Dehydrating vegetable soups

[Yoyo]

I'm gearing up for a new trip this summer and want to revisit dehydrating again. I was wondering if anyone of you have any suggestions for dehydrating veggie soups. For dinner, I will usually throw into a pot leeks, fennel, chard, kale, mushrooms, and simmer it for about 1 hr. I was wondering if I can just pour this whole soup mixture (precooked) into my Nesco dehydrator, or if I should blanch (steam) each vegetable briefly then dehydrate and make the soup once I'm rehydrating on the trail. In other words, do I cook them fully in advance, or just partially? I read online somewhere that blanching is better so you don't lose the nutrients.

I've done spaghetti sauce before in my dehydrator, and it turned out OK. Although, I had to powder it in my blender. Not sure if I want powdered vegetable soup. I'd rather have the bits of kale, etc., to be relatively intact.

[Elliott Wolin]

My wife dehydrates soups, stews, sauces, almost anything that doesn't have fat in it. She cuts the pieces fairly small so they dehydrate better. Otherwise she just puts the stuff on plastic wrap in the dehydrator and turns it on.

If something does have fat in it she cooks it separately, then rinses it in hot water to remove most of the fat (e.g. ground meat for spaghetti sauce).

[Cayenne Redmonk]

I purée a couple of quarts to make Rick broth, and dry/buy chunks of stuff for texture.

[Paul Ashton]

If you blanch then dehydrate veggies, then cook for one hour on the trail, you will destroy just as many nutrients as you would simmering for one hour at home.Better to do the simmering at home IMO so as not to waste an hour's worth of fuel (and the time) cooking it at camp. As stated earlier, make sure you chop the veggies to a uniform small size or rehydration will be varied (incomplete in big pieces, over cooked with small pieces. Should be no need to whiz in a blender if small pieces are used – just crumble in the fingers. Personally, I like "cream of" soups, and usually blend as a final step in cooking, but I can understand that some would prefer the soup to be chunky, but the chunks must be uniform and small. Re nutrients, when hiking, I always expect that my diet will be short of some essentials, so I take a USP daily multi vitamin pill to compensate just in case.

Re veggie soups in general: I like them very much, but when hiking, a veg soup is very low in carbs and protiens, so would not be anywhere near a complete meal. An exception, of course, would be if the soup has a large content of legumes, in which case it would really be a bean soup, not a vegetable soup. I f you are hiking any distance, you need carbs and proteins in quite large quantities as part of your meal.

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