|
Boundary Waters Quetico Forum :: BWCA Food and Recipes :: Freezer bag cooking question
|
| Author | Message Text | ||
| Brooklynn07 |
Do you dehydrate the hamburger with the sauce or separately? Just wondering if it would rehydrate in the same amount of time. Brooklynn07 |
||
| Camp_Girl |
Freeze Dried v Dehydrated That answers all of the questions we could think of about the differences between the two :) Some of the big differences though are that freeze-dried foods rehydrate almost instantly while dehydrated food can take a little longer - you can even eat freeze-dried foods without rehydrating them! They'll be a little bit crunchy but nothing like dehydrated. Also, freeze-dried foods are a bit more lightweight than dehydrated but they also retain more of their shape making them more bulky. |
||
| Buffy |
|
||
| nojobro |
And if I do order them, I'm confused about how much to order. The online store has things in ounces, and the recipes call for cups. |
||
| croixboy96 |
I'm going to follow this thread. What, specifically is FBC cooking and how is it different from re-hydrating your food in a pot of hot water? I have a food dehydrator, I'd like to use as much 'home made' food for the BWCA as I can. I don't like to buy pre-processed, pre-dehydrated, pre-anything. I've heard of people dehydrating everything from spaghetti sauce to stews to ground beef(?). Can somebody break down a step by step process how to dehydrate these items safely (especially the beef)? It seems this could be dangerous if not done properly. I REALLY would like to eat a bit meaty spaghetti dinner at the campsite with a glass of red wine (bag wine, of course). I also wonder, how is the freeze drying different from dehydrating? Croixboy |
||
| nojobro |
the Trail Cooking/FBC website Also check out the dehydrating part of the above website here. |
||
| nojobro |
|
||
| Buffy |
To do beef, brown it until it is cooked through. As nojobro said, you can add whatever you like to the meat as it cooks. Drain off the juices and fat. You might even want to spread it on a couple layers of paper towels and then pat it with a couple more layers to dry it. (To get rid of more of the fat, I put mine in a colander and run hot water over it, then pat it dry.) Again, put a thin, even layer on your dryer trays, turn on the machine, and keep an eye on it. You don't need to put the dehydrated tomato sauce in a blender. We had home-dried spaghetti sauce on our June trip. We just tore the "tomato leather" into chunks, so it fit in the pan, added the beef, poured boiling water over the whole thing, waited ten minutes, and added the cooked spaghetti. Not long after we got back, though, I ran across this additional suggestion (probably on this site), which I plan to try on my next trip: We cook our pasta at home, and sauce, then mix them together, then dehydrate. Now it's a one pot meal at camp. No need to strain any noodles and then top them with rehydrated sauce. Plus they cook faster. Just cover your dehydrated pasta/sauce dinner with about 1/2 inch of water, boil, set to the side and let soak for 10 minutes, and enjoy. |
||
| Buffy |
Freeze-drying is a special form of drying that removes all moisture and tends to have less of an effect on a food's taste than normal dehydration does. In freeze-drying, food is frozen and placed in a strong vacuum. The water in the food then sublimates -- that is, it turns straight from ice into vapor. |
||
| OBX2Kayak |
However, I'd also highly recommend purchasing a good trail cooking book. Several excellent authors frequently participate on this board. For veggies, I've found that frozen bagged veggies work well for a lazy cook. They have been cleaned and blanched at a fair price. I even do corn that way, though others prefer freeze dried corn. Good luck. You are entering a fascinating area. |