What's your best dehydrated meal?

Penns Woods said:

Does anyone dehydrate raw eggs? I'm not talking about those freeze dried eggs you buy. I mean raw eggs dehydrated like you would anything else. I've seen dozens of videos on dehydrating eggs and they claim it's fine. I've been wanting to try it, any advice?

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I have always been told and seen written to not attempt to dehydrate raw eggs at home as not being safe or effective. Commercial dehydrated eggs are either freeze dried, or spray dried in air into a powder. But if you combine eggs in a cooked casserole with potatoes or some other starch and seasoings with other ingredients, then I have had good success with doing that.

I like instant mashed potatoes and dehydrated soup. Even for a backpacking trip I buy all of my food at a grocery store. I like the little foil packets of tuna, chicken and spam, smoked salmon. I bring raw vegetables and fruit if the trips are not too long. I really hate pouch food and have found little progress in the last 40 years.

I add rehydrated ground venison to the various Hamburger Helpers. Simple and a great meal in the bush.

Like Marten, I do the same … also add the meat to knor rice dishes, good stuff.

There are many vegetarian/vegan recipies out there that are quite tasty (as they have to be to be edible). Turns out they can be made much better by the appropriate addition of some type of meat.

Y'all gonna laugh at me probably, but my favorite dehydrated meal is Mountain House spaghetti with meat sauce. I make my wife have it for dinner sometimes.

I also like the Knorr or Tasty Bite rice dishes and instant potatoes with a little something added in while camping. Costco has some dried steak strips that drop into that stuff great, I like canned chicken in there too. I typically have several types of freeze dried fruit with me as well. I tried a while back to do a weekend hike/camp with food just from Dollar General, canned chicken and Knorr made up most of what I had. I did it just for the fun of it and to see how cheap I could go for a weekend. I ate 6 meals for $18, I wouldn't recommend that though, by the end of the weekend I would have run over my mother to get a good burger or some pizza.

I’ve done the dollar general challenge with our scouts where they have to get all their backpacking meals for a trip from there. Not particularly healthful but it makes them think creatively.

Rusty Ole' Bucket said:

Y'all gonna laugh at me probably, but my favorite dehydrated meal is Mountain House spaghetti with meat sauce. I make my wife have it for dinner sometimes.

I also like the Knorr or Tasty Bite rice dishes and instant potatoes with a little something added in while camping. Costco has some dried steak strips that drop into that stuff great, I like canned chicken in there too. I typically have several types of freeze dried fruit with me as well. I tried a while back to do a weekend hike/camp with food just from Dollar General, canned chicken and Knorr made up most of what I had. I did it just for the fun of it and to see how cheap I could go for a weekend. I ate 6 meals for $18, I wouldn't recommend that though, by the end of the weekend I would have run over my mother to get a good burger or some pizza.

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I'm not laughing since that is my favorite also. I found that I can only eat half of the 2 portion meal at a time so I save half for breakfast and eat it cold.

I like Knorr cheddar broccoli rice sidekick with additional dehydrated veggies and a clover leaf tuna pouch.

Another favourite is instant mashed potatoes (doctored with garlic and other spices), dehydrated veggies and dehydrated hamburger or even rehydrated homemade beef jerky or sliced up pepperettes. I always add a spoonful of clarified butter/ghee to the instant mashed potatoes, and maybe some parmigiana cheese or old cheese.

We make all our own. My current favorite is a spaghetti squash bake with tomato sauce, impossible grounds, whatever veggies we have in the house and plenty of cheese. So good out in the wilderness. We dehydrate all of our own food; basically the many of the same things we eat at home. We probably have a couple months’ worth in the freezer right now.

This is a good meal as well! Dehydrated our own paneer pasanda for a 10 day trip. It was popular and will certainly be repeated.

MichaelMerry said:

This is a good meal as well! Dehydrated our own paneer pasanda for a 10 day trip. It was popular and will certainly be repeated.

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And the recipe would be? Come on, you can't just tell us that you make and dehydrate yourself, say it was popular, show a mouth-watering picture and NOT share the recipe? Come on, man!

During my early years of home dehydrating 90% of my own backcountry and canoe tripping camping food, I made extensive use of a book by Linda Yaffee, "Backpack Gourmet: Good Hot Grub You Can make at Home, Dehydrate, and Pack for Quick, Easy, and healthy Eating on the Trail". A second "Bible" of home food hydrating procedures is "Mary Bell's Complete Dehydrator Cookbook" Both are still available from Amazon books.

Some of Yaffee's recipes may look a little strange, but most are very good and tasty if carefully followed. The fantastic thing about them is they are great starting points for your own creative modifications.

If anyone remembers "Redhawk Vittles", an online source from the late Lakota native Redhawk, most of his prepared dehydrated offerings started with Yaffee's recipes directly from her book. Once you learn a few basic techniques, it is not difficult.

Over the years, I have home dehydrated several hundreds of pounds of camp food, which I prepared and served for 30 years of large group wilderness guide training programs, and also made complete twice daily high calorie meals by rehydrating by heating main meals while on board for my canoe team that we heated and ate while continuously paddling (literally) for 18hours/day in 7-seat Voyageur canoes on several Yukon River 1000 mile canoe races.

MJones said:

And the recipe would be? Come on, you can't just tell us that you make and dehydrate yourself, say it was popular, show a mouth-watering picture and NOT share the recipe? Come on, man!

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Here is the one I use:https://www.indianhealthyrecipes.com/paneer-pasanda/

You’ll need to find a decent Indian foods store to source some of the ingredients. Once you have the spices, they’ll go a long way.

I typically at least double the recipe. We eat some at home and dehydrate the rest on a fairly average household dehydrator. It usually takes about 6 hours. I just combine the rice and gravy for dehydration. Double bag and freeze it until your trip. To rehydrate in the field, barely cover with water in a pan, bring just to boil, cover and reduce from heat. Let stand for 5 minutes, stir and enjoy.

We often pack naan. Not just for this dish, but in general. It travels well and keeps for a week easily.

We really dehydrate everything we eat at home and, as a result, eat very similarly to the way we eat at home. We don’t eat red meat, but most fish dehydrates beautifully. Chicken works fairly well, but can be a little rubbery on rehydration. Egg dishes, including a full quiche, dehydrate nicely and taste great when rehydrated. I slightly overcook the crust so that it holds a little crunch on rehydration.

The limits are really just one’s imagination.

Chicken works best for me if I dice it small and combine it in a casserole type dish to bake then dehydrate, same idea with eggs, when combined with a potato, or rice type recipe mixture. Speaking of hash, one of my favorite simple quick breakfast dishes is a dehydrated can of corn beef hash throw in an egg to finish cooking at the end of rehydrating. Almost as good as dehydrated hash brown potatoes from frozen patties (McD's type), broken and dehydrated, then crushed. Rehydrates in about 5 minutes in hot water and is great with rehydrated sausage or ground beef bits and topped with hot McCormick white country gravy mix.

No need to dehydrate if you find a logan bread recipe you like. Add fruit and nuts, bake on low for a while longer than normal to remove much of the moisture and harden slightly, and it will keep for a couple of weeks in the field easily. Hearty and filling. Originally developed for climbers to first summit Mt. Logan in Alaska.

Have you ever tried canned? IME, chicken re-hydrates best if it's been canned. I can a variety of meats at home (saves freezer space as well as cooking time) and the canned chicken, in particular, shreds easily when it's time to dehydrate.

I've dehydrated white chicken chili which had cubed chicken and the cubes didn't re-hydrate nearly as well as the shredded stuff. I now make it separately for dehydration instead of using leftovers.

The white country gravy mix over hash browns is wonderful. That stuff would probably make pine bark edible.