How to dehydrate food
The example for 14 days of hiking from Kilpisjärvi to Abisko
We are hiking a lot, and food is a key element. For this hike, we decided to put in more time after negligating for a while! We planned 14 days of food in full autonomy. Although in winter, with the sled you can pull a lot of food, and heavy one, in summer, you have to reduce the weight. And it's how we ended up trying dehydration!
Step 1: what to dehydrate
After planning our food, not all of it worth the dehydration:
he porridge in the morning
The food from the shop like the noodles, mashed potatoes
Here is a list of the food we dehydrated:
hummus (mashed chick peas)
mushroom
lentils with vegetables
You can dehydrate all a lot of food if it fits those conditions:
It doesn't have oil/fat: because you cannot evaporate it
Is not meat or eggs (possible, but harder and doesn't last long outside)
Step 2 : How to dehydrate
The goal is to remove as much water as possible. If it's a proper dish, like a lentil sauce with carrots. Cook it until it becomes this paste that you could spread on a bread slice.
Then, if the paste still wet and tick, put it in the hover at the minimum degree for 30 min.
Spread it on the rack of your dehydrator. Not bigger than half a centimetre. The thinner, the better!
Depending on your machine, the room temperature and the element you want to remove water, you will have to test! But our experience says that about 8h to 12h at 60°c work's for most of the food!
If it's the goal is to get a powder (like hummus), you can grid it and put it again in the dehydrator for 1 hour to be sure that is dehydrated!
Step 3: Use it !
To rehydrate the food, just pour water and let it soak for fifteen minutes to half an hour. It's better to have a bit more than too less water in general.
We experimented many ways to use the dehydrated food. But we found our method, even though is not the most light one!
We use a small food thermos, both of us. We throw all the food in there, pour the water and let it soak.
For the morning, we warm up the water and put it with the porridge.
Right after the breakfast, we warm up water again for the lunch to make it ready to eat.
And the same for the evening at the tent. Washing it is super easy and fast to do: water, shake it, a little clean and hop! It's done!
The food thermos allows us to eat it inside the tent, even in the sleeping bag, without risk of spread it around.
