Rehydration Tips
You’ve made your delicious meal at home, and now it’s ready to enjoy in camp … whether in Tasmania … or Iceland.
But check regulations before you begin cooking for interstate or overseas trips: some have restrictions on the amount or types of food you can import. Restrictions are common around
raw vs cooked dehydrated food,
nuts and seeds,
dairy and eggs
honey, and
cured meats.
For Iceland, we brought the maximum weight of dehydrated meals because these would be the most expensive and difficult to organise. We also brought homemade dips, and then purchased cracker biscuits, porridge and snacks to package up in our room before a nine-day hike.
To rehydrate in camp,
check your label and boil the required amount of water.
Check bag carefully for holes, then neatly slit the top seal with a sharp knife.
Pour in the boiling water.
Stir thoroughly with a spoon (more carefully with a spork!) to evenly distribute and moisten contents,
especially in the bottom corners.
Fold over the top and seal with a peg or sliding seal
Pop into a pouch cosy to keep warm and wait 15-25 minutes. If you’ve over-dried a meal, it might take 30-35 minutes.
We’re slow hikers, and slow cooks, no need to rush. In any case, eating food that’s not fully rehydrated has horrendous effects on some people as it ferments, rather than digests, in the lower intestine. The farts will strip paint!
The pouch cosy is sewn from an insulated supermarket bag with velcro added. You can also cut them and use duct tape or tenacious tape to join the sides.
Open the bag and split the meal by decanting half into another container, such as the cookpot. Our Caldera cone system pot came with its own reflective cosy but they are easy to make with scissors, tape and insulated shopping bags or car windscreen reflectors.
The other eats the remaining half straight out of the bag. If your cookpot is empty, stand the bag in that. We never eat directly out of the bag while it’s in its cosy – the cosy would get funky pretty fast that way.
To rehydrate smaller serves of, say, breakfast noodles with vegetables (which we carry portioned for two in Ziploc bags) add vegetables to the pot of cold water and bring it to the boil. As soon as it does, add the noodles. Kill the heat, cover the pot with its lid and lid cosy, and it’s ready to eat in 4-8 minutes. Decant half into a second container; I usually use the tall narrow plastic container that came with our caldera cone system. Using the cookpot to rehydrate doesn’t work for our dinners as the volume of water required is too large for the dehydrated ingredients to fit in as well!
Certain meals, such as those with rice noodles or especially couscous, are nicer when the pasta is rehydrated separately so it doesn’t go gluggy.
When packaging your meal, note how much you need for the sauce, and how much for the couscous (usually 50% more water by volume) or noodles (enough to cover). Fill the pot with that amount and bring to the boil.
While this is happening, remove the separately packaged noodles or couscous, leaving the dehydrated sauce in the bag.
When the water boils, pour the required amount into the bag and seal.
Place the couscous or noodles into a second container with a cosy and add the remaining water, or simply add them to the pot of water. When the sauce is ready, drain the noodles or fluff the couscous, and redistribute 50:50 with the sauce.
Enjoy!
