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I normally don’t cold soaker on a trip, but have tried it a few times. It have been interested in the idea more for hot and humid summer weather. This is when I don’t feel like cooking or eating a hot meal. All the info in the internet about cold soak is basically the same, take a hot meal add water to it, hydrate for a few hours and eat cold. This is not appetizing to me! During the summer I usually don’t want to eat much after hiking all day and these types of dinners make me less hungry. I love flavorful foods, something that has some tang, sour, zip, sweetness and a little heat. I’m looking for food ides that are served cold normally, a summertime dish that is filling and refreshing. I would love to hear of some your ideas or recipes that I could pre-make package in a ziplock and just add water too. I think this is also something others are looking to see to get then to try cold soaking. Thanks for any feed back
Tabouli, instant retried beans, hummus and couscous are good bases for soaked cold meals. My $.02 is to skip the rehydration entirely and just eat tasty and calorie dense foods like hard cheese, nuts, etc.
Adventure Alan has a good blog post on the topic.
Here’s a BPL thread
I haven’t tried them, but Packit Gourmet has several options.
Buy a meat grinder for your meats and a larger coffee/spice grinder with a detachable stainless steel bowl to grind other foods. Buy a dehydrator that has the capacity to dry a fair amount of food per load. After that, your hiking food cost will drop by 50% or more and you’ll have much beet food and meals on the trail.
Cold soaking works OK, but everything starts resembling mush. Somethings I have had good luck with (eg, ramen noodles or spaghetti/flavorings) other things take too long without hot water (eg carrot bits, potato pieces.) Somethings cannot be dehydrated without cooking them first (eg, spaghetti.)
Getting the proportions correct of each type in any dish (stews, soups, tacos, etc) so they all get done at about the same time can be a rather painful process when cold cooking. Each type of food item (we are always talking precooked) will absorb water at different rates. One way to even this out is to grind everything fairly fine.
A Cheat-Chili works OK. A precooked mix of fine ground meat, red beans, tomato sauce, minute rice and spices (cumin/chili powder/black pepper/salt/ground red pepper) is all dehydrated separately. Then mixed in a baggie for the trip. (A 7oz baggie of dehydrated stuff is enough for supper, various proportions of stuff can change a lot.) I usually add about 1.5 cup of water per 1 cup of mix, wait an hour or so. Or you can boil water and drop it in a baggie and soak it for 5min. Makes about 2.5 cups or 2 big mugs of chili.
The following works, OK:
2oz fine ground meat (turkey/beef/chicken/pork or a mix, run through a blender)
2oz red beans coarse grind
1oz tomato sauce finest grind you can do
1oz minute rice
About an ounce of cumin, chili powder, fine black pepper, fine red pepper, salt all to taste.
To reconstitute, add about 14oz water, stir well, wait about 1 hour, eat.OK. That is the BASE recipe. Adding just beans and rice (black beans, red beans, white beans or canneli beans are all about the same) makes Beans and Rice. Adding meat, tomato sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin and ground red pepper makes taco filling. Adding dried green pepper bits, meat, tomato, onion powder, rice, Italian seasoning and salt makes Spanish rice. And so on.
Soups and stews are much more difficult. I carry a small bottle of olive oil I can add after cold cooking. But cold rehydrating always means mush. Instant potatoes, ground celery, ground carrots, ground peas, ground onions just do not look appetizing in your cup. They taste OK, though, but there is no chewing texture.
Even the Mountain House meals leave crunchy bits. Their lasagna is bad for cold soaking. All I can say is just try a few before you dive into it on the trail. Or, just bring a couple on the trail. Everything tastes good on the trail!
My $.02 is to skip the rehydration entirely and just eat tasty and calorie dense foods like hard cheese, nuts, etc.
^^^ That. Cheese, sausage, tortillas, nuts, Fritos, single-serve tuna/chicken salad, cereal w/powdered milk, dates/dried fruit, etc. Think about anything you eat in a normal day without cooking it as a candidate.
something that has some tang, sour, zip, sweetness and a little heat.
Make some dehydrated “beet soup” and use powdered sour cream added to it when soaking to rehydrate. There are instructions on the net for drying beet slices and recipes for cold beet soup for other ingredients. A drop or two of vinegar for the zip. A dash of something for sweetness.
https://www.amazon.com/Barry-Farm-Sour-Cream-Powder/dp/B0009TN7F2
Maybe have the bag next to your body so it at least gets to body temperature
Or black bag and put it in the sun
I’m looking for food ides that are served cold normally, a summertime dish that is filling and refreshing. I would love to hear of some your ideas or recipes that I could pre-make package in a ziplock and just add water too. I think this is also something others are looking to see to get then to try cold soaking. Thanks for any feed back
Mashed potatoes and Spam
One of my favorites that is simple is instant mashed potatoes with a spam single, possibly some fresh cheese chunks, and a ton of real and spicy authentic olive oil or a few mayonnaise packets. You could add sriracha to anything to give it heat, including this. You could add some dehydrated onions or whatever if you really want, but by itself it’s tasty and filling.
Poke
One that requires a dehydrator but comes out pretty darn good is to make dehydrated poke. I start with a base of dehydrated cooked brown rice. If you cook the rice and dehydrate it it rehydrates cold pretty easily. The poke part is dehydrated chunks of raw ahi tuna, chopped up cabbage, grated carrot, goma kombu which is a seaweed rice topper I’ve found but you can buy other kinds of rice topper at any Asian store that are already dried, chopped onions (regular or green, whatever you like), a sprinkle of chile peppers (the kind you get with pizza), some salt (or coat the ahi with soy sauce). After it’s dehydrated, I soak this starting at breakfast in order to eat for lunch or starting at lunch to eat for dinner. At the time of eating I add some toasted sesame oil. Mayonnaise is also good. Also good to add is shiso salt.
Cous-cous salad
I made this while hiking the PCT. Rehydrate some cous-cous, add some packets of mayonnaise (and maybe a mustard packet), some chunks of fresh broccoli if it’s the first night out, otherwise, use that cous-cous that comes in a box and has little dehydrated vegetables, and add some kind of foil pouch meat (I used to be able to find chicken breast in a foil pouch, but this is good with salmon, tuna, spam.)
Mix and match
As you can see from my list, with a base of dehydrated rice, instant mash potatoes, refried beans or cous-cous, add a protein (fish, chicken, spam, cheese), add a fat (mayo, olive oil), add a seasoning (sriracha? mustard? hot pepper flakes? shiso salt? Japanese rice topping? Taco-bell hot sauce? Other???), add anything else you might think goes with it.
Not too on point here and certainly not planned. But just forgot propane on an 8 day trip where I was above 10,000 feet in no fire zone. Cold soaking freeze dried meals is not fun. I went oatmeal only last three days and had to ration. Lots of food returned in bear canister. But it was nice not to have to cook when tired. I may try it on a short trip with some of the dehydrated real food suggestions. Almonds, hard cheese, jerky, and oatmeal (which was fine) seem good to go for 4 days.
Thread drift to other no-cook options:
Hard cheeses and cold cuts (turkey, beef) are good for at least 2 days if you can keep them not-hot. Cool to room temperature is fine. I’ve done 4 days sometimes.
Of course a hard salami is good for much longer, but 3 out of 3 times that I’ve seen a California black get a backpacker’s food, they went for the pack/hang bag with the salami in it.
I’ll bring Triscuits, carefully stacked back into the liner bag and reinserted into the cut-off bottom 2″ of the original box. And serve hard salami and Parmesan cheese on those.
I just did a taste testing with a group planning to do a section hike in October.
One of the dishes that got a big thumbs up from everyone was super simple.
Ramen w/o seasoning pack cold soaked for 45 min in Talenti jar then added 2 packets for Starkist Teriyaki Chicken creations and eat it cold….that’s it. Like a chicken pasta salad.
560KCal, 21g Protein, 54g Carbs, 17.5g Fat
There was non left and one lady was trying to lick the Talenti jar to get it all.
Starkist Chicken creations are relatively new (just saw them for the first time around here last week) and I have to say they are big on flavor so no extra seasoning was needed. Going to try them with CousCous next. Only 4 flavors though: Buffalo, Teriyaki, Classic BBQ, and zesty lemon
Thanks for mentioning the Chicken Creations, Scott. The Starkist site shows one more flavor, chicken salad. I see two flavors of Salmon Creations. I’ll have to try some out.
I did the Ramen and foil-pouch of teriyaki chicken thing on a July trip and it went over well. Plus I added a FD veggie mix.
I’ve told the story of being under a NZ shelter for lunch one day on the trail and an Aussie family being instructed by Dad to “get out your two-minute noodles” (Australian ramen is faster than American ramen) and they proceeded to eat them, raw, un-hydrated. No way could I get my family to do that, but, wow! only 39 cents, good calories/weight ratio because there’s some fat in there, no stove or pot or fuel needed!
I razzed him about how do they consume the flavor packet, but subsequently found I prefer it sprinkled over the dry block of noodles.
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