making a pot cozy out of Reflectix and duct tape

Also.... making complete shepherds pie and drying squares of it works really well

One tip: For a lot of foods.....when you have peppers and carrots and corn...those things are going to lose a lot of their color in the dehydrating process. You can add more of those ingredients at the end...when everything is dry. That way, you have the imbedded flavor of the corn and carrots and peppers in the food....but you add some separate dry vegetables because their color is still good and it will add visual appeal.

Tip:. The dehydrating process will mute some of the spice...so use more spice than you normally would. I don't mean add more hot pepper (although you may want to), but if a dish needs a tablespoon of oregano , add two and see how it tastes.