Dehydrated Meal Portion Size (ounces)

[TJ]

I started dehydrating my meals for dinners last year. Most of them worked out pretty well, not all though.
My biggest problem seemed to be my portion sizes, always too much.

My question is, for those that have done this a while how do you size your portions?
Do you weigh your meals?

Any ideas?

 

[Tod osier]

We have no system other than to eat the meal ahead of time. We test the meal, keeping track of the wet to dry proportions, and eat the meal for a regular dinner. We eat a normal meal and then estimate how much it we would need to eat to be stuffed and then convert that weight or volume to dry and seal individually. We are usually right on.

 

[Jmock97]

Mine last year were all around 4oz after dehydrated. What I like to do is figure the calories for the dish then figure how many meals it will make I shot for 400 cal a meal. Weight the total dehydrated food and divided by the number of meals.

 

[pods8 (Rugged Stitching)]

I over packed too. I packed what I could eat at home (5000') and up at 11k we were choking stuff down 2/3 through due to lowered appetite (esp. predawn). I'll back off the hot meals accordingly and bump up the dry snacks which can be eaten over a longer period of time.

 

[TJ]

We have no system other than to eat the meal ahead of time. We test the meal, keeping track of the wet to dry proportions, and eat the meal for a regular dinner. We eat a normal meal and then estimate how much it we would need to eat to be stuffed and then convert that weight or volume to dry and seal individually. We are usually right on.

This is what I tried to do also. I weighed everything ahead of drying and then afterwards. I guess I missed my mark.

Mine last year were all around 4oz after dehydrated. What I like to do is figure the calories for the dish then figure how many meals it will make I shot for 400 cal a meal. Weight the total dehydrated food and divided by the number of meals.

I'll look more into this.

Thanks for all the replies.

 

[njdoxie]

I'll make a dish, like spaghetti with meat sauce, then eyeball it from experience and decide how many servings that would be (small servings for reduced appetite at altitude), then dry it and separate into that many single serving bags. I don't count calories, I know how much food I need.

 

[GFY]

I separate mine into serving sizes then dehydrate. When I know that I am going to be making up some meals I just make a big batch of whatever and have it for dinner. It is then easy to judge how much a serving should be (as I just ate one) and put one serving on each drying rack in the dehydrator. This way I never over crowd the racks/trays and know that each one is its own serving. If you think you will eat less at altitude you can adjust accordingly.