Hi all,
I’m looking into buying a dehydrator.

I recently acquired a lighter solo canoe and now single portaging is a real possibility. Food weight is my only focus now. For each of two 11 day trips, I needed one BV500. My last trip, I took 9 lbs. 8 oz. of food(only). Also, I’m not interested in freeze dried packaged meals.

The first item to be replaced are foil packs of meat. I had 6-2.6 ounce packets equaling 15.6 ounces and 17.6 with packaging. Other thoughts? Is there dried summer sausage? I brought 12 ounces. Are there alternatives(edible!) to oil. I brought 8 ounces and used it all. I’m also taking out 5 ounces of Mio squirt flavoring.

In the BW, I eat to live, not live to eat. I prefer one-pot boiling, using a cozie after. I use only olive oil, for simplicity. I haven’t brought cheese.

What is the key ways or info for food weight reduction. For this post, I’m not interested in getting into other ways of cutting weight. I’ve done pretty good there, and I’ll work on that later.

Fritty

I don't believe there is dehydrated summer sausage as it has a considerable amount of fat. My solution is to make my own jerky. I used to bring fresh eggs for 4 or five days, and now I dehydrate those as well. I've brought dehydrated peanut butter, but it certainly doesn't measure up to regular peanut butter. I dehydrate all my dinners, except when I eat fish.

Welcome to dehydrating. This chef basically taught me how to dehydrate everything, including ground beef, chicken, tuna, and even shrimp as well as all the vegetables and fruit. Have fun! Backpacking Chef Dehydrating Meat

Plus one on making your own jerky, so much cheaper and better. Don't use hamburger but bottom round trim the fat off the one side and slice about an 1/8 of an inch thick.
Try making your own hummus, the Backpacking Chief mentioned above has a good recipe. Let's you eliminate the oil from store bought.
Jimmey Dean's Sausage also dehydrates well, rinse the fat.
Off the shelf frozen veggies, cook about half-way first.
Canned chicken dehydrates better than fresh.
I make thin sliced zucchini with garlic chips that are really good.

Catch fish. Fresh meat that you don't have to carry.

We bring ghee to fry fish. But it doesn't serve as a lightweight alternative. Olive oil is not desirable as it's a low smoke-point oil.

One pot meals are the key. Spaghetti and chili mac are two staples of my meal plan. I prefer rotini noodles for the spaghetti. I can make them beforehand and dehydrate all at once. There are numerous videos on YouTube. The one from Matthew Posa is quite entertaining. I also like to dehydrate canned chicken for variety. You can then add it to pretty much any Knorr side with olive oil and powdered milk. I also will use various dehydrated veggies with them for countless different possibilities. You might also want to take a look at this book. I have not read it but have heard many good things. Backcountry Eats

You might be interested in this Youtube channel Kevin Outdoors has a whole playlist on it

This is great! Thanks for all the info!

Fritty

I’m currently prepping for a weeklong trip by cooking seasoned beef and pork roasts in an instant pot, shredding them and dehydrating. These will then go into ramen-based meals with cooked fresh corn, carrot sticks and pineapple that I have also dehydrated, along with various seasoning powders. I tested one version the other day with boiling hot water and a ten-minute wait. The result was PDG.

I’ve also done dehydrated hamburger stroganoff with a very good result, using very lean hamburger as a substitute for the ground venison in this recipe:

Backcountry Beef (Venison) Stroganoff

I'm loving this thread. I've got all winter to experiment.....

I stopped using foil chicken because it has so little flavor, the weight and the packaging- smell in the garbage. I now dhy. rotisserie chicken removing any skin and fat, much better flavor. I also poach chicken breasts and dhy. Poaching is easy, youtube poaching fish just adjust seasoning. There is a drawback to doing your own chicken and that is it requires a longer soaking time.
I have always taken regular salted butter in a plastic container for up to 10 days with no problems and unflavored Crisco for frying fish.

A side note on the rotisserie chicken-- you get to eat the delicious skin! (makes the wife crazy)

Large pieces of chicken do not rehydrate well. It’s best to shred the chicken before you dehydrate.

YouTube channel Kevin Outdoors has great content by the same guy who authored the book Backcountry Eats that someone mentioned above. Kevin has a whole video series on cooking and dehydrating meats that you could learn from. Kevin is from a mindset that meats and vegetables need to be prepared, cooked, and dried separately and then combined when packing out your food - this way you can optimize the drying meat hotter than the other ingredients. I find his recipes pretty tasty.

To minimize food weight, which was the original question, one important part of it is to take only what you will need to eat, and aspire to have no left-over food at the end of a trip. After realizing I had over a third of my food left after a trip, I got serious about packing smaller portions, less of the bulk stuff like trail mix, and so on. I am now hitting much closer to what I actually eat without going hungry, and I have finished trips with a couple oatmeal packets and maybe a protein bar left.