Hiking food recipes and meals

[MLD]

I'm preparing myself for a season of hiking after a long hiatus. I'm curious from those that are into hiking and camping what are your favourite meals on the trails. Interested in recipes for meals that you make yourself (as opposed to dehydrated packet meals) and conversely interested in opinions on the dehydrated meals. Have people found a dehydrated meal combination that is nice (greater than mere tolerable).

I'm interested in how you package the meals i.e. vacuum sealing etc, and if you have worked out a way to take luxuries like chorizo (or any meat product) sans refrigeration.

To be clear i'm not interested in recipes suitable for car camping unless the recipe is equally applicable for a multi day hike and weight is a factor in the meal plan.

cheers MLD

[Judo]

I got the impression purchased packets of dried food are pretty terrible but if you have a dehydrator yourself it's a totally different story.

I look forward to seeing comments from someone who has a dehydrator.

[sheerluck]

I used to do a lot of hiking and I never found those dehydrated meals palatable at all. Particularly when you were having to prepare them with water of uncertain quality that had been chemically treated. Mmmmm, mashed potato and chlorine, my favourite!

I did find that the ready meals that came in a foil pouch to be the best compromise between weight and taste.

[MLD]

I did find that the ready meals that came in a foil pouch to be the best compromise between weight and taste.

Do you mean a microwave type meal? That's an idea, the lean cuisine type meal. Next question, where did you plug in the microwave? :D

If it's a different type to the microwave meal, is there a brand name or another description i can use to google it.

I got all excited about a dehydrator and looked at Sunbeam's version. Good for fruit and solid foods. The design wouldn't work for a wet dish.

I have a vacuum sealer. That sorts out the packaging for a wet dish. It doesn't address weight. I was fearful that i'd be eating cous cous with whatever on a daily basis.

If Amazon can deliver packages by drone, they could do a meal food drop to remote hikers. Great business idea with little commercial demand. Forgive me, it's Friday afternoon.

MLD

[Avion8]

I have found the range of Happy Camper Gourmet single serve meals great for both extended 4WD trips & hiking. They are not dehydrated, do not need refrigeration or freezing, & can easily be reheated in just boiling water in the bag - I just use a Jetboil - they also keep for 18 months or so.

If you order on line when they have a sale which is quite often they work out very reasonably priced & if a big order arrive packaged in a large bucket, which is handy. I supplement these with potatoes for the stews or rice/pasta for some of the other recipes - Lamb Shanks are very nice. A lot of the single serve rice products can be cooked in the bag as well which is handy, & if you are feeling real tired & lazy just eat them out of the bag, just the fork to wash then:o

[Judo]

I bought SWMBO a dehydrator a while back and the short version of my research is buy the Excalibur Food Dehydrator. Seemed to crap all over the rest of them. Quite pricey, but the reviews are all excellent. We haven't done whole meals in it, but what fruit and veg drying we've done, it's been really good.

[isuzutoo-eh]

My run of the mill dehydrator has a slippery plastic tray for wet foods, stick it on the bottom shelf and hope the stuff above isn't too drippy! Good for fruit rollups, apparently good for spaghetti etc but i've not tried it yet. Chunks of chorizo would be fine on the mesh trays anyway.

Jerky, added to boiling water, makes the best stock ever. Way better than that vegetable derived pseudo-beef stock from stupormarkets, or those little salty cubes. A nugget goes a long way in a pot of pasta or rice. Just be careful of salt intake with jerky.

Salami/pepperoni etc are popular amongst my caving mates to make a bland meal worth eating, albeit fairly dense/weighty.

[sheerluck]

Do you mean a microwave type meal? That's an idea, the lean cuisine type meal. Next question, where did you plug in the microwave? :D

If it's a different type to the microwave meal, is there a brand name or another description i can use to google it.....

Similar to those microwave type meals, yes, but they are not refrigerated, and warm up fine in a pan of hot water. You'd probably find them in the soup aisle at Woolies.

Another alternative is those Uncle Ben's pouches of ready to heat rice. Come in different flavours and weigh little.

[MLD]

I forgot about the uncle bens rice packets. i used those for making lunch at work for a short while. They come in 125g and 250g. I might buy one and see what the packaged weight is. Rice and dried jerky, mmmmm feast fit for a king.

MLD

[sheerluck]

The other point against those dehydrated meals is that if you have an issue with cooking (fire ban, too windy, cooker out of fuel.....) you don't eat.

At least with the stuff in the pouches, you can eat them unheated.

And yes, I did get caught out with that. One night high in the hills in the Lake District in England, it was blowing so hard that my mate's tent poles snapped, and we couldn't keep a gas stove lit enough to warm water up to eat. :(

[Disco_Rock]

Pasta, freeze dried peas and corn, packet of tomato soup (powder stuff), and tuna (don't need the tuna but I like it)
Boil some water (enough to cook pasta) add the pasta and peas and corn,
When cooked add tomato soup (do not drain excess water there shouldn't be to much in there anyway)
Add tuna and enjoy!
I cook on a Trangia when hiking but a jet boil is faster and will cook dinner in about 10 mins at max I think
I also take an apple, a Mars bar and a bit of foil/snap lock bag to cook dessert
Core the apple
Insert Mars bar
Wrap in foil if you have a fire or put in snap lock bag if using boiling water (I cook this while boiling water for washing up)
Put in water or on fire and take it off when it's cooked

[numpty]

We do our own, as other than the dehydrated Back Country etc, they're all too heavy.

I make Spag Bol, Chilli Beef and Lauraine does asian curries, all using beef mince (have found chicken to be rubbery) and dehydrate them in the Ezidry. Then Vac Pac. They only require soaking in boiling water for a time and heating up and serve with 2 minute noodles. Uncle Bens rice will get a try this weekend.

Alternatively, the packet pastas with a pouch of tuna or salmon are tasty, but they do require more time to cook.

[MLD]

i gave the Uncle Bens rice a nudge the other weekend. A tin of chilli tuna and a bag of rice made for a tasty meal that was quick and fuss free. (Thanks Dave or the heads up)

I looked at the pasta in a pouch meals but all bar the tomato based ones required milk. You could skip the milk (or carry milk powder) but i suspect the quality of the meal would suffer.

MLD

[roverrescue]

Walk the lagoon country up north with us.

On a 4 day walk Ill take a few packets of noodles, perhaps some biscuits a few coffee bags and then some herbs and spices and Tabasco. I manage to carry about 10kg total. 6 of that is fishing gear, GPS, camera & batteries. 2l of water in the bag a Lifestraw and as little food as I can get away with!

Oh yeah the easy thing is Lunch and Dinner consists of barra or sooty grunter baked in the coals!

S

[stewie110]

It depends on how long you intend in hiking. I've done 10-12 nights unassisted and carried a pile of chilly powder, chicken and vegetable stock cubes and dried vegetables (celery, onion, garlic, tomato, capsicum), powered tomato pasta, rice and biltong/jerky. It's light, you can change up the combinations to create completely different meals and it gives you all the energy you need for some seriously long days. However after day 8 it starts to get dull even if you change it up.

I've since been experimenting with a variety of different meals that expand on the pallet. Having since done a 8 and 10 night walks. Having said that these are winners but require some forethought.

Dehydrated kidney or black beans are very light weight. I have a small nalgene bottle that I add the days serve to and soak them overnight and all day while I walk. Then cook them in the evening. Adding a sachet of burrito mix and some dried onion, tomato paste and tomato. It tastes good and gives you a very filling meal.

Alphabet pasta (packs small and is light) with tomato paste powder, garlic, mixed herbs and chilly. make a paste with the spices and cover the pasta once cooked. It's light and tastes awesome. If you add some beef stock it's also a winner.

You can buy unflavored billtong at a number of stores online. It's a good source of meat that can be re-hydrated or cooked through meals. However a tip is to grind it into a mince because the texture is sometimes a bit **** if your expecting meat and get something that tastes meaty but the texture is gritty.

Lentils, chickpeas etc are also light weight good sources of energy and protein. If you go down this route pre-prepare ginger, cumin, tumeric, vegetable stock, chilly and ground coriander seeds in a small bottle. One teaspoon with a handful of pulses serves one person easily. It boils down to a proper curry and you sleep well at night with a full stomach.

These are just guide ideas. Generally only useful for longer more extreme walks (beyond 4 nights where weight and more planning are essential).

If you are in the Sydney/Central coast area I plan bi-monthly walks, feel free to PM me if you have an interest in joining (free). Some walks are brisk but we generally take it pretty easy. We range from 20km morning walks all the way up to 60-80km night walks after work on Fridays.

[weeds]

We have done two multi day walks........

Our pick for commercial dehydrated meals is Strive Food for the main meal of the day......tried Back Country and one other......

[Toxic_Avenger]

I don't hike, but have had good success with camping food like dried beans (chickpeas, kidney beans, borlotti beans), rice, pasta and my own jerky recipe which I've been making since my teens...

What others have mentioned about a food dehydrator is true, they are very versatile if you want to get involved in preserving. Banana chips, dried apple, apricots etc, all really simple to make, as well as being very compact and light for their calories.