Making dehydrated soup etc

[wildWoman]

I don't think this was covered in other threads...does anyone know how to dehydrate things like pea soup, refried beans and tomato paste? Without a dehydrator. I think you can spread it thinly on a baking tray and keep it in a warm oven, but I'm not sure how thin it has to be or how to check for doneness - should it be brittle or still somewhat moist? And then how much water do you add when you're ready to use it?

[Rick]

WW- Fruits dry best at 135F. Veggies at 125F. Most ovens won't heat that low. You can still dry at 200F (usually the lowest setting) just prop the oven door open so there is air movement.

Here's a nice link on pre-treatment and drying times (remember, you higher oven temp will reduce the drying time). It also has the reconstitute times and ratio of vegie to water.

http://farmgal.tripod.com/Dehydrate.html

The tomato paste will be the same as a fruit leather. So will pizza and spaghetti sauce. It turns into the consistency of a slightly sticky fruit roll up.

[tacmedic]

I've never tried this, but I have heard to reconstitute things like dried soups you should add twice the volume of water as you have soup. I.e. if you have 1 cup of dried soup, you should add 2 cups of water. If it turns out to be too much, you can always let it cook longer until the excess has boiled off.

[Rick]

The amount of water you see on that web site is to reconstitute the vegie/fruit. At that rate, there should be no or very minimal water left as the vegie/fruit absorbs it. So, in essence, you are correct. You would need 1 to 1 1/2 cups to reconstitute then whatever amount you desire for your soup.

[warman87]

this could help http://hikinghq.net/forum/archive/index.php/t-1968.html

[wildWoman]

Well I dehydrated tomato paste yesterday, that seems to have worked really well. I spiced it already to use it as pasta sauce (this is all for camping food). Being somewhat limited with what I have on hand here, I did the following:
-mixed spices into canned tomato paste
-spread it about 1/8" thick on a regular baking sheet
-put it into the oven of the wood cookstove while I was cooking a quick dinner. The thermometer on the oven doesn't work properly, so I just opened the door a bit while the stove was hot, and later closed it a bit more, and closed it completely over night.
-the top of the paste was dry after a few hours. Before I went to bed, I gingerly turned the "tomato leather" around, with the bottom, more moist side, up.
-in the morning, it was all fairly dry but still very pliable, except for the centre. I've had it out on a drying rack behind the stove all day and now it looks like its done.

Will tackle pea soup tonight, and hummus and refried beans over the next days. I think I read years ago that a good way to rehydrate food out on the trail is to put it into a ziploc bag in the morning, add water, and let it do its thing all day. By dinner time, it should be ready to heat up, maybe with some more liquid added. I'll test this all before I head out, will give an update then or else in August.

Anyway, seems like a pretty easy way to make lightweight and small-sized campfood, and you don't need fancy expensive equipment to make it.

[Rick]

If you take hamburger and dehydrate in the oven until you have gravel you can take the hamburger, tomato paste and some noodles and you'll have Spaghetti a la Wilderness.

This is a really great book to have. I have dehydrated a lot of food from this book for backpacking. There is one chapter devoted just to backpacking and trail cooking.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?...y+bell&x=0&y=0

Fruit and vegetable leathers can be a bit of a pain because they like to stick to whatever you pour the liquid on. If you can keep the temp low enough try lining your pan with wax paper and adding a light film of cooking oil. That will keep the leathers from sticking.

I'll offer you a couple of recipes as an enticement.

Backpacker Vegetarian Tomato Soup

All of the ingredients for this weigh in at 3 oz!

1 1/2 cups of water, plus 1/2 cup
1/4 cup dried tomato powder*
1/4 teaspoon dried bell pepper powder*
1/8 teaspoon dried onion powder*
1/8 teaspoon dried garlic
1/8 teaspoon dried basil
Pinch of dried celery powder*
1/2 cup powdered milk

In a pot, combine the 1 1/2 cups of water and all the remaining ingredients except the 1/2 cup water and the milk. Let sit, covered, for 15 minutes. Bring the mixture to a boil over high heat, lower heat to medium, and simmer for 5 minutes.

In a cup, combine the remaining 1/2 cup water the the milk. Stir and add to the soup base. Remove the pot from the heat, cover, and let sit for 10 minutes.

Makes 1 3/4 cups, or 2 servings.

Variation: Add 1/4 cup cooked dried short-grain brown rice and let it rehydrate in the soup base.

* vegetable and fruit powders are nothing more than pulverized dried vegetables or fruits just as the name suggests. You can use them in place of salt to add some nice flavor to foods. Celery powder is great on a baked potato, an omelet or in a sauce. You can even use it like salt on a fresh tomato. If you are on a low salt or salt free diet, celery powder is the berries!

Trail Pudding

2 cups water
1 cup powdered milk
one 3.4 ounce box of vanilla instant pudding
2 tablespoons dried fruit powder, such as strawberry, apricot, peach or banana.

In a pot or container, combine all the ingredients and stir until completely blended. If desired, divide the pudding among individual cups and let stand for at least 10 minutes or until thickened.

[wildWoman]

Well, the tomato sauce/paste I dried rehydrated really fast, about 1 1/2 hrs. The pea soup is still drying, that's harder to judge...turned into a flaky powder kind of thing with some crusty flakes and feels still a bit moist. I'm trying chili today but not too sure how that'll go because the moose meat in there is really greasy.

Anyway, it's fun to fiddle around with it. Will hopefully be a much better provisioned paddle trip than usually. I've been taking soup mixes and rice and pasta along in the past, and stuff to make bannock, but all in all that wasn't such an amazing taste experience. Never could bring myself to shell out $6.- for a freeze-dried package of camping food that supposedly feeds 2 people (maybe 2 anorectic models after gazing into the mirror all day and counting calories). So this is really cool!

[Rick]

Greasy food doesn't do all that well. If you have any luck (I've never dehydrated moose meat) I wouldn't keep it too long. I would think it would go bad. Kind of the same reason you can't make jerky with pork.

You can dehydrate so much of a vegetable and it takes up so little space when you're done. I posted elsewhere that I did a large stalk of celery (the whole stalk) and it turned into about a cup of dried celery. Three onions (diced) about baseball size each turned out to be about a half cup.

You can mix all your dry ingredients into one container and then just add water for a soup or whatever it is you want to make. A lot cheaper than that $6 meal, a lot lighter and a lot more fun.

dehydrate some grapes into raisins. They are the best!! And so sweet.

[crashdive123]

Wild Woman - You have may have answered this elsewhere, but how long is your trip planned for?

[wildWoman]

@ Rick- darn, that's what I figured with the greasy meat...maybe I'll look through the cans for leaner cuts then, and just pile this load in for dinner. As far as veggies go, yeah wouldn't it be nice, but the only thing at harvestable stage in the garden at this point is lettuce, spinach and chard, and all other veggies I have left are in cans. Not too sure I want to dry those...also I'm not much of a camp cook (well, cook period), so I'm trying to concoct whole dried meals I just have to soak a few hours, heat up and wolf down.

@ Crash- just 8 to 10 days by kayak. But it's fairly small for a touring kayak and I have a 3km portage to do, so cutting own on weight and size will help. Trying to prevent the usual scenario where I have oodles of things strapped to the deck of the kayak.

[crashdive123]

You're are certainly on the right track with using dehydrated foods. I've always purchased them in the past. They weigh next to nothing, and taste great. Since hanging around you guys I've decided to stop buying that stuff (too much $) and make my own. I'm taking my first canning class on Monday at the local Ag extension center, and have conviced TDW that a dehydrater should be in our near plans. Thanks everybody for the inspiration.

[Rick]

Hey!!! Moose can be dried!! According to the Complete Dehydrator Cookbook, lean cuts of deer, elk, and moose make great jerky. Venison will work as well.

[Rick]

Beef, any lean cut.
All poultry. (all skin and bone must be removed as well as the filmy membrane). It should be precooked BEFORE being dried.
In addition to the game above, fatty game, like bear, must be precooked to an internal temp of 170F before drying (trichinosis you know).
Lean freshwater fish - sunfish, crappies, perch, walleyes and bass.
Low Fat Saltwater fish - Flounder, Halibut, Pollock and rock cod

You can also dry tuna packed in water and canned salmon.

Shellfish: Shrimp, lobster, crab but they need to be pre-cooked before drying.

Packaged luncheon meats: Pepperoni, hard Italian salami and plan salami call be dried. (who knew?)

[Rick]

Canned fruits and vegetables CAN be dried. A 1 - pound 5 ounce can of fruit cocktail when dried reduces to 3 ounces of tastes like fruit candy. You don't even have to rehydrate it.

A 13 ounce can of cream soup reduces to 3 ounces dried.

A 6 1/8 ounce can of water packed tuna reduces to 3 ounces dried.

A 1 pound 9 ounce jar of spaghetti sauce reduces to 3 ounces.

All of this re-hydrates with its original flavor.

Drain the water or juice (like peaches) than arrange them in a single layer on the drying tray. Dry until bendable to the touch.

Canned Cream or stock-based soups or sauces, such as spaghetti sauce, canned tomato paste or even ketchup should be dried on a lightly oiled tray. Dry until the food can be peeled off. Even if some foods don't hold their shape when dry they are still usable.

You can either eat it like the fruit cocktail above of rehydrate it with water, juice or milk.

[wildWoman]

Yeah, TDB made some moose jerky and considerately took the entire batch out with him, so I get to wait till next year...but since he shot the moose and made the jerky, why shouldn't he He also smoked and dried lake trout but I don't like it enough to lug it along with me. There must be some cans with lean meat. I just grabbed this one because I love fatty meat (yeah I know, makes my boyfriend barf too).

[Rick]

I had a neighbor that loved to eat the fat off a steak. Her husband would eat his steak and give her the fat. Grossest thing I ever saw. I hated to go to dinner with them because she did that. Bleeeeeeeeck!

[wildWoman]

Canned fruits and vegetables CAN be dried.

Canned fruit might be not so bad, but somehow the canned veggies are so lifeless already, I can't imagine they're worth the trouble dehydrating. Maybe I'm just sick of them after eating them for the past months. I'll get some fireweed on the trip, the top leaves are usually still ok even when the plant is fairly big already.

[Rick]

You could dry some corn, beans and carrots or potato, add a little dried moose meat (or fish) and have a chowder!

[wildWoman]

I had a neighbor that loved to eat the fat off a steak. Her husband would eat his steak and give her the fat. Grossest thing I ever saw. I hated to go to dinner with them because she did that. Bleeeeeeeeck!

yup, that'd be like me exactly! Mmm, it's sooo good, especially on game! Real good flavour to it. Now I know why you're not our neighbour, though. Thought there must be a reason.