Dehydrated Chinese Pork Chow Mein Stir-Fry
Loaded with meat, vegetables, and carbs from rice or noodles, this flavoursome recipe brings the Chinese restaurant to you in camp!
Pork Chow Mein on the Larapinta Trail in Central Australia, with the closest Chinese restaurant 150 kilometres away!
Who doesn’t love a great Chinese Chow Mein? Well, now you can enjoy those fantastic Chinese flavours in camp with this dehydrated recipe, with 3145 kJ (750kCal) and 48g of protein per serve! We experimented with both pork fillet and slow-cooked pulled pork shoulder, and preferred the latter even though the texture isn’t traditional. Although we’ve used fresh ingredients, you can also prepare the meat and vegetables, and add commercial powder sachets (often called ‘Chinese stir-fry’) to your dry mix, or dehydrate low-fat commercial stir-fry sauces and add those: see Cheat’s Clever Hacks at end if you’re time-poor or hate cooking!
Chow Mein traditionally has noodles, whereas Chop Suey is an American-Chinese term for a stirfry that contains pretty much anything, including rice. Our dehydrated recipe is technically neither because of the cooking technique, but nicely replicates the flavours and textures. When we make this recipe, we package some with parcooked rice, and some with noodles (instant, egg, rice), making four different textures in each batch. If using rice, parcook (1.1:1 water or stock to well-washed rice for 10-11mins via absorption method, then let sit for an extra 15 minutes before fluffing with a fork) and dehydrate it the day before cooking the vegetables.
For the rice, make up one (or two) serves in a bowl, remembering you’ll be adding vegetables, meat and garnish, weigh it, then spread on a dehydrator tray marked with a spoon. Weigh again after dehydrating: you then know how many grams of rice to add when packaging. Or, use our guide below.
Fresh ingredients. This image has an early batch with velveted pork, but the recipe works better with pork shoulder as described below.
Ingredients (makes ten generous serves)
Each individual serve has approximately 750 calories (3145kJ) and 48g/1.7oz protein per serve. If you portion differently with more or fewer serves, or want a certain number of calories, divide the total batch that yields 7,500 calories by your number of serves to get calories per serve, or by calories to get the required number of serves.
For the slow-cooked/Roasted Pork:
Use our Dehydrated Pulled Pork Recipe
Sauce for Vegetables:
7 tbspn cornflour
9 tbspn soy sauce
9 tbspn oyster sauce
9 tbspn mirin
3 tbspn sugar
1 tbspn white pepper
OR use several commercial Chow Mein powder sachets (see Cheat’s Clever Hacks below)
For the Vegetables:
2 tspns peanut oil
350g mushrooms thinly sliced
500g carrots julienned
525g onions halved then sliced lengthways
150g celery thinly sliced
1 knob garlic, cloves separated, peeled and finely chopped
850g Chinese cabbage sliced crossways
180g bok choy, leaves separated and coarsely chopped crossways
175g bean shoots
160g Freeze Dried Peas
Rice, Instant Ramen, and/or Egg Noodles: we use a mix for different meals
Added in camp
125g Cashews
Fried Noodles
Olive oil (for extra calories/energy if desired).
Gather your carbs (par-cook and dehydrate rice the day before). Discard the flavour sachet if using instant noodles.
Method
Meat:
Make our Dehydrated Pulled pork a few days ahead. Dehydrate all of the leftover sauce separately and powder it.
Sauce:
Mix all ingredients in a bowl.
Vegetables:
Sauté mushrooms in a little water in a non-stick pan over medium-high heat until they’ve given up their water and the pan is almost dry. Remove.
Pour in a teaspoon of oil and add the onions, carrots, celery and garlic. Stir fry until just softened. Return mushrooms to pan.
Add sauce ingredients and bring all to the boil: it should thicken a little but don't worry if it’s still a bit runny because we’ll reduce it later.
Add the bok choy, cabbage, and bean shoots and mix well.
The above picture shows a batch using velveted thinly sliced pork fillet that, although perfectly edible, turned out a little more rubbery than I wanted. You can see it looks pretty good, but shredded pork shoulder dehydrated separately beforehand and added in at packaging is better!
Taste and adjust seasonings of your vegetable mix: it will taste a little bland because you don’t yet have the pork shoulder mixed in. Normally you would season to taste a little stronger than ideal because food loses flavour during dehydration, and you'll dilute it further with rice or noodles, but this time season until at your preferred taste by adding more soy sauce or MSG.
As soon as you're happy with the flavour, drain the mixture in a colander set over a wok or large frypan.
Place pan with drained sauce over high heat and reduce until thick, stirring and scraping bottom so it doesn't burn or stick. Spread thinly onto silicone-lined dehydrator trays.
Scoop out one serve of the vegetable mix into a bowl. Remember you'll be adding meat, rice/noodles later. Spread this serve, or two depending on the size of your dehydrator, onto a tray and mark with a teaspoon. Spread remaining mix onto trays (again, the pictured batch combined pork fillet with the vegetables but you will be adding your already dehydrated pulled pork later to the dehydrated vegetables). Dehydrate your vegetable mix at 63C (145F) until dry.
Weigh the marked tray of dried vegetable mix. (Dry Weight B, this batch includes meat but yours won’t). By the time you've added meat, noodles/rice, powder, freeze dried peas, nuts and fried noodles, the weight for two will be close to 400g/14.1oz.
Powder the dried sauce in a spice grinder and place in a bowl. The tiny amount of sauce, meat and veg at top in the picture were a test batch to check proportions.
Next, gather your components: vegetable mix, dehydrated pulled pork and its powder if you have any, rice/noodles/ powdered sauces, freeze dried peas, cashews, and dried fried noodles.
Portion out vegetables into containers or straight into vac seal or freezer bags using your dry weight (B). We portion meals for two (ie 2B x Dry Weight).
Divide the powdered sauce(s) evenly between your portions.
Divide your pulled pork (1.6 kg/56oz should reduce to around 350g/12.4oz once dehydrated) evenly between your portions; you should have about 70g/2.5oz per two-person portion.
Add 16g/0.56oz freeze-dried peas to each portion (remembering our portions are for two).
Place 25g/0.88oz of cashew nuts plus 30g/1.1oz of dried fried noodle into one ziploc for each portion (we package for two). Don't omit these as they add important calories, protein and crunch.
Last, add your carbs. Place parcooked dehydrated rice in a ziploc, or you could use greaseproof paper bags. Noodles we add carefully and directly to the sousvide bag. We find 70g/2.5oz of rice or noodles per person is about right, (so that's 140g/4.9oz per portion) but you may prefer more or less.
Partially vacseal: vac too tightly and the shredded meat and noodles poke holes in your bag, unless you line them with baking paper. Label your bags with date, description and weight, with instructions if necessary! You'll be cooking the meat/veg separately from the noodles/rice, and adding the cashews and fried noodles as a garnish at the end.
Cheats’ Clever Hacks
Commercial powder sachets save time and effort (Image Credit: Maggi)
You'll need to add everything else, though! (Image Credit: Continental)
Assemble your ingredients using freeze-dried or dehydrated vegetables and dried spices rather than fresh.
Use Chinese Chow Mein stir-fry powder sachets, enough to match the weight of your meat and vegetables.
Use commercial dried or freeze dried shredded cooked pork (it varies from moderately expensive to eye-wateringly expensive in Australia, less so in the US). Make sure you get pulled pork or shredded pork, not pork floss, which is yummy but which is too fine, turning sludgy when mixed into a meal.
Use precooked pulled pork from your supermarket, but dehydrate it yourself. It’s still expensive, so if there’s one thing you can do yourself to save dollars it’s cooking and dehydrating your own pulled pork recipe.
Vegetarian Hacks
I haven’t tried this but have done similar recipes, so I’m confident this would work with vegetarian mince marinated overnight in the pulled pork sauces, cooked separately and then mixed in with the vegetables to dehydrate all together.
In Camp:
Silky noodles, salty flavoursome meat, plenty of veg and the crunch of nuts and fried noodles: yum!
Open bag, remove noodles or rice and set them aside. Remove and set aside fried noodles and cashew nut garnish.
Place meat/vegetable mix and powder into your pot. Although we usually specify the amount of water to add, this recipe works best by just covering the ingredients with scant water. Bring to the boil, stirring now and then. Because you’ve powdered the cornflour sauce, the mix needs to boil again for a minute or two to thicken slightly — it will thicken further on standing.
Pour meat and veg mix back into the sous vide or freezer bag. Put bag into a cosy and leave for 20-25 minutes to rehydrate.
Wash out pot. Five to ten minutes (depending on the speed of your stove) before serving, bring water to the boil. Put noodles (full pot of water) or rice (water to just cover) into pot. Stir, cover and allow to rehydrate. Drain excess water.
To Serve:
Top noodles or rice with meat and vegetable mix, mix through a little olive oil (optional, for extra calories) then sprinkle over nuts and fried noodles.
If you are two people who carry only one pot and no plates like Geoff and me, remove half the noodles or rice (place onto pot lid or in empty ziploc or mug). Return half the meat mix from the sousvide bag to the pot. Transfer the noodles or rice from the lid into the sousvide bag. Distribute the garnish between the bag and the pot.
Enjoy!
Yum!
This recipe took a while to get right but it was worth it: here's Geoff enjoying a Chinese restaurant meal on the Larapinta Trail!
