What's your best dehydrated meal?

[yknpdlr]

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?

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.

 

[ppine]

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.

 

[Marten]

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

 

[Bob B.]

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

 

[yknpdlr]

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.

 

[Rusty Ole' Bucket]

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.

 

[Caledonia]

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.

 

[Packrat]

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'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.

 

[MJones]

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.

 

[MichaelMerry]

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.

 

[MichaelMerry]

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.

 

[MJones]

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.

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!

 

[yknpdlr]

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.