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Dry Up Your kit is ultra-light
and youÕve sawn the handle off your toothbrush, so now itÕs time to lighten
your food. Simon (Òcall me
chefÓ) Willis investigates the black art of food dehydration. Imagine
you could reduce the weight of your tent by eighty percent while you carried
it, then when you reached camp, plump up to its original size, weight and
shape. It sounds ludicrous, yet
you can perform such astounding trail magic with whatÕs often the heaviest item
in your rucksack. If you enjoy
exploring the worldÕs wild places and prefer to carry a lighter pack, youÕve
probably thought about, or even tried, dehydrating your own food. A sustaining home-made tomato sauce
with pasta might look unappetising, like a torn up red tissue, but the best
thing is it weighs little more than a hanky and fits in the palm of a
hand. A delicious meal of tuna
and mushrooms with rice weighs little more than a zip-lock bag. Before we hiked the Pacific Crest
Trail, my partner Liz and I dried almost several months of supplies. From on our trials and errors, IÕve
distilled a basic formula for making simple, cheap backpacking meals at
home.
Cooking a basic
tomato and bean sauce with no oil until thick Drying
your own food is not for everyone.
Matt Hazley recently completed
the PCT in record time reportedly consuming a trail-diet of little more than
Pop-tarts and energy bars. If
youÕre only out for the occasional long weekend then dried pasta and squirt
of tomato puree might suffice.
But to me, food is much more than fuel. The ritual of preparation and consumption should be a time
of contemplation and enjoyment, as the warming, filling pleasure of the meal
rewards the effort of the day. I
just donÕt get the same satisfying sensation, or number of calories, from the
wham-bang of a chewy bar. People
have been drying food for centuries.
Some buried it in hot sand, others smoked it, while in Peru they
fashioned a type of crisp by air-drying potatoes. Trekkers in Nepal and Pakistan still see fruit and corn
drying in the sun. The idea is
for hot, dry air to drive out moisture without cooking the food. This inhibits the growth of micro
organisms and has long been the easiest and cheapest method of food
preservation. Nowadays
itÕs considerably easier with a home dehydration machine, which is little
more than a fan heater with trays stacked on top. The mesh trays allow air to rise through them, and while
this is great for drying meat or fruit, backpackers will need several solid
sheets called Òleather sheetsÓ to dry sauces and small items like peas and
rice. There are recipe books
describing techniques such as dipping, blanching and candying, with methods
of drying everything from asparagus to zucchini (OK courgette - the books
tend to be American). But who
has the time to do that?
Instead, IÕll give you a fast and efficient way of starting to make
your own range of hill-meals with the minimum of fuss. Think of
this system as a savoury pick-and-mix, with two basic sauces; one is tomato,
onion and sweet pepper; the other is mushroom. To these you pick-and-mix extras such as sweet corn, peas,
kidney beans, lentils or tuna, and to bulk up the meal, add rice or
pasta. Basic Sauce 1: Tomato
In a
large pot, sweat the onions, but do NOT use oil or butter, because fat doesnÕt
dry-out properly and can go rancid.
When the onions are soft, add crushed fresh garlic, tinned tomatoes,
finely chopped sweet pepper, tomato puree and a few herbs and cook for ten
minutes or so. You can make two
different basic sauces at this stage by pouring half into a second pan. To one add some pre-cooked lentils,
to the other add tinned kidney beans and some chilli pepper. Simmer each until they are thick and
need a spatula to spread. You
now have one basic tomato-and-lentil sauce and one basic vegetarian chilli,
and with more experience you might want to add other vegetables or minced
lean beef or lamb to either. Basic Sauce 2: Mushroom
You can make a proper mushroom sauce, but this is
easier. Sweat onions in a large
pot without oil, and when soft add a couple of cans of CampbellÕs condensed
mushroom soup, and some very finely chopped mushrooms. Simmer until the mushrooms soften and
the sauce is thick. ThatÕs all. Dehydrating Sauces
While the
sauces cool, work out how many portions youÕve made, because once dried itÕs
hard to tell and youÕll divide them up by weight. With a paper towel, wipe a tiny amount of vegetable oil
onto the solid leather sheets so the sauce doesnÕt stick, then set them on
individual drying trays away from the dryer. Spoon the cool sauce onto a sheet and spread it thinly and
evenly. Set the tray onto the
dryer base, and move on the next one.
Spoon sauce onto drying
sheet and spread thinly Sauces
take 8-20 hours to dry depending upon their thickness and the machine. When done itÕll be whatÕs called a
ÒleatherÓ, a pliable sheet of sauce which can be peeled or picked off. A beginnerÕs mistake is to make the
leather too thick so the outside dries and traps moisture. Tear off a little to make sure itÕs
dry right through with no sticky or tacky areas. WeÕve yet to roll a complete leather off a tray, we tend
to pick ours off in small lumps which donÕt look as neat but actually make
re-hydrating easier. If the leather has completely stuck to the sheet, put
the tray in a freezer and try again when the sauce has frozen.
Ready to dry Rice and pasta
To save fuel, and so all components of a meal can cook
together in one pot, avoid slow cooking rice and pasta on the trail. You can buy decent fast-cook pasta,
but fast-cook rice never tastes as good as whole-grain, so we dehydrate our
own. Cook as normal, drain,
spread grains on a solid sheet and dry.
You can do the same with tiny pasta shapes or spaghetti. Tuna and peas
These are
useful pick-and-mix components.
Boil frozen peas, cool and place on a drying sheet. Open a tin of tuna in water (not oil)
and crush onto a drying sheet.
Neither looks impressive when dried, as the peas shrivel and the tuna
turns to dust, but once sprinkled into either basic sauce and re-hydrated
their flavours come through. Meat and fish
In Africa
itÕs ÒbiltongÓ, to the French and Spanish itÕs Òchar quiÓ, but we know dried
meat as ÒjerkyÓ. The list of
chemicals on a packet of shop-bought stuff can turn your stomach, but a food
dehydrator produces superb jerky at a fraction of the price. All meat
must be lean with fat and connective tissue removed. Fish must be cleaned of all skin,
bones and blood. Flesh is easier
to slice thinly when itÕs semi-frozen, but must be fully defrosted before
drying. Traditionally, jerky is
marinated to impart flavour and to tenderise, then dried raw, but
increasingly the advice is to cook it to kill all micro organisms. So before attempting to make jerky,
for safety and to decide what to put in your marinade, seek out some recipes
in books or online. And donÕt
try to take meat or fish into the USA.
Peeling sauce ÒleatherÓ off
drying sheet Storing
Dehydrated
food must be kept in airtight containers away from moisture. We rip up the sauce leather into a
bowl, then divide it into portions by weight, before sealing it immediately
in zip lock bags. Roll them to
expel as much air as possible before sealing. Thicker, more expensive bags are worth using so the sauce
can be re-hydrated in the bag.
Dehydrated rice and sauce in
separate air-tight bags On the trail
A couple
of hours before you plan to stop for your meal, start re-hydrating the
food. If youÕve used thick
zip-lock bags, you can top one up with water, reseal and put it inside your
cook-pot, just in case it leaks.
Try to keep the pot level, near the top of your rucksack, so as you
walk the food will be shaken and slowly suck up water. At meal-time, re-heat the rice or
pasta together with the sauce.
We also stir-in a little olive oil to add taste and calories. It can sound like a lot of fuss, but if you treat it as
part of the planning process it can be fun way to spend a wet weekend. If you regularly escape to the hills,
shop-bought backpacking food can become boring and prohibitively expensive. With a home dehydrator, the cost is
all at the start. YouÕll quickly
master these basics and start to experiment. YouÕll discover dried apple slices are delicious, mangos
magnificent, while fruit smoothie leathers are clinically addictive. In fact, youÕll want to go
backpacking even more often, if only for the food. When was the last time you ripped open some freeze dried
fodder and thought that? BOX OUT
Picking a dehydrator
In
Britain weÕre not overwhelmed with choice. Choose a machine 500-1000 watts for faster, more efficient
drying, with a fan to blow air up from the base. More sophisticated models give control fan speed and
precise control of temperature.
Backpackers mainly dry sauces, so ensure you can buy extra solid
Òleather sheetsÓ since you may need more than the two which usually come as
standard, although you can cut your own from baking paper using the original
sheets as templates. If youÕre
planning to dry huge quantities of food for expeditions, you might want to
check the sheets fit in a dishwasher.
The definitive text is ÒMary Bell's Complete Dehydrator
CookbookÓ. Buy at backpackinglight.co.uk |
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