DIY backpacking meals- “safe time-proven recipes”

This post is about the creation of low cost, lightweight, safe and nutritious meals for fast and simple preparation at the campsite. 

Introduction to DIY backpacking meals

I am a great advocate for home-dried meals. They are: easy to make safely following a few basic rules, much cheaper than commercial dried meals, can be easily scaled for group cooking. You know what you are eating and it is good fun.

Note: If you just want to see my recipes without looking at my food safety and packing tips, just go to the bottom of the post.

Camp cooking

If possible all my backpacking evening meals start with food rehydration and relaxation with unlimited cups of; tea, coffee, hot chocolate and soup for body rehydration and recovery after a long day of skiing or walking. A stove that generally can provide unlimited cooking power is a good start for this. My stick-fired Ultralight Blower Stove can provide this cooking power and it can cook two pots and simmer and boil at the same time. It can even prepare hot water for an indulgent hot soft bottle shower and a luxurious monster Alpine hot water bottle.

The following ideas are for making backpacking meals easy, safe, tasty, efficient, and convenient. If you feel like you don’t wish to be told how to suck eggs you can simply go to the recipes at the bottom of this page.

My guiding rules for DIY backpacking meals- preparation, nutrition and safety:

• Use wholemeal, whole grain, raw, natural unprocessed foods where possible. I make exceptions for desserts and treats.
• I use the best hygienic practice so that moulds and bacteria will not be there in significant numbers to multiply during preparation (soaking/hydration) at camp.
• Remove as much water as possible as it is lighter to carry and preservation is better.
• Prepare food in bulk quantities for multiple trips as it takes little more time to prepare a dehydrator load of meals as it does one meal. Luckily, I have a large dehydrator (see below). It also means that over time you can easily have an inventory of a variety of meals stored ready to go for a trip at any time.
• The success of this bulk preparation method will often depend upon having good moisture and gas-proof packaging system for the meal packs, particularly for the meat/egg/fat-containing meals (see later discussion of meal packing).
• I make dried meat/protein sauces, vegetables and carbohydrate separately.
• Ground meats in meats dishes dry better than coarser products and it is impossible for it to be tough.
• Immediately after dehydration, I pack meat-based meals in heat-sealed meal-sized packs that can be stored indefinitely without freezing or refrigeration (more on that later). This packing method makes the meal scalable for any group size and makes it easy to plan adequate food supplies for long trips.
• I like to share an ultralight large tent with someone else. Consequently, sharing cooking equipment and meals with others often flows from this. Preparing meals this way can be efficient regarding pack weight, meal preparation time and makes mealtime more fun.
• Where possible I have most ingredients pre-cooked (except for desserts) so that the campsite cooking process is mainly re-hydration and heating (short cooking in the case of raw dried vegetables) to a desirable temperature for eating. This precooking means that the meal can be eaten without further cooking in emergency situations.
• I like ‘one-pot’ main meals where the part that needs the most soaking and cooking can be prepared first and other parts can be added later, finishing with sauces and thickening that will need gentle heating and stirring to prevent sticking. (For hungry walkers or skiers it requires a large pot for a meal for 2-3 people. Please see my post on Pot Pans, Lids & Lifters)
• I make small meal packs that can be added together when cooking a shared meal (e.g. dinner main course for two people; 2 meat sauce, 1 vegetable and 1 carbohydrate).

I have found the Excalibur Dehydrator to be very effective and efficient. It has been a great replacement drier for the three old ’round Sunbeam style’ dehydrators that I have just thrown out because of the failure of the fan motors that cannot be readily replaced.

“There is a little irony in this common experience; that if a product is built with parts replacement in mind, then the parts are of such quality that they never need replacement anyway! My Dad’s old Vanguard car had replaceable ‘wet sleeve’ cylinder liners in the motor. The liner metal was just so good that the liners never needed replacement, but the rest of the car just wore out around the cylinders.”

I have a Teflon drying mat for each of my nine trays. They are indispensable for drying DIY meals that have significant free water content. The tray with the mesh mat and the Teflon mat on top of that can be loaded up with fresh hot meals to be dried. They sag a little and form a shallow dam that prevents the juices from spilling.

When the meal is dried or even partly dried, the Teflon sheet can be carefully peeled off. Then the meal slab (or fruit leather etc) can be returned to the drier with the moist side up for much more rapid and economical drying.

The Excalibur Teflon mats work well. However, the alternative silicone rubber mats may be better as my beloved and much used Teflon mats are starting to show signs of wear. These silicone ones should be just as good if not better. If you read my posts you will find that I am a great fan of silicone rubber and make lots of wacky things with it.

[Add photos of Excalibur Dehydrator, trays, sheets and meal peeling]

Safe dehydration of DIY backpacking meals

It is time to lighten up with an ode:

Keep your dehi-meal preparation hygienic and smick,
No delays after cooking, on to those trays hot and quick, 
Food poisoning's not really funny,
Even with home comfort of a dunny,
Far worse in the bush when it all turns to shit.

For those in US, ‘dunny’ is an Aussie idiom for the toilet or water closet (WC). The term has survived from the distant days when collectable dunny cans were collected by the ‘dunny-man’ with all sorts of stories about rusty cans breaking on the shoulder of the poor ‘dunny man’. So here’s an ode for you:

May your DIY dehi-meals be hygienic and trail-fit,
Transferred from hot-pot onto drying trays, lickety split, 
At home food poisoning's definitely no fun,
Even with a comfortable john to sit on,
Far worse in the woods when there is nowhere to sit.

My suggestions for safe meal dehydration are:

• Only dehydrate these dishes when freshly cooked to prevent bacterial growth before drying, during drying and soaking/re-hydration and meal preparation at camp. “Bacteria share our world but we can prevent unwanted ones multiplying in our food with timely application of good hygiene, heat, acidification, fast effective dehydration and rapid sealing into suitable ready to use packets or sachet.”
• Make meat and vegetable dishes acidic with lemon/lime juice/pineapple, vinegar or tomato to reduce the risk of botulism poisoning.
• Where texture is not critical, macerate the ingredients just before drying or preferably while cooking (to minimise cooling and oportunities for bacterial contamination during maceration). The maceration will make it possible to form a more even layer on the dehydrator sheets to promote rapid even drying. It will also make the dry packing of meal portions easier and nor compact.
• Cook in the evening and run the dehydrator overnight if you have a night rate electricity tariff. Alternatively, do it in day time if you have free solar power to spare.
• Make sure that all the food is fully dried. If uncertain, the food can have a second drying after the suggested pulverization step (described below). No loss of weight after the second drying is evidence of good drying.
• Try including pulverized chickpeas in the recipe as they; great for your gut biome, provide great nutrition, assist rapid drying, make the dried meal mix easy to pulverize and quick to hydrate when it is time to prepare the meal at camp.
• Quickly spread the hot cooked sauce thinly out on dehydrator trays. This limits the opportunity for bacterial growth in the food before drying. It also sanitizes the surface that it will be dried on.
• Dry immediately at the highest temperature as quickly as possible. Again, this will limit any bacterial growth on the rapidly drying surface. It will also limit any bacterial growth within the sauce while it is moist.

Pulverizing DIY backpacking savory meal sauces

Let’s face it, one-pot backpacking meals will never win any points for appearances, so pulverizing meal sauces in a blender (if you have one) before packing into meal-size portions is efficient.

“This pulverization will not improve your chances of winning the ‘camp-chef-plating-up-award’.”

However, pulverization should provide the following functional benefits:

• Disperse any small pockets of inadequately dried food that has gone undetected.
• Makes a good texture for additional drying if required (see note below).
• Allow easy and denser packing of the food in meal packs with less air (and oxygen) entrapment.
• Eliminate the risk of sharp food particles puncturing the food package.
• Make rehydration quick and allow it to easily mix through the vegetables and carbohydrate before eating while minimizing the risk of sticking to the pot.

Carbohydrates for DIY backpacking meals

Where possible I cook my pasta, noodles, rice etc in bulk quantities, and then I dehydrate them. This means that they require no further cooking to be digestible, if not palatable.

“Forgive me for banging on about nutrition for emergency situations where cooking is not possible.”

Lastly, after dehydration, I give the carbohydrate a brief whirl in the blender to separate the grains and break down clumps. Pasta gets the same treatment to make the particles smaller and smoother so that they pack densely and no longer have sharp points that could puncture the packing fabric.

Vegetables for DIY backpacking meals

Mixed frozen vegetables from Aldi have been my favourite vegetable base for my meals. I break up the frozen vegetables and cut any large pieces into smaller ones (particularly the beans) before spreading evenly on the dehydrator mesh for drying. As well as drying onion, I dry extra greens and herbs (e.g. silverbeet, red mustard, parsley) from my garden. I add them to the other dried vegetables before packing.

On a recent three week walk, my friend Michael lightly precooked a similar vegetable mix before drying and we gave them a whirl in the blender before packing. They re-hydrated nicely and had the advantage of being precooked and needed less camp cooking time. I plan to use this method in the future.

Is my DIY backpacking meal dry enough?

“It’s too late if you find mould in your dehydrated meal when you’re out in the bush”.

When new to dehydrating a meal type, particularly one with a high fat/oil content, it may be difficult to know if it is fully dried. A simple test for this is to weigh the meal in a tared bowl after the first drying and pulverizing. After another hour in the drier, weigh it again in the tared bowl. There should be no appreciable loss of weight after the second drying. This works best with large batches where measurement errors are not significant.

Ready to go dehydrated foods

There are many wonderful ready to go meal ingredients. These are some of my favourites:

Full cream milk powder

This is a near-perfectly balanced (except for fibre) sustaining food for backpacking, (if you don’t have a lactose or dairy intolerance). I use it in my lunchtime milkshakes and my many cups of tea (from a pot) and other hot drinks. The best results are achieved if the powder is first dissolved in a little cool water before adding the hot drink. (I should know as I have a background in dairy chemistry, see one of my papers: A reference milk system for instrumental measurement of milk fat and protein.)

In addition to nutrition, I also use milk powder for flavour and texture in the preparation of many meals. This includes in my ‘all-day-breakfast-muesli’ as described later. I carry my stock of milk powder in sealed sachets (describe later) and transfer them one at a time into a small wide neck juice bottle for convenient dispensing.

[Add photo of sachet and bottle]

Instant dry noodles

With about 22% fat and 64% carbohydrate in instant dry noodles, these would not be an ideal choice of carbohydrate in the diet of a weight-conscious sedentary person. However, the high-fat content is probably not a problem for an energy deficient walker or skier. They make a wonderfully convenient much-needed source of energy for them. Dr Michael Mosley has recently shed light on the unfair bad reputation that fat has in our diets. Sugar and refined carbohydrates are the real bogeymen in that order.

Dried green peas

Loaded with protein, carbohydrate and fibre these are a superfood and almost everyone likes them.

Dried falafel mix

This is another superfood. In most commercial mixes I find that the flavouring is nice but a bit too strong, so I dilute the mix with 50% chickpea flour or split yellow pea flour (homemade of course).

I also mix in a small chopped onion (fresh onion, a small luxury that I am prepared to carry as dried onion just does not make the grade) and home-dried apple cubes (fully ripe Golden Delicious apples) dried in the ‘Excalibur’. When mixed with water and fried in a little olive oil, these extra ingredients make the falafels lighter and give the flavour a real boost, but they are still ‘very filling’. A little tube of sweet chilli sauce (homegrown and homemade of course) gives a nice finish.

Chickpea flour

I am ‘a bit of smartie’ and mill my own pulse (beans & peas) to make my own pulse flour. However, it is very noisy and hard on my poor faithful old mill. I have started to use commercial chickpea flour as an alternative to extend the life of my mill. Chickpea flour (or other pulse flour) has great nutrition value in a healthy diet and is very convenient and cost-effective food that can be used in many meals as a healthy alternative to refined starch.

All-day breakfast muesli

I find this to be a very versatile food and I eat as much as I can for my breakfast with a hot coffee and the rest is eaten for lunch and beyond. I use Aldi fruit and nut muesli and add extra oats and home-dried fruits and toast the mix with olive oil.

“I find that the toasting makes the mix much more palatable. This is particularly useful under tough conditions when my energy is used up, my appetite is jaded, but I must eat.”

I store the muesli in sealed 2L used plastic milk bottles. Just before a trip, I measure out the daily rations (~250g) of muesli mix into sealable bags and I add a scoop of full cream milk powder to each bag. The milk powder will oxidize and develop off flavours if stored for long periods of time in the mix. I use a zippy bag for the first ration to be used and store a short plastic spoon within the bag. This means that I can eat directly from the bag whenever needed and I top this bag up daily with a new ration from a simple sealed bag.

This may not be to your taste, but I have found that it is a very satisfying food. I can eat it dry or with a little water (that turns into milk) or as a cooked porridge for a cold morning. Luckily, I do not tire of the same food when I am eating to support my strenuous activity in the bush.

When backpacking, all food is good and gets used by our bodies. This is not true when we are living sedentary lives without enough physical effort and sometimes “live to eat rather than eat to live”. For my last three week walk, I took ~220g of mix per day. Next trip I will make it 250g. A pack of this muesli mix makes a good extra emergency ration along with a block of chocolate.

Packet soups

Single-serve instant soups or multiple serve simmer soups are a lovely light supplement to backpacking meals. They can be quickly prepared after the trekking is finished while setting up camp before dinner is served. Homemade dried soups are nice, but in my experience, they are much slower to rehydrate than commercial products.

The simmer soups make 1L of soup and are just great to share between multiple trekkers. For a group, such sharing is always welcomed to restore energy levels, appetites and spirits after a hard day on the trail.

Dried egg

In my experience dried egg powder does not make a good substitute for fresh eggs as a stand-alone food, but it does make a good substitute in cooked items like pancakes.

Make or buy egg powder? Commercial egg powder is much better than I can make even from eggs from my own hens and it saves a lot of effort.

When I purchase a fresh pack of dried egg powder, for short trips I get a small one (12 egg equivalent) to avoid spoilage. I split up the pack into one egg quantities and seal the portions in little ‘airless’ gas-tight sachets (see ‘fake-vacuum-sealing’ below). The bulk powder does not keep well after opening as the headspace air that enters the container each time it is opened. This will cause the egg powder to ‘go off’ quite quickly. In contrast, the freshly packed egg equivalent sachets will last forever.

Olive oil

Olive oil is probably the most energy-dense food that we would put in our mouths. I should know what I am talking about as I worked on energy density issues as a dairy scientist Estimation of milk energy.

Some people, such as Dixie of Homemade Wanderlust, ingest olive oil with all sorts of other ‘real-food’ as a desperate high energy food supplement. I can’t stomach it, possibly because as a child oils were threatened as a punishment.

“Don’t get me wrong, I take olive oil on every trip for cooking pancakes and other delights. Like Dixie, I can in desperation, but I would prefer to use it as a fire starter, lubricant, rust preventer or a bear trap”.

Chockolate

As a total contrast, chocolate is less energy-dense, but infinitely more palatable to almost everyone. It is ‘king’ when it comes to eating it. Any sugar content is good for a fast glucose energy boost while the fats release their energy more slowly. Just perfect for a knackered walker.

Food packing ideas

Warning: I should also tell you that, in my previous professional life as a research scientist, one of my nicknames was ‘the bag man’, on account of all my tinkering around in the laboratory with heat-sealed sachet bags and pouches that stored all manner of plant, animal, liquid and gas samples. So if you are starting to yawn, I will understand. However, there may be a few gems of wisdom that might help you do better heat sealing in the future for your adventures.

SACHET PACKING

I use little ‘cup of soup’ style sachets for packing most of my meal portions of dried food. These sachets are not simple plastic bags, they are complex laminates of non-stick plastic, paper more plastic, aluminium and heat-sealable plastic. “Just wonderful technology”. When gas is dispelled and the sachet is heat seal it makes a perfect backpacking food container that can store dry food flexibly, efficiently and indefinitely. The aluminium laminate in this structure makes the sachet gas-tight.

Bag filling scoop

To make measuring and delivery of my meal portion to bags or sachet clean and efficient I use a simple tapered scoop that is made out of a UHT milk carton. This scoop allows the portion to be weighed out or measured by volume and then delivered cleanly through the opening of the bag without contaminating the zone of the bag that will be heat sealed.

Note: Good heat seals usually depend on the sealing surface being clean and uncontaminated, particularly with oils or fat.

Heat sealing

Making consistently strong heat seals is essential for backpacking meal packs. “They are no good if they occasionally open themselves in your pack or leak air or moisture into the contents”. Thorough and harsh testing of the quality of your seals is essential if you are to avoid later disappointments. A little rule of thumb is if the seal looks good, it is probably not strong enough… the seals usually require enough heat to start making it look a little ugly (little crinkles along the length of the seal) before it is at its best. With laminates that incorporate a layer of aluminium, much higher heat input is required to make an effective seal, as the aluminium rapidly dissipates the heat from the seal area.

HEAT SEALING MACHINES 

You may have your own sealer or borrow one from a friend or your walking club. Often these combine bag evacuation with heat sealing (see example in the photo below). This is a wonderful combination of two food storing technologies.

In my experience, when sealing aluminium laminates, the sealers have a limited heat output and the highest setting provides barely enough heat to form a good seal with aluminium laminates. However, a second over seal repeated immediately will often suffice because some the heat is stored in the plastic and the machine from the first seal. This is because these bags with aluminium in the laminate need high heat input to seal well because the aluminium in the structure can dissipate/reflect a lot of the heat before it can get through to melt the two heat sealable laminates (below) on the inside of the bag.

“This is an inconvenience that comes with a quality backpacking food container”.

Powerful sealing machines

Alternative high quality and powerful impulse heat sealers are available with plenty of ‘power’ for sealing the most difficult laminates usually with gas barrier aluminium layers in the structure. These are particularly good if you combine them with the fake vacuum technique described below.

Fake vacuum sealing

The above vacuum sealing machine requires a special textured plastic bag material to be used to make the evacuation possible. I use a cheap simple DIY foam and plywood hinged sandwich boards to squeeze out most of the air from the sachet before sealing with a simple heat sealer. This fake vacuum achieves good air removal and works well with all heat sealable laminates and bags without the need of a vacuum pump. “They don’t puff up like a bag of chips when you take them up high mountains!” The small amount of entrapped oxygen could cause an inconsequential amount of oxidation of the food and then the oxidation will cease as the oxygen is depleted.

Backpacking one-pot main meal recipes

Cheese sauce

Single serving with vegetables and pasta or noodles.

Note: Processed cheddar cheese is quite stable to dehydrate, unlike most other cheeses.

45g of dried processed cheddar cheese (45g after drying). Seal in a separate sachet.

50g milk powder, 30g flour, 2 tsp raw sugar, 0.5 tsp mild curry, 1 tsp Vegeta stock, and a grind of pepper (seal in separate sachet). Garlic and other flavourings can be used. Seal in a separate sachet.

For camp preparation start by re-hydrating the vegetables. Cook them and then add the pasta in the excess water. When both are cooked, add the dry cheese then the thickening mix. Reduce heat to a simmer and mix frequently to minimize the risk of sticking to the pot.

Alternative mature unprocessed tasty cheese sauce (SINGLE PACK)

Single serving with vegetables and pasta or noodles.

Dry ingredients

1 spn plain flour

3 spn full cream milk powder

Trace of mild curry powder or garlic powder, and soup stock (Vegeta)

90g of fresh unprocessed cheese

Grate the cheese, spread on the drier sheet and dry at 50C.

Unlike processed cheese, this ‘real’ cheese melts and oils-off under the drying conditions (“It looks like a disaster”), so it needs special treatment for effective packing. The sheet of ‘dry’ cheese, with oil on top, can be cut up with sharp scissors into thin strips  (~15mm) that can be stacked three deep on one another to be cut crosswise into a jar with the other dry ingredients spread to form a nest shape the receive the cheese bits without contacting the jar. Shake the jar to mix the contents and the oily cheese gets coated with powder and can be transferred cleanly into a sachet for sealing.

For camp preparation start by re-hydrating the vegetables. Cook them and then add the pasta to the excess water. When both are cooked add the thickening mix cheese to make the sauce. Reduce the heat to a simmer and stir frequently to minimize the risk of sticking to the pot.

Each sachet provides a single serving with vegetables and pasta, noodles or rice.

Tuna sauce

Makes about ~4 serves of 100g of dried sauce.

1 large onion (chopped and cooked in tuna oil)

2 medium carrots (chopped and fried with above)

1 can of chickpeas

1tsp curry powder

1tsp garlic powder

50g milk powder

25g flour

50ml vinegar

425g of tinned tuna in oil.

After cooking briefly, blend till smooth in a food processor. Then spread thinly on dehydrator trays while hot. Dry at the highest temperature possible. When the sauce forms a solid mat, peel it off the drying sheet and invert it on another sheet. (I do this by flipping the first drying sheet and contents on to the second sheet. Then I peel the first sheet off, leaving the sauce on the second sheet to be returned to the dryer.) This speeds drying by exposing the moist underside of the mat. When dry, break up the mat over a large bowl and pulverize it in a food processor till it forms a fine uniform powder.

Immediately pack the 4*100g portions in gas-tight sachets.

Each sachet provides a single serving with vegetables and pasta, noodles or rice.

For camp preparation start by re-hydrating the vegetables. Cook them and then add the pasta or rice to the excess water. When both are cooked add the thickening cheese sauce and mix. Reduce the heat to a simmer and stir frequently to minimize the risk of sticking to the pot.

Kangastew

This makes about 7-8*75g dried single serves of meat sauce.

1 Kg kangaroo mince (it is naturally premium lean mince), 3 onions, 1 red capsicum, 3 carrots, 2 Spn raw sugar and 1 large jar of tomato paste (rinse the jar with 0.25 cup of vinegar and add to mix).

Spices to taste: 2 tsp fennel seeds, 3 tsp fennel powder, 1 tsp curry powder and 2 tsp sweet chilli sauce.

Brown onions and meat in a pan with a little olive oil. Add chopped vegetables and everything else and simmer for at least one hour. Macerate in a food processor while hot and transfer to dehydrator sheets and spread evenly and thinly (5-8mm thick) and start drying at the highest temperature. When dry, break up the mat over a large bowl and pulverize it in a food processor till it forms a fine uniform powder.

Immediately pack the 4*100g portions in gas-tight sachets.

Each sachet provides a single serving with vegetables and pasta, noodles or rice.

For camp preparation start by re-hydrating the vegetables. Cook them and then add the pre-cooked rice or noodles in the excess water. When both are cooked add the meat sauce mixture. Reduce the heat to a simmer and stir frequently to minimize the risk of sticking to the pot.

Desserts

Desserts make a nice finish to a meal for hungry walkers. Again I find it convenient to prepare the ingredients as a one pack mix for two serves.

Creamed rice & sultanas

Makes two serves

50g dried cooked brown rice, 30g milk powder, 15g vanilla custard powder’ 25g raw sugar, 30g sultanas. Pack in a gas-tight sachet. Soak to swell rice in 500 ml of water then cook gently until thick.

Pancake mix

Makes two serves

50g self-raising flour, 20g vanilla custard powder, 15g milk powder, 1 dried egg (packed separately in gas-tight sachet). Mix with water to a creamy texture and pour pancakes into a hot oiled pan and flip over after bubbles have popped up all over the cake. Don’t worry if the first cake sticks, the next ones will be great. Great served with a little sweet lime, lemon or ginger sauce.

Sweet lemon or lime pancake sauce

Makes many serves and keeps indefinitely in fridge or freezer (recipe to come).

Custard

Makes 2 serves.

60g milk powder, 30g vanilla custard powder, 20g raw sugar and 500ml water.

Custard variants

Mocha

Add 3 tsp cocoa & 1 tsp coffee

Bananna

Add home-dried ripe banana slices (home dried bananas taste much better than those pale ‘plastic’ commercial ones that have very little flavour). The home-dried bananas go an unattractive colour, but if eaten in the darkness the custard is a delight.

Tim