A delicious trail lunch or dinner that’s almost as fast as instant noodles!

pot of spaghetti Bolognese with shaved parmisan cheese on top — Sprinkle over parmesan and enjoy!

For those who love ‘spag bol’ but want something instant rather than our more authentic rehydrated dinner version that requires 25 minutes rehydration in a cosy, this delicious recipe lets you prepare a super quick lunch (or dinner!) in the same way as you prepare instant noodles: add meat or TVP to water, bring to the boil, add noodles or pasta, boil two minutes, mix in reconstituted sauce… and it’s ready! For us, one dinner serve is perfect as two lunch serves.

However, unlike ordinary instant noodles, our recipe includes freeze dried beef (or TVP), vegetables, cheese and olive oil, so it’s higher in calories and protein: between 725-810 Cal (3050-3400kJ) per 205g/7.2oz serve including olive oil, and 27- 48g/0.95-1.7oz protein (the lower range is for the freeze-dried beef brand we used, the upper for TVP). It’s also easy to tweak these amounts by varying the amount of beef/TVP and cheese for protein, or amount of noodles and olive oil for calories if you’d like a smaller serving size.

And of course, this recipe is healthier and tastes a whole lot better than packet offerings!

Hike rin red shirt on mountain top with pot of spaghetti — *Quick enough for lunch on trail! Devil’s Peak, South Australia.*

Our recipe uses passata or tinned tomatoes, but we include the usual Cheat’s Clever Hacks using jar pasta sauce for those who don’t enjoy cooking.

Unlike many of our recipes which are cooked, dehydrated and packaged immediately, this recipe lends itself to storing the powdered sauce in a resealable mylar bag with a dessicant sachet, and then assembling serves with pasta, freeze dried beef mince/tvp and parmesan before each trip.

Recipe Variations:

Mexican Chilli beans (not instant): add extra chilli, and tablespoon or to taste of smoky paprika and ground coriander per serve, and serve with rehydrated par-cooked rice and/or corn chips
Middle Eastern beef: omit wine, add 1 tbspn or to taste of your favourite Middle Eastern spice blend eg Moroccan, Bharat, Ras-el-Hanout, and serve with couscous and chopped pistachios instead of cheese, or
Indian Curry: omit wine, add freeze dried peas, add 1 tbspn or to taste of your favourite curry powder, replace cheese with roughly chopped almonds and serve with rehydrated par-cooked rice. You could also mix the powder with par-cooked dehydrated lentils instead of beef as a (non-instant) dhal base.

You can even divide your batch for several different meals but dehydrate them separately or the flavours will clash. If adding powdered spices, do so when caramelising the leek and onion.

table of fresh ingredients — *Fresh or bottled passata, chillies, leek, garlic, onion, beef stock (or vegan version) onions, herbs and other flavourings.*

Ingredients (makes approx. 300g powder, 15 lunch serves or 7.5 dinner serves at approx. 810 calories per dinner serve)

For the sauce:

1 knob garlic, peeled and chopped

1 leek finely sliced, white parts only

2 onions diced

0.5 tbspn olive oil

1 anchovy (optional, omit for vegetarians), well-drained and finely chopped

1.5 cups red wine

fresh chillies to taste

2.25L tinned whole or diced peeled tomatoes OR 2.25L bottled passata *

1 tbspn beef stock concentrate OR 2 beef stock cubes OR Vegeta vegan beef flavour stock powder

1 tbspn freshly ground black pepper

0.25 - 0.5 tbspn MSG

1 tbspn dried oregano

1 tbspn sugar or to taste

20g/0.7oz dried sliced porcini or shittake, crumbled.

* Passata without seeds is marginally less nutritious but sweeter-tasting than tinned tomatoes processed with their seeds. For those who grow their own tomatoes, stay tuned for our fresh tomato powder recipe!

f canned tomatoes — If buying tinned tomatoes, go with the cheapest. These may be a bit less ripe and need a little extra sugar in the recipe.

Other Ingredients

1 large block (80g/2.8oz) instant ramen per serve OR 80g/2.8oz angel hair pasta OR 80g/2.8oz egg spaghetti/noodles.* You may prefer more or less: adjust powder proportionally when packaging.

60g freeze dried beef mince OR TVP per serve**

15 grams shaved fresh or shelf stable parmesan per serve

10 ml/0.03oz - 1 tbspn olive oil per serve (carried separately on trail)****

noodles cooking in pot — *The most authentic slippery texture is with angel hair pasta, which cooks in 2 minutes; counterintuitively, ‘instant’ spaghetti cooks in 8 minutes! If using very thin angel hair pasta, dilute your powdered sauce so that it is runnier rather than thick. Thin Asian egg noodles have a different texture but work well. Choose ones with a 2 minute cooking time; again, a runnier sauce suits thinner noodles. Try instant ramen like the above udon or Korean-style ones if you prefer a thicker pasta. Calories vary with noodles or ramen chosen: quoted figures are for spaghetti.

**This recipe is much nicer with freeze-dried beef mince than with TVP because the latter has zero flavour, and the quick cook doesn’t provide enough time for it to absorb any. If using the latter, consider adding a teaspoon of nutritional yeast per serve. Don’t use dehydrated beef mince because it won’t reconstitute in the available time. If you want to use dehydrated mince, see our dehydrated recipe here.

***Fresh parmesan is nicer than shelf stable powder. Parmesan is a hard cheese and will last for up to a week in cool weather. It sweats in warm weather but is still fine to eat for a few days. Use your pocket knife to shave cheese whilst the noodles cook.

****Mix through olive oil after rehydration on trail

Cheats’ Clever Hacks:

Method

frying onions and leeks — Heat olive oil in a large non-stick or heavy-based pot over medium heat. Add onions, leek, garlic, chilli (if using) and anchovy (if using) and saute until just beginning to caramelise, stirring regularly.

If making a different version such as Mexican beans, Moroccan couscous or Indian Rice, add the spices towards the end of sauteeing so they don’t burn; you may need to add a tiny bit more oil first. You can also add the spices to the powder after dehydrating, but they won’t have the same depth of flavour.

adding red wine — Add red wine and cook until half of it has evaporated, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom to release any yummy caramelised bits.

Add tomatoes and remaining sauce ingredients except MSG.

use stick blender to puree the sauce — Use a stick blender to roughly puree the ingredients.

reducing the liquid over low heat simmering slowly — Reduce heat to medium low and simmer uncovered until sauce is very thick, stirring regularly. It should be about the consistency you like to eat. Taste and adjust seasonings including MSG. It should taste just a tiny bit too strong and salty, because the beef/TVP and noodles dilute the flavour.

various pots and noodles to test what works the best — Test batches in the slowerhiking kitchen! Different noodles and pastas, TVP and freeze-dried beef absorb significantly different amounts of water for the same weight, so it’s not one size fits all.

Dehydrating

sauce dehydrated in dehydrator — Spread sauce very thinly onto silicone-lined dehydrator trays and dehydrate at 57C (135F) or 74C (165F) if you’ve included anchovy. Once sufficiently dry, peel off and invert onto mesh and continue dehydrating until snap dry.

spice gringer to powder the dehydrated sauce mix — Once dry, break into shards and powder in a spice grinder. Spread powder onto lined dehydrator tray and dry for another ten minutes to condition. Allow to cool, then place into a sealed mylar bag ready for packaging. Some people just use the shards (aka ‘bark’) but, for an instant version, the powder is best.

Packaging for ONE Dinner Serve

This is one meal where your ingredients are best stored separately until just before your trip. If pre-packaging individual serves, use a vac seal bag to extend storage time. If packaging just before your trip, ziploc bags are fine.

For ONE generous dinner-sized serve (halve for a lunch-sized serve):

Fold 40g (1.41oz) of powder into baking paper, or place in a small ziplock or mylar sachet.

Fold 60g (2.2oz) freeze dried beef mince or dehydrated TVP into baking paper or place into a snack sized ziploc.

Place 80g (2.8oz) instant noodles OR thin egg noodles OR angel hair spaghetti (broken in half) into a vac seal bag or ziploc. Add sachets of powder and TVP/beef. Vac seal lightly so that the noodles aren’t crushed.

packaged up in a vacuum sealed sachet — This test batch was packaged with TVP and noodles together, but on trail separating them worked better.

On Trail for ONE Dinner serve:

Add water to the pot. We noticed a huge difference in the amount required to rehydrate different ingredients. TVP required more than freeze dried beef, and spaghetti required less than the same weight in Asian egg noodles. For this recipe, you’ll need 750ml-850ml/25.4-29oz water for one dinner serve. If using freeze dried beef and/or spaghetti, err on the lower side (you can always add more later). If using TVP and/or thin egg noodles, err towards the higher side. You’ll be decanting about 250ml/8.5oz of the water before adding your noodles to it, so you won’t need a giant pot, or you can do a separate boil.

components laid out on the track ready for rehydrating — *On trail left to right: TVP, parmesan cheese, olive oil, angel hair spaghetti and sauce powder.*

Although you could add the powder to the pot at the same time as the beef/TVP, we found that this sometimes resulted in a claggy texture, and also increased the time for the noodles to soften, unless the sauce was very runny. With these ingredients’ different rehydration requirements, the following method should result in good textures regardless of your noodles or protein type.