Amazon.com favorites?

Get yourself a food dehydrator first. Experiment with it for a while until you get the hang of it.

–B.G.–

+1 to what -B.G.- said. Then buy a vacuum sealer to dramatically increase the shelf life of your concoctions, and also decrease the space they take up in your food bag.

+2 on that. I bought a pretty cheapo dehydrator ~ $50 on amazon a few months back and I was just going to check out the idea of doing it, to see what it was all about. I ended up really liking it, especially how I can mass produce dehydrated meals that taste much better than anything I ever bought. Or maybe they are just fine tuned to my own sensibilities since it is my own cooking. I think if you are working short term, like making meals for a trip within a month, you may have a little more leeway with things. I'm now guessing that if you prepare freeze-dried commercial food that is suppose to last for 10 years there is something extra lost – or maybe added. Anyway, now I'm hooked!

If you want my advice try that out – for the price of about 1/2 a dozen mountain houses you can just get a dehydrator and cook normally, not really any trick required. Then dehydrate it and the sky is the limit.

Looking now, i didnt realize dehydrators were so reasonably priced. Nor did i realize it was that easy. So i can whip up some… lets say, steak, pepper and onions fajitas, dehydrate them, and im good to go? How do you decide how much water is needed to rehydrate? Just learn by doing? Or is there an online resource you got ideas from?

I have been just testing afterward on the water ammount, mostly to to determine it it was edible (I'm a newb). There are tons of recipes and instruction on line, and tons of books. Short of a recipe, you could determine the amount of water needed the scientific way and measure the weight before and after dehydration, or the guy way, which is just to shrug and wing it. It almost always works that way too.

There are are few neat tricks, like adding bread crumbs to ground meat to help it rehydrate better, but mostly I also have been using the guy method to dehydrate things as well – just dump the finished food in there (about 1 cup per tray) turn it on and let run overnight. Timing, we don't need no stinkin' timing!

Aaron, one thing to keep in mind is that the smaller you chop things, the more easily and thoroughly they will rehydrate. So I'd suggest chopping your meat for fajitas pretty small.

Yes, there are very few rules, but if you want to rehydrate maximum surface area, so you have to chop the meat up. Macaroni, rice, orzo – all more or less idiot proof. On the other hand with meat I suggest you start by looking at a recipe specifically for dehydration first time. For example, canned chicken is supposed to rehydrate much better than fresh. I found this site:

http://www.backpackingchef.com/dehydrating-food.html

very useful, and I even got the ebook. I like it because he spends a lot of time talking about specific techniques for isolated ingredients, which is great if you want to reproduce your own recipes.

I just ordered a Nesco. Thanks for the advice. This is going to be fun!

"How do you decide how much water is needed to rehydrate?"

Let's assume that you start with twenty ounces of some fruit. You dehydrate it overnight and get three ounces of dry fruit. To rehydrate it again, it will require something like 17 ounces of water added.

Now, in reality, the dry fruit can't quite absorb as much as it started with, so maybe the water is only 15 ounces. You can get it to absorb the maximum by simmering it a little and letting it stand.

Hungry backpackers tend to be an impatient lot, so if they can get twelve ounces to soak back into it, that is good enough to eat.

–B.G.–

And if you add too much water, just dump in a bit of Parmesan cheese to thicken it up ;-)