Cooking Dehydrated Food

“When I dehydrate brocklee, brokclie, brocclee, broccoli, yea! broccoli, it always burns the stems. I usually just break the stems off and use the flowerettes kinda crushes up. It really adds good flavor to soups and stews. That is the only thing I can ever remember burning in the dehydrator. I think the may just turn black instead of burning because I dehydrate them at 135°.
I'm with Ewker on this-buy one with a knob. You are probably killing a lot of nutrients with too high of a setting.”

“One of my friends uses those metal "grease filters" for your over-the stove fans...

Puts ground beef on there, stacks it together and attaches a large square box fan to it to dehydrate ground beef-- he swears by it and says it dehydrates faster and without heat.

Sounds crazy to me, but I haven't tried it yet!

I tried dehydrating my own rice-- it ended up with the sharp edges as well.

Now, I've discovered instant rice porridge-- no need to dehydrate it myself and it rehydrates in a snap. (You will find packages about the size of ramen packages at an Asian Grocery store.)”

“You can get "instant" wild rice made by a small american company. It says to cook a bit, but it isn't needed if you are doing freezerbag style, and using a cozy. I use it all the time...I toss in a 1/4 cup of it along with my regular instant rice.”

“Okay, I couldn't seem to find an answer here, but when rehydrating your meals you dehydrated yourself, is there any magic formula to how much boiling water to add? Do you just add what looks like enough? Better to have too much water than not enough?

Thanks gang!”

“I always start out with too little (rather than too much). I start mixing as I am cooking and then add little amounts at a time. i find it rehydrates perfectly this way...”

“I've been wondering the same thing. Treebeard's method sounds good, but I'd like to try re-hydrating in a ziplock freezer bag. Any ideas on how much water for that? I'm assuming about the same as an Enertia meal.”

“I have found that with an Enertia meal you use less water (2-4 ozs) than what they call for. Makes it to runny if you use the amount they say”

“Tarabull once told me some formula that had to do with weighing the meal prior to dehydrating it or something. I can't remember exactly so you should ask her Noncom.”

“I have just started eating the meals right out of the bag dry and drinking enough water so I am not thirsty anymore.”

“Yea, Jimmy san, I like to stomp the bag of dehydrated food first before I eat it (like you do-without cooking) so I don't have to chew it up. But I find it more palatable to drink enough beer first so that the meal rehydrates as soon as it hits my stomach.”

“Maybe the formula was to measure the amount of food, dehydrate, measure again and add the difference of water....?”

“...seriously. Captain Hook introduced me to eating uncooked blocks of ramen noodles. Damn AT hikers and their strange ways! It's a staple in my food bag now.”

“I dehydrate my own food, so I don't really know about the prepared meals. For instance, I dehydrate chili quite often. This takes a good deal of stirring and gradually adding water to make it back into its original consistency. But, it works.
last edited: 4/25/06 11:53:05 AM”

“I don’t think I could ever eat Ramen noodles ever again. I ate some much of that stuff in college, that the smell of them makes me physically ill.”

“I like them crunchy but intensely dislike them cooked.”

“I've been leafing though a book entitled Lipsmackin' Vegetarian Backpackin', by Christine and Tim Conners. Among other things, it has recipes intended to be dried and rehydrated, and it includes the amount of water and technique for rehydrating. You might get some ideas from there.

It is a great book that includes many recipes that do not need dehydration. My only negative comment about the book is its statement that there is no toxic effect of rehydrating foods with boiling water in plastic bags. All plastic bags contain phthalates. One of the uses of phthalates is to make plastic flexible. Contrary to what the book says, phthalates have been found to leach from plastic into food, as well as into fluids used in the health care professions, such as I V solutions. Evidence now pretty clearly links phthalates in women to genital abnormalities in their infant sons, and in female children to premature breast development. Several phthalates have been found to be testicular toxicants and seem to be linked to death and disintegration of the testicular germ cells.

So my point, not to get too sidetracked, is that rehydrating in plastic bags seems to not be such a good idea.”

“Dang. Here we go again. Posted this before.

I have a slurry of books that I use for my own dehydrating that suggest the the amount of water needed to rehydrate.

Recently moved, have to dig out the references.”

“Yup, Sass, that's how I do it. Measure the cooked food. Dehydrate it. Measure again. Add the difference in water. It's worked every time for me.”

“I measured the cooked food before I turned on the deydrator last night. It was about 16 inches in diameter. Now what?”

“Measure again. I'm guessing you'll need only a few inches of water.


dork”

“Well, the approach i take is to add just enough boiling water to the bag so that my food is almost but not quite completely covered.

The trick here though is to make sure the food is compressed, or broken up so that it fills the bottom of the bag as much as possible. For example, I do a lot of spaghetti meals and if the noodles aren't broken up they fill up the bag too much and if you put that much water in the bag to cover the noodles, you'd just have a big mess.”

“Gotta agree with Ewker on the Enertia meals. Now I add some dehydrated items to the food (peppers, meat etc) so that sucks up even more water and as a rule they go pretty good.

Face it the best "home made" backpacking meal was a batch of Whatchgot Stew in Colorado. We had been out for one week and were just getting rid of the extra stuff. Granted it helped that the "cook" was a professional chef (his rotation on cooking)...
Does anyone here ever find themselves making a no refrigerated meal at home...and thinking THAT WOULD BE GOOD ON THE TRAIL.?”

“yep, i do that a lot - my best trail meals are my leftovers from dinner, thrown on the dehydrator.”

“Ditto Roam. I just have to be disciplined enough to actually put them on the dehydrator instead of eating them for lunch. =)”

“WTF. Just do like towndawg and pack in steaks and baked potatoes.”

“I add enough water to be even with the amount of home dehydrated food in a pot for solid foods and more for soupy things like chili. Sometimes I need to add more, but this is a good starting point.”

“Haven't bought that dehydrator yet. Hubby has been trying the Mountain House dehydrated foods and likes the Pasta Primavera and Beef Stroganoff a lot.

So hubby buys all these dehydrated meals and then takes about 4 pounds of gorp with him, lol:) Well, I guess he saved weight, because he would have taken the 4 pounds of gorp even if he had hydrated meals. That was only for 2 days!”

“You'll love a dehydrator. It means that you can take foods, even leftovers, that you use at home and make delicious meals. There are many free sites on the internet, wilderness cooking courses and great books. I'd highly recommend anything from the Lipsmackin' Backpackin' series or Backpack Gourmet. Beyond Gorp is a decent book too.

He sounds like my hubby... afraid he will go hungry out there or something.”