[pct-l] Dried meats and Cheese on Trail

[Scott Williams]

Great questions about food over the past few days, and I've finally got
time to chime in.  I went stoveless this year on my CDT thru hike and dried
and vacuum sealed almost all the meat and veggies I used.  The meals were
the best I've ever had on trail as they were as big as I wanted, which
store meals never are, and had a much higher percentage of protein and
veggies than any I've ever bought, and much more than the mac and cheese
and Lipton Sides I subsisted on several years ago when I hiked the PCT.
 Why Not, who hiked the trail with me, also dried her meals and loved them.
 We traded off sometimes for variety.

It took most of the winter last year with a big food dehydrator to get that
many months of food prepped before the hike, but I ended up with quite a
following of people coming up trail behind me who started collecting the
extras I was leaving in hiker boxes.  You don't need to pressure cook the
chicken and meat (the question came up in an earlier post) as you're not
canning it and needing a sterile environment, you are simply removing the
moisture and keeping it from getting wet before you get around to
rehydrating it, a very ancient and basic technique for preserving food.
 The meals I made over the course of the winter lasted from 8 to 9 months
from the time of drying without using refrigeration or freezing to prolong
its shelf life.  That meant that by the last 2 weeks of my hike, some of it
had begun to get kind of funky.  I never got sick from it, but it just
smelled off and I chose to supply from the last few towns on trail.  When I
do it again, I'll freeze some of the dried foods to be brought out by my
resupply trail angel closer to the time I'll be eating them.

Particularly funky were the powdered cheeses that had been out of their
original packages for 7 months and more.  They were like the mac and cheese
pack cheeses and I loved what they added to the meals, but out of their
original packages for that length of time caused some of the meals to take
on a bit of a limburger cheese aroma, and I chickened out on continuing to
eat them.  In retrospect, I should have kept the cheese separate and added
it later.  Because they were mixed in, the whole meal was ruined toward the
end of the hike.  The chicken also began to get funky, but that was a bit
later, only really getting noticeable in those last few weeks.  But the
pork and beef help up well, and none of the veggies ever went bad.  So much
for the learning curve.

I based all my meals around instant brown rice or instant mashed potatoes.
 Rehydrating the rice, meat and veggies took the same time, two hours at
least, but 4 or 5 hours, even better.  Keep the instant mashed potatoes
separate as they soak up all the water and stop the rest from rehydrating
well.  Just mix them in at the last minute as they take no time at all.

I bought whole pork loins which I cut in two, lay on a bed of rosemary and
garlic in a large roasting pan and rubbed them heavily in spices.  They
went uncovered into a 500degree oven for 10 minutes to give them a bit of
crust and glazing and then I tented them with foil and turned the oven down
to 175 and slow roasted them all night.  By the next morning I had nearly
fatless pulled pork to die for.  I shredded it in large pieces and dried
it.  That became the basis for a number of recipes.  Large beef roasts I
thinly sliced and added salt, soy sauce, garlic and chili and anything else
that struck my fancy and dried in a smoker over hickory and then finished
them off in the dehydrator.  It was great beef jerky.

For chicken I smoke cooked some until they were fall off the bone texture
and even just bought several precooked from Costco.  Skinned and boned and
with most of the fat removed they dehydrated easily and were delicious.

For veggies I relied heavily on my own dried carrots, celery, butternut
squash (delicious) kale, collards, mustard and beets and lots of seaweeds I
gathered on Pacific beaches, but also got great dried veggies from my local
Korean market.  They use lots of dried foods in their basic cuisine and
they are cheaper than at health food stores.  Dried onions are cheap at
Costco.  Dried baked potatoes were wonderful, but took the full 5 hours to
rehydrate.  When Lint got hold of some of my meals he thought the potatoes
were some kind of meat because they were so chewy, but it was just that he
hadn't begun soaking them early enough.

Having a big chunk of meat and a recognizable vegetable in each bite made
for great eating on trail.  In the past I'd cut the meats up really small,
which worked but didn't give the wonderful mouthful of meat that leaving
them larger did.

I began soaking breakfast (rolled grains, nuts and dried fruit which I
topped with yogurt made from Nido and cultured daily on trail, way better
than Nido straight up) after dinner.  After eating breakfast I'd put the
water on my lunch meal which had 4 to 5 hours to soak and really get tender
and then after lunch I'd begin soaking dinner.  It was so much better than
the cooked meals I'd eaten on the PCT that I hope I never go back to eating
store bought.

What I didn't have on trail, and I lusted after, was really good, greasy
pemican.  Why Not made some that was wonderful and Diane, who met us in the
Winds, also made absolutely terrific, very light and incredibly caloric,
pemican.  I hope they chime in with their recipes as the stuff was like
ambrosia in the woods and I can see why Native Americans, trappers and
voyageurs all lived on the stuff.

Well that's enough for now.

Shroomer