Dehydrated Instant Spaghetti Bolognese
A delicious trail lunch or dinner that’s almost as fast as instant noodles!
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!
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. The sauce would also marry well with:
bean dishes (add extra chilli, a shake of smoky paprika and ground coriander per serve),
couscous (add Moroccan spices or spice blend, and add pine nuts or pistachios instead of cheese), or
rice (add your favourite curry powder, add almonds)
You could divide your batch into three! If adding powdered spices, do so when caramelising the leek and onion.
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!
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)****
*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:
The ridiculously easy option is to simply buy a jar of pasta sauce. Check that its fat and oil content is under 5%, preferably below 4%. If, when you open the jar, you see oil floating on top, skim off as much as possible with a teaspoon. Skip all the cooking steps and simply spread the sauce thinly onto lined dehydrator trays, then follow the recipe from there. The amount you need might vary according to the brand. Approx 220g/7.8oz should give you your required single serving size of dried powder of 40g/1.41oz (but of course this varies with ingredients). So, for example: if you’re making a batch of eight serves you will need approximately 1760 grams/62.1oz of jar pasta sauce.
Still too hard? No need to dehydrate anything! Simply gather commercial sachet powder — check the back to see how much meat it’s for — and assemble your ingredients into a bag just before your hike! (Image Credit: Continental)
Method
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 different versions, such as Mexican beans (smoky paprika and coriander powder), Moroccan couscous (Middle Eastern spice blend) or Indian Rice (your favourite curry spice blend), add 1.5 tbspns 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.
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 a stick blender to roughly puree the ingredients.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Add cold water to pot and immediately add TVP or freeze dried beef. Bring to a boil. For 800ml/27.1oz on our alcohol stove this takes about ten minutes. When you add the noodle cook time, this was enough to fully rehydrate both the TVP and beef mince. If you have a fast gas stove, just dial it back a little — 7 minutes to boil is plenty using this method.
While the water and beef/TVP is coming to the boil, pour powder into a cup.
When the water boils, strain about 200-250ml (6.8-8.5oz) into the cup with the powder to make a sauce, leaving enough in the pot to be able to just cover the noodles/pasta when it is added.
Add noodles or spaghetti to pot and return to the boil, stirring now and then to separate strands. Add a little more water if necessary.
TVP and angel hair pasta.There should be only just enough water to cover everything.
Meanwhile, stir the sauce thoroughly, scraping the bottom and corners to ensure that it all dissolves. It will thicken on standing. If it’s too thick, you can add a little more water from the pot, or even cold water.
Also meanwhile, use a pocket knife to shave your parmesan (shave edges as if sharpening a pencil). Set aside.
Add 10ml/0.34oz olive oil to the sauce and stir briskly to combine. Set aside.
When the pasta is cooked to almost al dente, you should have only a little water left in the pot. Don’t decant this — especially if you’ve used freeze dried beef — because you’ll be pouring away too many nutrients! Just add your sauce and mix it through. Don’t worry if it’s a bit runny: it thickens quite quickly as the noodles absorb extra water as they continue to cook, and still taste great! Avoid overcooked pasta at all costs: oh, the horror!
Delicious bolognese with shaved parmesan: YUM!
Spaghetti bolognese atop Dutchman’s Stern for lunch! Doesn’t get much better than this!
