Time/weight/volume – how to make freezerbag cooking actually work

With the gear you have, either do more careful measuring, following precisely recipes already tested, get a lot more experience doing FBC meals so your "intuitive" guesses become more accurate, or just accept that your meals will be less than ideal.

Or get a different stove/pot combo.

Using published, tested meals combined with measured ingredients is probably the best way to go.

And if you don't have one, get a cozy so the long soaks don't lose as much heat.

Whar Steve said – Keep doing it and you'll get the hang of it.

Also, I always bring dehydrated mashed potatoes anyway, you can add them to anything as a thickener. Tastes good too!

hike further or more days and you'll care less what is in the bag. you'll probably inhale it and wonder where there is more :) half cooked, overcooked and soupy.. 5-6 days in it won't matter

at least have some sort of measure in your pot or water container so you can at least adjust for next time.

another trick is to have some instant potatoes to add in to thicken things up if you use too much… which is a lot better than not enough

I always recommend trying out your food at home before hitting the trail. I hate the idea of expecting a good meal ending up having to force a less than tasty gruel down my throat. It agree with Stephen about the experience issue. I used to get anal about using the exact amount of water then I realized every dinner I have requires one to one and a half cups of water. With time it has become somewhat intuitive. I pour some water in the bag, squeeze it a bit to mix it up, add some more water or pour a little out when I occasionally miss the mark. A cozy is a must or at least a piece of clothing wrapped around the bag while it re-hydrates.
You do have to take care that everything you dehydrate should be cut or come in small enough pieces to make it work. Angel hair pasta will rehydrate a lot quicker than regular spaghetti for instance.
Keep experimenting and you'll soon get the hang of it.

Thanks guys, that all sounds like wisdom. I guess the safe bet for starters would be the adding-too-much-water + using-mashed-potatoes-as-a-failsafe approach.

Good to be reassured.

yea, at least with extra water things cook a lot better. not enough water it tends to be undercooked and harder to fix

I find it best when doing rehydration, as compared to real cooking, to ALWAYS only add 2/3 to 3/4 the amt of water the directions say. Noodles dont absorb as much at lower temp as when you are boiling them. Even for Mountain House meals , this usually works best. You can always add more later, but you cannot take it away.

When rehydrating plain pasta , before adding sauce ingredients, (ala Ramen or mac-n-cheese), plan to pour off excess water before adding sauce ingredients. I make coffee from the extra starchy-water.

But as pointed out, try as much out at home as you can.

There is a Food,Nutrition and hydration sub forum further down with loads of good tips and recepies.
A good start is to add about the same ammount of boiling water as you have in dry food.
If you can , soak meat and some hard veggies like beans an hour or more before "cooking"
Just enough water to soften them . Some use a small separate container loaded up at lunch time .
Adding insulation to your cozy can help a lot.
In my case because we don't have bears and the like I can just wrap around it some spare clothing or in winter my sleeping bag
Obviously you must make sure your bag is 100% watertight…
If animals are a problem then you can drop the cozy into an aLosak or similar , then wrap more insulation.
(cous cous is an easy no fuss base)

Thanks for the tips everyone!

Franco,
You mentioned rehydrating or pre-soaking meat or hard veggies — how does one do this when using a boil-only cooking device like the BC Boiler mentioned in the OP? If I soak meat or beans, then what I end up with is softened meat and beans which are COLD, and with no way to warm them up except by adding hot water to them. Seems like the best that I could end up with would be very wet, lukewarm food after that.

… right?

He means use some cold water for those items that take a long time. You then add those and the needed hot water when ready to make the whole meal later.

Another tip is to scratch half cup marks on the inside of your pot.

As others mentioned — practice at home. Also I write on each bag how much water to add.

Yes ,Michael can read my mind
Some add baking soda to the water, that is a known (well to me…) tenderizer but apparently it robs meat and veggies of some nutrients.

If you want to use wood as a fuel source and would like to be able to simmer you could go to a Trail Designs Sidewinder Ti-Tri Stove System w/Inferno insert. With the pot it is about half the weight of your Boiler and much more flexible as it can use other fuels too.

http://tinyurl.com/8hh2py3