mountain house alternatives!

[Anonymous]

I was so stoked when I bought my Excalibur 9 tray dehydrator. Even came with the book " Backpacker Gourmet". I thought making my own dehydrated meals would be easy, fun and save money. Well… The excitement has turned in to upset stomachs and pure disgust!

I've scanned over this book and the meals Look delicious. I tried the hashbrown, sausage, egg and cheese casserole today. After drying, it looked liked over cooked dog puke!. i went ahead and tried to rehydrate to test the food. Disgusting! What am I doing wrong here? I followed the directions to. a T. I spread the slop evenly and thin across 8 of the mesh layered trays. What is the best technique(s) for making my own meals? Any book suggestions… YouTube channel? Thanx.

[Brad Rogers]

If you want to go back to buying meals then try packit gourmet.

[Andy E]

take recipes you already make and then dehydrate them. Spaghetti sauce, chili, beans and rice etc.

It's gotta taste good to start with :)

[Bob Gross]

Had you tried those recipes before you took them to the dehydrator?

Although that is the normal way to dehydrate meals, I do it differently. I dehydrate each food ingredient separately. I'll spend a couple of days drying only green peppers. Then I'll spend a couple of days drying only red peppers. Then something else. Then something else. I end up with bags and bags of separate ingredients. I carry those out on the trail, and when I get to camp, I mix up the ingredients depending on my taste for that day. I might want extra protein, so I add in extra beans and quinoa. I might want extra calories, so I add in extra olive oil. Or extra meat, or something else. That gets rehydrated in warm or hot water to form my meal. That way, I don't make a big pile of something that has a color problem or a texture problem. If you get the dehydrator temperature too high or too low, that might create a problem.

Some people get better luck by pulverizing the raw food in a food processor. That makes the food chunks more like a granular powder. Others do the pulverizing after the dehydration step. That makes the whole rehydration quicker and more thorough.

–B.G.–

[Anonymous]

The casserole taste great after I took it out of the oven. It's the after drying phase that sucked lol. I just don't see how a meal like dehydrated crab lasagna could taste good. Seriously… This hashbrowns casserole was pretty foul. I pretty had the idea that you can cook anything and you can dehydrate it.

Maybe running the dried meals through a bullet or vitamix sounds ideal. I'd like to hear other people's experience with dehydrating full meals. The idea of dehydrating each ingredient sounds time consuming and not very pleasurable to the appetitie. No offense.

[jimmy b]

I am looking forward to answers on this issue too. Done with buying pre packaged meals but not sure what the best alternatives are when dehydrating my own. I suspect a lot of it may be meal choice. I'm guessing there are a lot of foods/meals that just aren't that great for the purpose of hydrating and rehydrating.

I see a lot of pasta meals that work out well for DIY dehydrators on Youtube and such That's what I'm gonna start with soon. I had messed around with a chicken and rice meal with a dehydrator with same disastrous results you had.

Keep in mind you may have to look for this under another topic if it gets moved.

[Bob Gross]

"The idea of dehydrating each ingredient sounds time consuming and not very pleasurable to the appetitie."

Forget about the idea. It works.

The time is not a problem. I heat my home during the winter months simply on the waste heat from my dehydrator.

Each food ingredient requires a different amount of dehydration. That's why I do them separately. If you cook the food all together first and then try to dehydrate it, that might work, but it might also fail. If some ingredient gets ruined due to too much heat, then you will learn.

–B.G.–

[jimmy b]

Makes sense to me Bob.

If and when you dehydrate meats like chicken for example, how do you know when it is done. When I tried dehydrating some I must have overdone it cause it was hard as a rock and never quite came back to life. Reason being was I didn't know when to stop and didn't want the end product to go rancid making me sick as a dog :(

[Bob Gross]

"If and when you dehydrate meats like chicken for example, how do you know when it is done."

That's why I don't dehydrate meats like chicken. If the chicken fat "goes the wrong way," then it ruins the whole thing.

Virtually any food item that I can purchase already properly dehydrated or preserved in some way, I get it that way. The stuff that I can't find that way, I dehydrate it myself in my kitchen. On the trip, I carry a bag of turkey sausage and five or ten ziplock bags of various dry ingredients.

For example, dry onion flakes are readily available cheap, so I buy it that way. Dehydrated quinoa is not readily available, so I do my own. Turkey sausage is readily available, so I buy it that way. Instant rice is readily available. Dehydrated kidney beans are not so available, so I do my own. Dehydrated pear chips are not available, so I do my own.

After a little practice, you learn what is available in the market, and you learn what you can dry at home.

–B.G.–

[Lori P]

don't dehydrate any kind of chicken except for the canned version. Unless chicken is pressure cooked, it will come back like paper towels with no texture and no flavor.

don't dehydrate eggs – get the powdered freeze dried kind and then mix with ingredients after you've cooked it.

with any pasta or rice, cook the product and then dehydrate it to make it just add water ready. The only exception is couscous, which is already a just-add-hot-water pasta.

with a full meal that you want to dehydrate, consider that oils and fats do not dehydrate well. Meats need to be very lean if you want to store them for long. In the case of recipes that require a lot of oil, it works best to dehydrate ingredients and then mix together with oil you were carrying with you.

to make the casserole you describe, I would use freeze dried powdered eggs purchased from ova easy (or crack fresh eggs into a ziplock bag and freeze, to be used the first morning out), instant hashbrowns that you rehydrate on the trail, dehydrated peppers, onions and whatever else I wanted to put in, and then take a small block of cheese. Cheese does not dehydrate well either due to the high fat content. you can purchase freeze-dried cheeses online at Packit Gourmet.

[Anonymous]

Scanned over the backpacker gourmet book again. The author recommends covering the mesh racks with parchment paper or plastic wrap and leaving one inch space around all edges. Thinly spread the fresh cooked meal on top of the cover. Check a couple of hours later and try to break up the food to speed up the drying process. Hmmm… I have fruit leather covers for the racks but it completely covers the mesh racks. The purpose of having a 1" space around the edges is to promote air flow. I think I will try this method first and see if it works.

[Jerry Adams]

The last Mountain House dinner I ate was this big blob of stuff I couldn't clean off my spoon. Seemed unappetizing after that. For one thing, the amount is too big.

I've played with dehydrating vegetables, but you can buy them from packitgourmet or wherever for about the same. If I take veges I grow it's good.

I've dehydrated my own pinto beans. Put in some spice – onion, oregano, chili powder, pepper, salt. Cook it really good and mash it.

1.33 oz dried beans (or a package of Nile Spice beans or peas). Add 0.33 oz each of onions, tomatoes, peppers, and olive oil. 8 ounces of water. That's my favorite currently. My theory is you should eat 5 servings of fruits/vegetables per day, and this goes along with that, although it's hard to get that many backpacking. Maybe that's 2 servings of vegetables.

[Andy E]

The problem might be more with what you tried to dehydrate, rather than the technique you used (proper sheet/ arrangement etc). Take it from those of us that have successfully done it… it's more about WHAT you are trying to dehydrate. I think you are making a mistake with the eggs.

The people who have posted in this thread are all spot on.

Try some recipies from http://www.backpackingchef.com/ perhaps.

[Dan Yeruski]

Buy Mountain House favorites in #10 cans and repackage in the quantities you need.

If your hashbrown, sausage, egg and cheese casserole tastes like cooked dog puke then hang it up and go back to Mountain House. If you try their chicken and rice you'll buy it by the case in #10 cans :-)

[Bob Gross]

Many years ago, I used to buy Mountain House #10 cans of food for group backpacking trips. However, I had to learn that you open up the can and use it all within a short period of time. Instead, if you open up the can, divide it into four parts in bags, and then use only two of them, the other two may develop strange odors over time. If you store the excess bags in a refrigerator, they aren't exactly spoiling, but the flavors will degrade. After a longer time, they are still somewhat edible, but they get difficult to rehydrate. In other words, just splashing hot water over the food doesn't cut it. Instead, you have to simmer the food for a while, and add in some butter, margarine, or olive oil.

–B.G.–

[Lori P]

ie Mountain House, would be the last thing I would suggest to anyone who wants food instead of preservatives seasoned with food-substitute.

I successfully dehydrated tuna casserole- but, it has no eggs and cheese is added after rehydration…

I recommend the book Fork in the Trail wholeheartedly if you want recipes for meals complete with dehydration instructions.

[IVO K]

…is the proper BPL forum for this thread.

David Drake (all lowercase):
Why in hell would you start it in the "Gear" forum?!

You are screwing with my brain functions!
When I need to research BPL wisdom regarding foods, I usually go to "Food, Hydration, and Nutrition".

Now you've done it and a good food-related thread is under "Gear"!

People like you drive me to drink!

[jimmer ultralight]

David.

While I have rehydrated both a lot of dehyrated and freeze dried foods ,I have never read the Backpacker Gourmet.

I saw the batch of dog vomit you made in the pic you posted..Lot of wasted food there..sad

My question is this, are you SURE tbat book recommened dehyrating both the eggs and the cheese at home? I ask this becuase in all the research I have done,NO backpacking food dehyradtion expert has ever recommend dehydrating any high fat foods or dairy products. Frankly, I am shocked a food author would do so.

Eggs ,chreese and even many fatty meats and some vegetables only stay fresh and /or rehydrate well if freeze dried.

So, if you are going to make a home made "breakfast skillet" or " mountain man " breakfast casorole etc, the potaties,onions, peppers and maybe the sausage is about all you can home dehyrate ahead of time. The eggs and cheese need to either be fresh or freeze dried.

[Anonymous]

I think I'm gonna give this book a try "recipes for adventure". Has the highest rating on Amazon.

My question is this… I don't cook on the trail, I boil scalding hot water with my msr reactor stove. I just want to boil water and throw it in the insulated bag and eat 25 minutes laterq. do a lot of these one pot meals need more cooking time? Like pour in a of of boil water then simmer with a lid on? I don't eat like that at all on the trail. I got better things to do than cooking and cleaning at the campsite lol.

[Charlie W]

Ingredients matter. Dehydrated meat chunks are always awful. Chicken is the worst. I know some people disagree, but I suspect these are the same people that like all-white-meat chicken tenders. It only works if the idea of meat is more important to you than the actual taste or texture of meat.

Brand matters too for FD meals. I gave Mountain House a fair try but it really isn't good. MaryJanesFarm is better and PackitGormet is much better. Even so, PackitGormet can't make dry chicken cubes appeal to me, so I just avoid meals where that is a central ingredient. (I satisfy my meat craving with summer sausage and beef jerky, which I never tire of.)

[Jerry Adams]

I think it's a little better to bring water to boil, turn down burner to simmer, add dehydrated food, stir, wait maybe 30 seconds for it to boil just a little, put on lid, turn off burner, wait 15 minutes or whatever.

If you put boiling water in a bag with dehydrated food, it will cool down a little so it won't re-hydrate quite as good.

Despite what anyone says, I question putting boiling water in a plastic bag. Some chemicals will leach out. Probably not a big deal, especially if you only do this occasionally.

[Ed Coughlin]

Yep, we bought the dehydrator and tried some of the recipes out of the book. We had mixed results, mostly bad. Food prep is a bit like describing your version of a light pack. We all have slightly different preferences.

The wife and I have been actively experimenting with food for backpacking, canoeing and kayaking for four years. We dehydrate ground beef and turkey. We buy freeze dried chicken. I prefer to dehydrate my own eggs (uncooked) and fry them on trail. For many meals we dehydrate items separately then mix once dried.

There is no one answer, but the dehydrators are a great tool. Keep experimenting

[Larry De La Briandais]

One of BPL's own has a lot of good information on her web site:

http://www.trailcooking.com/

I'd start there if I were going to dehydrate my own food.

[Valerie E]

The BEST reason to post (or move) this thread to the "Food, Nutrition & Hydration" category is that it is FAR more likely to attract attention from our resident food experts, including Laurie Ann March (the author of "A Fork in the Trail") and Sarah Kirkconnell (of the blogs Freezer Bag Cooking and Trail Cooking).

Both these ladies are a genuine treasure trove of excellent information and ideas, and their input is part of what makes this website so useful!

[Brendan Hole]

"Like pour in a of of boil water then simmer with a lid on? I don't eat like that at all on the trail. I got better things to do than cooking and cleaning at the campsite lol."

Good food requires some discipline. Building a routine will make this task, well, not a task. If you are not willing to spend the extra 5-10 minutes cooking and cleaning, then why even bother straying away from your Mountain House?

[Author]

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