I am writing this post mostly for the benefit of my best friend, Jenny. When I first told her of this planned adventure, her first question was: “What are you going to eat?” To which my reply was: “Not entirely sure. On our practice hikes we usually just eat ramen.” The response was not adequate for her and she preceded to lecture me about all the stuff that’s bad about ramen. I tried to ease her fears by telling her that I was planning on getting the Appalachian Trail Food Planner but because I didn’t know what recipes were in them, she was not satisfied. So Jenny, you will be happy to know that I did buy the food planner and in the past couple weeks I’ve become pretty darn good at dehydrating food with only an oven.
Since we are only doing 10 mail drops, occasionally we will have to eat ramen, but we will be mixing it up with a bunch of other stuff. Using the Appalachian Trail Food Planner to plan out our meals and food on the trip. It has a lot of great recipes but we decided not to use them all. First reason being, I have a seafood and walnut allergy so that eliminated some recipes. Also, since I was only unemployed 3 weeks before starting I didn’t have the adequate time to prepare everything. I read that you should allow a couple months to prep all your food and that was time I did not have. Also, the author had support at home making all this food for their hikers over the 6 month period of time. We don’t have that option and have to pre-make all of our food. We ended up picking out 9 dinners, 4 breakfasts, 5 breads, and 6 cookies. The breads and cookies will be made my mom and Kenny’s mom.
One worry that Kenny had about packing mail drops was getting sick of the food we pack. The food planner does a nice job of spreading food out along the way and mixing up recipes. The writer includes a schedule of how they spaced out different food. So I made up a schedule for us and tried to spread food out as much as possible. There will be some repeats but hopefully not enough for us to get sick of one meal. Once I had a schedule down, I tried to estimate how much we’d want of one meal in the mail drop. Except for the 100 mile wilderness, I have planned 3 of each dinner (2 different dinners per mail drop) and 3 of each breakfast (alternating 2 different breakfast types). For the 100 mile wilderness in Maine, I have a total of 8 dinners planned out. I also tried to plan the more fatty meals in the colder months, which will keep us warmer at night.
I figured out the ingredients I would need and did dehydration test to make sure I could actual do this. I figured out how many cups of dehydrated onion was made from 1 small yellow onion and how many ounces of dehydrated chicken was produced from 1 lb. Once that was all done, I went back to the grocery store and bought more of everything. In the end I dehydrated beef, chicken, onions, carrots, and green peppers. I attempted bananas and apples but just couldn’t get the timing right. I also made beef jerky and chili. Below are my finished products. I’d also like to add, I am too cheap to buy a dehydrator and did all of this in my oven.
The chicken must be cooked first and then dehydrated.
Above are onions and carrots.
Above is beef that was cooked then pureed and dehydrated. This will be added to multiple meals and can even be added to ramen to increase calories and protein.
Lastly, the chili before and after dehydration.
Jerky.
For the vegetables (and fruits), they all have to be soaked in ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) or lemon juice to preserved the taste and nutrients before dehydration. I used lemon juice. Then put them in the oven at 175 degrees F with the door propped open 2 to 6 inches with the fan on. (For all dehydration, the oven must be propped open and a fan on to make sure to remove all moisture.) Depending on the size of the veggies, they took about 2 to 3 hours to dehydrate. I just kept checking them every 30 minutes until they were done.
For all the meat you must make sure you have lean cuts of meat (at least 85% lean). Fat can go rancid during dehydration and doesn’t keep well. For chicken I used chicken breast. For the puree beef I used 92% lean ground beef. For the chili I used 85% lean ground chuck. And for the jerky I used flank steak. On the chicken and flank steak I made sure to trim the fat before cooking.
Before cooking the chicken, I sprinkled with pepper, garlic salt (Kenny and I both really really really like garlic), and a garlic herb rub. Then I baked it at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes on each side. I cut up the chicken into cubes and put them in the refrigerator for 1 to 2 hours. After removing from the fridge, I dabbed them with a paper towel to remove any moisture. I spread on the cookie sheet and dehydrated at 275 degrees F for 3 to 5 hours.
For the beef puree, the recipe called for pressure cooking, which I did not have. So I used a slow cooker/crock pot. For 1 lb of ground beef I used 4 cups of water and 1 cup of soy sauce as called in the recipe for pressure cooking. Once it was done cooking, I put it in the blender with a little of the liquid from slow cooker and spread it on a cookie sheet. I then dehydrated for 5 hours at 175 degrees.
For the beef jerky, I cut the flank steak into strips and marinated for several hours. The marinade was just soy sauce, garlic powder, and pepper as recommended in the food planner recipe. Then I spread the strips on the cookie sheet and dehydrated at 150 degrees F for 10 hours. At about half way through, I flipped the pieces over to make sure it dehydrated all the way through.
For the chili I doubled the recipe and followed it exactly to the book. I added a little extra cumin to give it more of chili taste and not so much a tomato taste. The chili comes out thicker than normal chili does because it is going to be dehydrated. All my recipes containing beef will be refrigerated until being shipped in our mail drop box. The beef can go bad after a month even though it’s dehydrated because of the higher fat content.
The chicken will be used in chicken fettucini, teriyaki rice and chicken, and turkey trail dinner. The pureed beef will be used in chipped beef stew, stroganoff, and expedition spaghetti. The beef jerky will be eaten at lunch or used to increase protein with ramen. I also cooked extra chicken and beef to also add to ramen or other dried soup packets (like Lipton). The veggies will be added to various dishes as the recipe calls for but also added to various soups to increase our nutrients. We also likely add olive oil to everything to increase calories and fat content. So the only main food group we’re missing is fruit. “How are you going to get your fruit servings if you suck at dehydrating fruit?” you ask. Well on a trip to REI I found a nice little brand called Just tomatoes, etc. They make freeze dry and dehydrated veggies and fruit. So Kenny and I purchased blueberries, strawberries, and pomegranates to add to oatmeal, granola, and other breakfast foods. Just tomatoes has a very large selection but they are a bit pricey for a fixed income so we chose our favorites.
I hope this post accomplishes several things. I hope to ease the fears of friends and family of what I am to be eating on the trail. Also, I hope to help other hikers if they plan to dehydrate food in the future. Most hikers don’t have the money to buy expensive dehydrators and the internet isn’t entirely helpful in guidelines for oven dehydration. I hope other hikers can use this as a reference for oven dehydration. Feel free to shoot me questions in the comments section if you want an tips or tricks for dehydrating.
“The clearest way into the Universe is through forest wilderness” -John Muir
Fun Sized AT Adventure 