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Pasta for FBC
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Home › Forums › General Forums › Food, Hydration, and Nutrition › Pasta for FBC
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Apr 4, 2013 at 6:15 am #1301295
What is the best pasta overall for FBC? I tried cooking and dehydrating some angel hair pasta and it was a PITA to deal with. I wondered if elbow pasta would be easier to dehydrate and portion. What do you guys use?
Apr 4, 2013 at 7:12 am #1972717we use Sopa noodles. You can get them in the Mexican section of most grocery stores. It cost about .33 a package. They don't even have to be dehydrated since they cook really fast or you can let them sit in hot water for 8-10 minutes in a cozy
Apr 4, 2013 at 7:18 am #1972721Break up the angle hair when re-packaging. It will be easier to manage and easier to eat.
IF you are into it…. the Tinkyada brand of brown rice pasta will rehydrate in ~15 minutes of cozy time.
And although you didn't ask, the Barilla brand tortellini will rehydrate in 15 minutes of cozy time.
Apr 4, 2013 at 7:36 am #1972733I like bigger pasta shapes over long noodles – I cook the pasta, cutting the cooking time by 2-3 minutes, drain, rinse quickly and dry. Then it makes great FBC-friendly pasta. rigatoni, elbows, penne…..
Apr 4, 2013 at 8:45 am #1972760I pack the pasta seperately and pre-soak the pasta for 1-3 hours prior to use. I have made lasagna using this method. Best regards – Jon
Apr 4, 2013 at 10:40 am #1972799Cous Cous is the quickest I've found to rehydrate. Not the greatest texture, but good and easy.
Apr 4, 2013 at 10:50 am #1972808Couscous is the easiest to deal with. Commercially dehydrated noodles seem to rehydrate easiest, although they are bulky. I treat Quinoa as if it were a pasta, although technically it is not. I cook it and dehydrate it at home, so it is instant on the trail with just a bit of hot water.
Frankly, I don't like to eat only a single pasta/starch/grain when in the field. I carry ziploc bags of several and then use them in a rotation or else mixed. Instant rice, instant noodles, instant quinoa, instant potatoes, couscous.
–B.G.–
Apr 4, 2013 at 12:45 pm #1972855I've given up using any sort of pasta except couscous. Couscous can be used straight out of the box with no preparation time and is basically instant, even the whole grain variety which I use. I realize that spaghetti looks odd when made with couscous and that you can't slurp the noodles, but it tastes the same! Couscous is so much more convenient than noodles. For one thing, unlike spaghetti noodles, it doesn't poke holes in the freezer bag!
Apr 4, 2013 at 4:08 pm #1972915Angel hair ends up tough or mushy for me. I gave up on it after several attempts.
Elbow macaroni (especially the Kraft Mac 'n cheese kind) usually comes out perfect. I don't pre-cook or dehydrate it–just use it straight from the box.
And best of all is the Barilla tortellini. You can use it straight from the bag, and it's really tasty and cooks very well in 10 minutes or so.
Other pastas supposedly work fine if you pre-cook and then dehydrate them. I always thought it was kind of ridiculous to spend all that time and energy cooking the pasta, dehydrating it, and then cooking it again. That strikes me as a big waste of time when there are options that work fine without all the prep work.
Apr 4, 2013 at 7:35 pm #1972971I like the sopa noodles idea. Not having to have to precook is such a time saver. I picked up a bag tonight. I found the La Moderna brand.
Apr 4, 2013 at 7:36 pm #1972972Bob – your practice of dehydrating quinoa is intriguing to me. Do you do that in a food dehydrator?
And then can be prepped like instant oatmeal or instant cream of rice?
I've got a week of camping in the Aleutians coming up. No wood anywhere and no fuel ( except maybe wax) allowed in luggage (damn jets with all their rules!). So I'm really looking to reduce cook time but want hot food.
Apr 4, 2013 at 8:28 pm #1972988I'm not aware of any other way to dehydrate cooked quinoa other than with a food dehydrator. I cook the quinoa, and let as much natural moisture evaporate as possible. Then I spread that on the fruit leather tray of my dehydrator and let it rip overnight. In fact, you want to get it as hard as possible. What comes out is a lot of tan granular bits. You can roll that with a rolling pin to reduce it to smaller bits, and that makes it easier for rehydration.
Then, on the trail, you can pour some hot water on it and let it rehydrate, or you can simmer it more with other ingredients. You can make it act like instant oatmeal, or you can make it act like instant rice.
As for your fuel situation, you can take dry wood, wood fire starters, and wax. If you are on a turbo prop out of Anchorage, they don't seem to check very closely.
–B.G.–
Apr 4, 2013 at 9:15 pm #1973006David, you can also find Quinoa Flakes at natural food stores, they are truly instant.
Apr 4, 2013 at 9:18 pm #1973007I find the flakes to be best for baking quinoa cookies, but my granules are good in a stew.
–B.G.–
Apr 5, 2013 at 5:45 pm #1973256The q flakes make a great hot cereal, just like oats.
Apr 7, 2013 at 3:40 pm #1973779My favorite pasta is Barilla ditalini (also called salad pasta by other manufacturers and commonly used by preschool teachers for making necklaces).
Cook el dente, dehydrate, add hot water on the trail and wait. Mix with dehydrated sauce and ground beef or TVP.
I've also tried orzo recently and it works well too. Just need to label the bags so you don't get them confused with rice. When rehydrating, mix with sesame-ginger dressing, peanut butter and soy sauce and protein (we used foil pack of tuna). Yum.
Apr 7, 2013 at 4:43 pm #1973798"The q flakes make a great hot cereal, just like oats."
My package of quinoa flakes says that it requires 90 seconds of cooking. That's OK, and it is much shorter than normal quinoa. But, I don't consider that to be exactly instant.
It is such a versatile food, though. I mix instant quinoa with f.d. fruit bits, add a splash of hot water, and that makes breakfast.
–B.G.–
Apr 8, 2013 at 8:41 am #1973991I typically use Ramen Noodles or Couscous in my recipes which require pasta.
Apr 8, 2013 at 10:06 am #1974016I also generally rotate through the different grains as BG suggests. I find couscous the most versital because it actually rehydrates well and quickly in cold water and can make a good pasta salsa no-cook dinner.
Apr 8, 2013 at 11:50 am #1974054"I typically use Ramen Noodles or Couscous in my recipes which require pasta."
So Americans actually think that Couscous is some form of pasta?
Apr 8, 2013 at 11:58 am #1974057Can you think of a better category for couscous?
–B.G.–
Apr 8, 2013 at 12:16 pm #1974062"Can you think of a better category for couscous?"
It's own I would guess. Maybe together with Bulgur. Food made from wheat and similar to couscous went out of fashion after northern Europe discovered the potato however, so I suppose there once was more in that category.
But looking a bit further into it Wikipedia also tells me pasta and couscous are similar. Oh well, carry on then ;)
Oh, and that really was just curiosity, because they certainly are not in the same category here.
Apr 8, 2013 at 12:27 pm #1974070"So Americans actually think that Couscous is some form of pasta?"
Jan,
Your tone hurt my feelings. If you could overnight me a jaegerschnitzel and a quality hefeweizen I think I could find a way to move past this :)
All joking aside I don't know how to categorize it but most people seem to call it a pasta and I've never spent any time trying to research it.
Apr 8, 2013 at 12:31 pm #1974072I'm transitioning away from Mountain House but of the meals I package on my own, almost all of them include either couscous, ramen noodles, instant potatoes, or stuffing. I'm not claiming to be a trail chef by any stretch of the imagination.
Apr 8, 2013 at 1:37 pm #1974096While couscous might not be seen as pasta, it is. It is made from the same ingredients as pasta. Now then…in other cultures couscous is prepared differently and it can be a long process. Suffice to say, in the US, couscous is an instant product.
PS: On the quinoa flakes….it is like 1 minute oats. You don't have to cook them for a minute – they will do just fine sitting insulated for 5 minutes. Same with the quinoa flakes.
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