Dehydrated meal ideas please

Include a little history in your walks. Pecsaetan - Ancient Derbyshire, Staffordshire and South Yorkshire - http://pecsaetan.weebly.com/

Ah, now you tell me. 

Sure i read on here someone dehydrated a casserole, i'd love to know how that's done. !

Include a little history in your walks. Pecsaetan - Ancient Derbyshire, Staffordshire and South Yorkshire - http://pecsaetan.weebly.com/

Those are pretty much the basis of my repertoire as well, Shewie and they're all variations on a meat sauce with a carb. 

You could try varying the curry by using different spices.  What I do is cook up a basic meat sauce - say minced lamb, tinned tomatoes, onion and garlic, dehydrate that and, just before setting off, add the spices in a twist of clingfilm.  I then fry the spices in oil to make a sort of curry paste before adding the dehydrated sauce and mixing together with water to rehydrate.  This seems to work much better than adding the spices while cooking the sauce as the flavours don't seem to survive the cooking process very well.

Below is a re-post of my chilli recipe for the dehydrator:

After various trials, including heating and dehydrating canned Chilli Con Carne, using a different spice mix, varying the cooking times etc, I've now got something pretty darned close to the fresh dish. Tips are as follows:

• Don't brown the meat first and then add it later. This seems to overcook it and make rehydration difficult. Fry off the onion and garlic first in oil , then add the mince (lean minced steak) and brown, before adding chopped tomatoes, kidney beans, chopped peppers and simmering for c45 minutes.
• Use either skinned peppers or those Peppadew peppers in jars. Pepper skins never seem to rehydrate properly and remain leathery.
• Key one, this. Don't add any spices - not even salt and pepper - during the cooking phase. Wrap the spices of choice (I use cumin powder, crushed dried chillis, chilli powder, sea salt and black pepper) in a twist of clingfilm and bag with the dried Chilli Con Carne. Once the food has pre-soaked and heated through, add the spices and stir through. 20 minutes or so in the pot cosy and you've got a Chilli Con Carne very close in both taste and texture to the freshly-cooked dish.

Sausage beans and mash works quite well in the dehydrator.  Cook sausages as normal and slice thinly before drying.  Heat baked beans and spread on dehydrator trays.  Bag with either Smash or your own mash, added to the dehydrator by passing the cooked potatoes through a ricer directly onto the tray. 

Hotdog stew (hence Septic measures) adapted from Linda Yaffe's book Backpack Gourmet:

Bring 8 cups of stock or water to a boil.  Add 8oz small-shape pasta and bring back to a boil.  Then add 3 finely chopped hotdog sausages and a finely chopped pepper (I use a few Peppadew ones in jars as they rehydrate really well).  Cook until the pasta is tender - say 8 minutes. 

Then add 3 cups of tomato sauce (see below for recipe) and a half tsp of cayenne pepper.  Heat through and spread on dehydrator trays to dry.  Add a handful of grated parmesan to the rehydrated dish.

I've varied this to suit my taste, adding more meat and spices.  Hotdog sausages rehydrate really well.

Tomato sauce is made by frying 2-3 cloves of garlic in a little olive oil until coloured, add a whole red chili (pierce with a knife to stop it bursting) and 1tsp of dried oregano.  Stir, then add 2 tins of wlole tomatoes.  Season and simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring from time to time to break up the tomatoes.  Take out the chili, add a swig of red wine vinegar and it should be perfect.

I did a little dehydrating of food but am too lazy really.

One thing I would do with spices you take along though is to dry 'toast/cook' them very lightly before you bag them up or in the pan before you add the dried meal.

Include a little history in your walks. Pecsaetan - Ancient Derbyshire, Staffordshire and South Yorkshire - http://pecsaetan.weebly.com/

I find the key is to

a) chop things much smaller than you normally would; and

b) to season a bit more than usual. I don't have the same problem as Jake but do find adding more herbs/spices than usual does help.

One of my favourites is:

-Lamb mince, onion, garlic, chopped toms, 2 x aubergine, a few dried apricots, a small handful of raisins/sultana, fresh coriander, curry powder, cumin, pinch of turmeric, salt and black pepper.  I dehydrate the sauce and eat with cous cous but you could mix cous cous in to the sauce before dehydrating if you wished.