https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAhA7BaoerY
Seems like a bit of a rigmarole :shock: think I'll stick to my cous cous and noodles with the odd pack of chicken flung in. Last time I was only overnight so took a pre made tarka daal, pre cooked rice and some chicken tikka, washed down with an ipa cooled down in a burn :8)
That's what I thought, but if you are cooking anyway then the dehydration only needs time not supervision. I thought the guy said the gizmo cost about £200 which seems a bit OTT :shock:
We have a dehydrator- did not spend £200 on it!
Not used for meals, but have had success with herbs, chillies, raspberries, sliced beetroot and so on from the garden.
It is a noisy bugger, so it runs in the shed.
You'd have to be doing a lot of camping to justify the 200 quid :shock: the guy probably just took a notion for one the way we do :lol:
Quote from: Lochan_load on December 08, 2018, 05:18:37 PM
the guy probably just took a notion for one the way we do :lol:
With 30 rods in the loft I'm keeping my trap shut......................... :lol:
I've acquired 3 rods recently in a variety of ways, I've got my eye on another I'd like to make and I barely get the chance to fish :roll:
I'd often thought of giving it a try but most dehydrators seem to be aimed at drying fruit - i.e. the trays are plastic or metal mesh and so less than ideal for drying a cooked meal that may have a sauce on it which would just drip through the holes.
Over the last while I've been using quite a few freeze dried meals as they are handy, easy to make, and light to carry if you don't have to carry the water as well. However they are expensive and the cost over the year can easily come to a few hundred quid! In a way it is a sort of catch 22 problem as I tend to eat out a lot in a year and so get fed up with sandwiches or cous cous or whatever and like variety but, because I eat out a lot, getting variety pushes the price up. The other thing is that making and dehydrating food isn't free either, so while freeze dried food might come with a premium in cost terms the "make your own" solution isn't free either and this can start to make freeze dried look like a reasonable approach.
To be honest I don't have the perfect solution so freeze dried might only be a passing fad for me.
i came across this idea on a winter campsite in north wales about 20 years ago. the folks opposite invited me over, which was very kind of them. they'd made a curry with a rich sauce. the food tasted AWESOME. if you can be bothered with the investment and the rigmarole (and if you're really going to be that far from fresh produce....... ) I'd say it really is a great way of having top-quality camping meals.
Quote from: corsican dave on December 08, 2018, 06:58:23 PM
I'd say it really is a great way of having top-quality camping meals.
For sure - AND the only sure way of getting enough to eat is making your own portions.
I got to wondering what the saving might be. Costs of ingredients, cost of cooking, cost of drier and the drying costs, a bit of packaging and probably storing the meal in a freezer to ensure it keeps OK since maybe not vacuum sealed. Bought dried hill meal packs have a five year shelf life. Plenty pasta mixes off the shelf in supermarkets too these days. You get your own recipes and quantities but there is a lot of faffing about.
Do a search on the forum for Dehydrating, there is a couple of threads started by Bushy Palmer about doing it using a fan oven.
Quote from: Bobfly on December 09, 2018, 12:24:30 AM
I got to wondering what the saving might be.
Yes, that is my problem with this. When I look at the cost of freeze dried it puts me off my food :-) Over the last while I've ordered some freeze dried from these folks as they had a sale, for example:
https://basecampfood.com/
However, when I consider what my lunch costs to make then on many occasions the freeze dried wouldn't be that much more expensive than making a similar lunch. Now, the other side to this is that the freeze dried stuff tends to be a bit more extravagant in the sense that I wouldn't usually have reindeer stew or even chicken tikka for lunch. On a day out it kind of takes a decent meal to fuel me through the day so I'm usually glad of something more substantial, and if I don't want something more substantial then I can take a sandwich and my freeze dried food will keep for ever lying in a box under my desk.
The other thing about the freeze dried stuff is that I keep a small selection lying about and so am ready to go whenever the chance presents - I'm working late tonight and have just decided that I'm heading out for a full day tomorrow. All I need to do in the morning is throw a pack of freeze dried in the rucksack and I'm away. I guess the convenience is worth something to me. You could say the same thing about stuff you do yourself but you are going to have to put a lot of prep in and you'll probably never come up with such an extensive menu - in the autumn I was out about 28 days and I'd guess I ate out on all of them but I didn't have the same thing on many days, and then usually through choice.
The other thing is that I don't always carry freeze dried food, sometimes I take other stuff, but because the freeze dry is so small and light in the pack it is possible to throw it in there as a backstop. A similar comment may also apply to stuff you dry yourself but if you fish or otherwise spend a lot of time out and about it really is worth having some freeze dry lying about for an emergency.
I use a dehydrator, it's great if you are growing things.I have a large plot of land so I'm getting more than I need. It's good for herbs and vegetables, I can add them to my cooking, also dried fruit for cakes and dumplings. I dont think its worth buying if its just to take snacks when your going fishing.
I thought I'd resurrect this thread. I use my dehydrator a lot. Mid-summer I'm drying cherries. I do 80-100 lbs (before drying). Dried apple slices are next along with fruit leather. Most of my fruit leather has an apple sauce as a thickener, but I mix in raspberries, strawberries and black currants. Dried veggies for soups keep it humming in autumn, lots of tomatoes, carrots, onions and beans. I hate eating raw tomatoes but dried slices are delicious.
My daughter came for a visit and about 5 pounds of dried cherries seem to have disappeared. I need to find a better hiding place.
Excellent storage system if you have seasonal overproduction which is easily done. We don't have a dehydrator but the freezer gets stuffed with boxes of blackcurrents in particular which reappear for winter breakfast toppings most days.