Why I dehydrate my trail food

At first I was dumb..........

Ok, to be fair to myself I'll say inexperienced. When planning the meals for the first long backpacking trip I took, I wasn't really sure what to do. I just took stuff that sounded like it would be easy. We took spaghetti and sauce, rice, and a large number of prepackaged freeze-dried meals.

The freeze-dried meals worked out fine, but they were very expensive and some people complained about the taste. The spaghetti and sauce worked fine, but the sauce was heavy and cooking the noodles was a pain, especially since we were in bear country. Dumping the noodle water seemed like it might be like a neon "Eat at Joe's" sign to a bear. Given the weight of the sauce, I decided carrying spaghetti just wasn't the smartest idea, so it was left out of the next trip at the beginning of 2001.

The first evolution

In the spring of 2001 I was reading an article in a magazine and it mentioned that you could dehydrate pasta sauce at home and then rehydrate it on the trail. That would be a significant weight savings over carrying pasta sauce like we had done. I was in shock. I decided to give it a shot, so I went to Wal-Mart and picked up the only dehydrator they had, a Nesco American Harvest for $35 (side note: I'm still using the same one 5 years later).

I dried some sauce out of a jar and then through it in a pot and added water to rehydrate it. I didn't expect it to taste any good, I was sure it would just be horrible. When it was ready I tossed it on some spaghetti and tentatively bit in. I couldn't believe what I tasted. It tasted exactly like it was just out of the jar. I tried a spoonful of the sauce alone. Yep, just like I hadn't dried it. WOW!

From that point I was hooked. I found all kinds of books dealing with home dehydrating and cooking and I bought several. When it came time for a trip in the summer of 2001 I was ready with my dehydrated meals. No more freeze dried for me. We'd simply boil water in a pot, then add the dehydrated meals into the pot and wait for dinner to rehydrate. It was great.

The new tests

Following my trip to Glacier in 2002 I began to wonder something. If the freeze-dried food companies could rehydrate food in plastic bags, why couldn't I? I'd already had lots of success rehydrating my home dehydrated food in pots, it seemed like the next logical step would be to do it in Ziploc Baggies.

I tried spaghetti and mac 'n cheese, 2 meals I thought were the most basic. If I couldn't get these to work I wouldn't get anything to work. I had some success, but it seemed like the bags vented heat too quickly, and by the time the food was rehydrated it had gone cold. While I didn't really mind it I found my tester (my girlfriend at the time) was completely turned off by the idea. She said it was too cold to eat. I didn't have any real ideas how to get around that problem, so I decided to just let it drop

The final piece to the puzzle, a new world opens up

2 years later, in 2005, I started reading the backpacker.com forums with a little more interest. I was particularly interested in the backcountry cooking section. I noted that many of the people there talked about food cozies. If you're not familiar with a cozy, it is just some kind of insulated material used to keep the heat from escaping from your food. The ideas for cozies ranged from those who just wrapped a fleece around their bowl to more complex holding items made of Styrofoam and other such insulating materials.

It was about this time that I heard about Anti Gravity Gear's pouch cozy. I looked at that and thought, "I could make that." So it was off to the hardware store. I returned with a roll of Reflectix Insulation and Henkel insulation tape, and within a few minutes I had my own pouch cozy.

Next I needed to test it and see if it would solve the problems I was having with rehydration and temperature. I fired up the dehydrator and did some spaghetti and sauce. I tossed the dried food into a Ziploc freezer bag, boiled some water, added that to the bag, and tossed it all in the cozy. 20 minutes later I tasted and it was a complete success. By the time my summer 2005 trip came along, it was all freezer bag cooking for me.

I should mention at this point that another member of the backpacker.com forums has written extensively about freezer bag cooking. She has written a book and maintains a wonderful website. Her posts, along with many others, have expanded my idea of what even I had thought possible with freezer bag cooking.

What's next?

I continue to expand the dehydrated meals I take backpacking. If freezer bag cooking isn't your thing, I at least encourage all to at least try dehydrating. Even if you only dry parts of meals you will find the weight and money savings to be enormous, especially over the freeze-dried alternatives.

Basic Dehydrating Information

What to look for in a machine

The most important thing is to make sure it has an adjustable thermostat. The optimum temperature for drying foods varies and this will allow you to select the best temperature and allow you to dehydrate more precisely and safely.

Additionally having a fan to help move the air around inside the machine is a good thing to have.

How do I dehydrate

For anything that's a solid, smaller chunks are better. This creates additional surface area for the air to move across and will lead to quicker and more even drying.

Sauces can be dried using plastic trays that fit inside the dryer. Most dryers come with at least one of these and more can be purchased if necessary.

How long does it take to dry items

It varies. For example meats need to be dried at 150 F. The reason for this is that at temperatures below that bacteria can grow. For other items, like most fruits and veggies, 130 F is good. Most dehydrators will come with a small guide that explains the best temperatures for various items. You can expect that most items will dry somewhere between 4 and 20 hours.

Is there anything I can't dehydrate

Dehydrating means removing the water. If the item has an extremely high water content, then the dehydrating process may leave very little left at end.

If the item has a high fat content then dehydrating will be difficult, and when you're done all that will be left is the oily fat that doesn't dehydrate. Cheeses are a perfect example of this, as are white sauces such as alfredo.

Costs

The cost of running a dehydrator can be calculated by looking at the wattage rating. For example, my dehydrator is rated at 500 watts. This means the maximum number of watts it uses in 1 hour is 500. Therefore, it uses 1000 watts in 2 hours. So in 2 hours it will use 1 kWh (kilowatt hour). If you look at your electricity bill you should be able to figure out the cost for 1 kWh of power. Mine is currently about $0.08. So running the dehydrator for 2 hours costs me $0.08, or I could think of it costing $0.04 an hour. Note: this is a max wattage usage. My dehydrator has a thermostat and running it at lower temperature than its max will use less wattage. However, it's hard to calculate how much less power it will use. The savings is probably insignificant anyway, so it's best to just think in terms of the maximum and leave it at that.