[pct-l] Dried meats and Cheese on Trail

[River Malcolm]

Thanks so much Shroomer. I really appreciate any and all reports of
experience with home-dried and cookless rehydrated food -- both
successes and "lessons"!

River--don't have a trail name yet!

On Mon, Jan 7, at Jan 7  10:49, Scott Williams wrote:

> 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
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