Help with dehydrating food

[Reggie]

I've been playing around with dehydrating my own meals to get away from eating so many mountain houses. However, every type of meat I dehydrate is always hard as a rock after re-cooking it. What am I doing wrong?

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[blackpowderhunter]

try these tips
use LEAN ground meat. I stay away from beef and usually go with lean ground turkey, or ground elk/venison if I have it.
I have tried using canned chicken breast and it did not turn out well, so i now stick with ground meat.
Cook the ground meat, breaking into small very small chunks.. once cooked, put into a colander and rinse under water to remove as much of the remaining fat as you can, then add back to whatever you are cooking to add spices etc.
I do this when I make my chili mac and have never had a problem with it not rehydrating well.
What are you cooking that you are having problems with and what is your rehydrating method? With my chili mac or spaghetti with meat sauce I have done two methods of rehydration, both working well; depending on if I am packing the MSR dragonfly or the MSR micro rocket.
With my white gas stove, I will put the meal in the pot, cover with 1/4-1/2 inch of water...let sit for a few minutes, add a little more water if necessary, then bring to a boil, turn stove off, put pot in home made cozy and let sit for 10-15 and I am good to go. I recently tried the freezer bag method with chili mac by pouring boiling water over it in a bag inside of a cozy and let sit for 15 and it was good to go as well.

 

[ChrisS]

The backpacking chef is a good resource on dehydrating meat:
"Backpackers often call dehydrated ground beef “gravel” because it doesn’t rehydrate well. Solve this problem by adding bread crumbs to the meat before cooking it. Bread crumbs allow more liquid to penetrate the dried meat when you rehydrate it, so it turns out tender every time."

 

[WoodBow]

I have no issue rehydrating deer chili. Shredded chicken works awesome too. You can always add water to your meal several hours before you actually heat it. That brings up another point. It works a lot better for me to add water and heat it all together in a pot. If you just boil water, dump it over your meal, and wait ten minutes, you will have poor results for sure.

 

[Reggie]

Thanks for the tips! I've just been boiling water and letting my meals sit in my cozy for 20 minutes or so. Looks like Ill have some more experimenting to do.

 

[njdoxie]

I've learned to put my chilli in a food processor and grind it up pretty small, then I pour boiling water in it, put in cozy, let sit for 30 min and it's very hydrated and very good

 

[pods8 (Rugged Stitching)]

I just trial ran the unstuffed pepper recipe last weekend. I did some ground elk (no fat added) mixed with the bread crumbs mentioned above and browned/dehydrated it. Red/orange peppers which I steamed first then dehydrated. Spaghetti sauce dehydrated and just ripped into pieces. I put them in a vacuum sealer bag (along with rice) and added the required boiling water, then rolled over and clamped the top shut for 20min. This was around 7000' in elevation. It all reconstituted fine.

 

[pwsINC]

Just get the book

Freezer Bag Meal - Sarah kirkconnel

And

Adventure Meals - Glenn McAllister

I found both really helpful when starting making my own meals.

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