Dehydrating: How to Adapt Favourite Recipes
Our favourite bolognese… in Iceland!
There are two main approaches to dehydrating meals. The first is to cook and dehydrate ingredients separately and then recombine them for meals. Or, the method I prefer, is to tweak ordinary homecooked meals, cook them, and then dehydrate them. I prefer this because the flavours blend and, in my opinion, the meals taste far better for it. But YMMV – do whatever suits you. It’s not rocket science: if you can cook a basic curry, stew, rice or pasta, you can create a dehydrated meal!
I will be providing recipes for dehydrated meals, always with quantities for two, and there are numerous ones online, but learning how to adapt your own favourites is even better. You’ll likely know favourite recipes inside out, and they will not only be easy to cook, but you’ll have ingredients at hand. You’ll be amazed at how similar the flavours are, too. And it’s very special eating a favourite meal from home with a view over distant mountaintops or a shining sea.
So, how do you tweak meals to make them suitable for home dehydration?
First, What to Avoid
Eggs, dairy, fresh shellfish and fatty fish (unless using fish for jerky, where sugar and salt are additional preserving agents). They contain or are particularly vulnerable to the fast growth of harmful bacteria such as salmonella. You’ll see online that, contrary to health guidelines around the world, many people do dehydrate these products. I figure that with so many recipes and ingredients (including commercially powdered milk and eggs) available for safe dehydration, why bother with risky ones? The last thing I want is a serious case of food poisoning in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, in a tent!
Oils and fats – use as little as possible, or none if the recipe allows. Use oil rather than fat or butter. Also avoid fatty meats such as ham (lean pork is okay). Fat goes rancid, but too much also coats food particles, sealing moisture inside during dehydration and causing spoilage. However, if your dehydrated meal with a small amount of fat in it has gone rancid, and you discover this in the middle of your hike, don’t panic. Regular consumption of rancid food is not advisable, but a single meal containing a tiny amount of rancid fat or oil will only taste disgusting, not poison you.
Adapting recipes
Here are the principles and techniques to adapt your own meals, although I’ll also be sharing my favourite recipes. But once you know the general principles, it’s easy to prepare your own!
For significant economies of scale, make as large a batch as will fit into your dehydrator (if you have a small one, enlist the oven as well). I usually do 8-12 generous portions at once and my recipes reflect this.
Dice vegies finely to 1cm or less so they dry and rehydrate quickly. Or shred them. I always add extra vegetables to backpacking versions of regular meals. Prepare diced veg in the same way and order as you normally would, but in as scant oil as possible.
Choose small pasta shapes rather than big ones: they dry faster and take up less space in your pack. Avoid shapes that nest, like oriechette or shells (they’re a pain to separate before dehydrating). Avoid long pasta like spaghetti whose ends poke holes in your bags, unless they are swirled nests of very thin instant spaghetti. Choose instead short pasta like macaroni, ditalini, small spirali etc.
Par-cook pasta, grains and pulses. Par-cooking them so they’re slightly underdone before dehydrating them turns them “instant”: they’ll rehydrate much faster than raw pasta. I usually cook them separately, and mix them with other ingredients just before dehydrating. High protein pastas are worth using instead of regular but the range of shapes available is less varied: you may need to rehydrate larger shapes for longer.
Use minced meat rather than chopped meat. Choose the least fatty, premium mince you can find – we use kangaroo, chicken, lamb and turkey. If you’re vegetarian, use a substitute such as vegie mince or TVP that is low in fat and oil.
When browning mince, use as little oil as possible (<1 tbspn oil per kg of meat) and break up the meat very thoroughly. Non-stick pans help. Once brown, rinse mince under hot water unless you plan to use your dehydrated meal within a month, or you plan to store it in the freezer. Rancid fat tastes gross but small amounts occasionally aren’t toxic.
Don’t waste the flavoursome rinse water or the caramelised brown on the bottom of the pan. Deglaze with water, and add to rinse water. Blot or skim fat from surface. Use the rinse water to parcook pasta, or instead of tap water to moisten other ingredients in your recipe. After cooking pasta, you can even reduce the liquid until it’s syrupy, then mix it through other ingredients before dehydrating, or dry and powder it to add back into your portions as homemade stock powder: Nothing is wasted!
Add slightly more herbs, spices, aromats and, if not precluded, about 15% more salt than you would for fresh.
Include sufficient protein with a balance of carbs and vegetables, especially on longer hikes and through hikes.
Add minimal water to soups, sauces and casseroles when cooking; add powdered stock later. Use tomato powder rather than tomato paste, tomato paste rather than tinned tomatoes, powdered stock rather than liquid stock.
For cream of vegetable soups, use stock, and never add fresh dairy like cream or milk. Blot any scant oil from the surface with a paper napkin. Then blend, dehydrate, and process broken bark again in a spice grinder to make powder. If you want that creamy dairy consistency, add milk or coconut milk powder to your soup powder. Your soup powder will rehydrate almost instantly and you can make it as thick or as runny as you wish (we usually add 1200ml of boiling water to serve two).
For chunky vegie soups, or those with mince and/or pasta in them such as my favourite chicken minestrone, drain vegetables, keeping the flavoursome stock (it may only be a cup or two). If you’re not using the liquid to cook pasta or grains, add a spoonful of vegetables to the stock and blend so it can be spread on a sheet to dehydrate into bark. Dry the bark and vegetables separately, then powder bark and recombine with dried veg. Add pasta after this.
Handy replacements include commercial sachet cheese, mornay or curry powders, milk powder, powdered eggs, coconut milk powder, and dried herbs. You can add commercial soup sachets such as Cup a Soup to boost whatever home cooked soup you’ve made. Spring vegetables, cream of chicken and French onion are my favourites. Because you’ve added so many fresh flavours, one sachet for two serves is usually plenty – you’re boosting flavour, not creating it. Keen cooks might want to make homemade meat or vegetable stock powder, and tomato powder from tomato paste.
Think laterally about form. Here’s an example. Love lasagne? Use the same ingredients where possible and substitute. Parcook flat bowtie or reginette pasta instead of lasagna sheets. Chop your eggplant, zucchini or mushrooms rather than slicing them. Mix them. Use the same spices. Use a commercial cheese sauce instead of bechamel and rehydrate the sauce separately on the track, then pour over your rehydrated meal. Sprinkle over powdered commercial shelf stable parmesan. Your meal will look different but taste very similar!
