Building a dehydrated & freeze-dried pantry to make simple & tasty On-Trail Dinners / Meals

[Bob Fink]

Companion forum thread to: Building a dehydrated & freeze-dried pantry to make simple & tasty On-Trail Dinners / Meals

Over the last couple years I have tried to find other options than standard brand name freeze dried meals for tasty on-trail dinners.    Currently the

[Chris R]

A friend of mine recently self published a backcountry cookbook, “Feast on Adventure”. Like Backcountry Foodie his recipes assemble ingredients that are dried separately then packaged for optimal rehydration in the back country. His recipes are a bit more complicated than than BF, he puts a huge emphasis on taste, but the book is full of great ideas on how to begin to build your own recipes and use flavourings to replace the taste that food would normally acquire during the cooking process. Full disclosure, there is a photo in the book of us hauling a canoe through a dry swamp on an ill fated attempt to find a route between lakes!

[Victoria M]

Thank you Bob for this article. I just recently had a 2-night trip exploring a new trail in the Cascades.  I also am bored on the name brand meals plus the food isn’t measured correctly on the servings.   I also have been exploring & coming up with some simple recipes that are much easier to pack.  I’ll take a look at Backcountry Foodie for some more ideas.

[AK Granola]

Bob, you probably get out a lot more than I do. I would say most years I only need 20-30 meals, so building a pantry of ingredients that will go bad before I can use them just doesn’t work well. I can do some “cheats” – adding stuff to ramen or rice, for example – but more than that the stuff just sits and eventually no longer has flavor. If anyone has found a solution to that, I’d be interested. I really don’t like the Mountain House type meals no matter which vendor. It’s desperation food; I have to eat so there it is. I’m always eating all the fresh stuff from the garden! it spoils me for backpacking food.

[Matthew / BPL]

Karen, Packit Gourmet sells some really nice ingredients in smaller sizes. It’s not going to be super cost effective compared to buying in larger quantities but you can get nice veggies, meats, FD cheese, etc. to add to couscous, polenta, instant potatoes, ramen…

[Chris R]

You don’t just have to use these meals for camping. The ones we have tried so far are definitely good enough to take to make a quick breakfast or take to work for lunch or, if you have to travel and have dietary issues, they can be made up in a motel room with just boiling water from a kettle. I certainly wish I’d thought of this when I was travelling around southern Manitoba during by Master’s research and trying to make do with food from small town diners.

[Matthew / BPL]

That makes a lot of sense and it’s also a “safer” way to try new recipes and variations.

[Bonzo]

Yep, we test-cook and travel-cook all the time due to some seriously inconvenient dietary issues: preservative, flavoring and colorant allergies that cause crippling migraines.  One of the worst offenders is MSG, so we have to make basically all of our soup/sauce/noodle recipes from scratch.  It costs more, but when one of us isn’t confined to bed with nauseating headaches, we get more enjoyment out of our time…so the cost is alleviated.  We also get to test and refine all of the meals, so there’s often very little that sits on the shelf and goes to waste.

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