[pct-l] Dehydrating Chicken Results / One pot cury rice + chicken

[jim@rollercoaster.com (Jim Serio)]

Now that I have tons of dehydrated food it's time to begin testing some one
pot meals. I was leaning at bringing a second pot for sauces and gravies,
but I figure I can use my cup for that. My goal is to have 7-10 recipes before
heading out April 15. Here's recipe #1 that I'm hoping others may find useful.

Dehydrating chicken...

I was hoping that the canned chunk chicken, being soaked in water for so long
and very stringy would dehydrate (and re-hydrate) well so I purchased a few 
cans
to test. I used the Valley Fresh brand and  purchased both a 99% fat free 
all white
can and a 96% fat free mixed (white and dark) can. Both 8oz cans. I spread the
chicken out on my dehydrator trays (the American Harvest spice trays work well)
and rinsed off most of the fatty water/sauce that the chicken was coated in. I
dehydrated these at 155 degrees for ~5 hours (until rock hard). See below 
for my
taste test.

One pot chicken curry...

I normally cook the rice and sauce separately but as I mentioned earlier I am
trying to consolidate all my cooking to one pot. For a single serving I add 
1.5 cups
of water to the pot. Add salt/pepper to taste. Add the dried chicken, some 
onion
flakes and 1 block of Golden Curry (there's 5 "blocks" to a cube of this 
which, for me,
seems to be the right amount. Add the rice and bring the water to a boil (I
find that minute rice is usually not soft enough after 5 minutes so I 
prefer to pre-soak
it). After the mix comes to a boil, turn off heat (if possible, leave over 
the heat source).
Wait 5-8 minutes and voila, one pot chicken curry.

Not as good as the curry sauce over the rice, but still pretty tasty.

Side note: I prefer the curry blocks to curry powder. Each cube contains 5 
"blocks"
and weighs 3.5 oz.

Taste test...

I found that the dark meat chicken remained VERY CHEWY even after 10 minutes
of cooking (plus the pre-soak). The white chicken, OTOH, was excellent. Most
of it broke into small shreds when mixed with the rice but you could 
definitely
taste it. A little chicken bouillon and ramon and you have a good chicken 
noodle
soup.

Now time to begin mass production of dehydrating chicken.

Jim