I hall now move on and add a few recipes. These will only be hear to illustrate what can be done, but a few of them are equally as good as normal food at home.

Bob and Rose at Backpackinglight.co.uk are writing a dehydation cookbook. I should really say that Rose has already written it. Bob just has to lay out the pages.

Come on Cartwight, get the finger out ….

… you can see the interest around here!

A food dehydrator can produce not only some absolutely sublime fruit and vegetable dishes but also some great trail food.

Fruit

Is easily prepared. Slice your fruit into thin slices, place on dehydrator tray and dehydrate until you have fruit chips. (This can take longer than you think).

Fruits that works well here include: banana, strawberry (but try and gets ones that taste of something in the first place, raspberry, blackberry, apple, pear, peach, plum and so on.

I tend to take a while bunch of mixed, dried, fruit and mix them together in a large Aloksak. This I use as a snack as I walk and desert in the evening …

… and I tell you what, sprinkle some on your porridge in the morning (or add to muesli) and you really will have improved the taste of your breakfast.

What you end up with is a wonderful mix of tastes with little nuggets of red fruits simply bursting with flavour in the mouth.

You will probably end up doing this right through the year and not simply waiting until there is a backpacking trip. Far, far, better than any commercially dried products — even those from health food shops

Vegetables

These can be prepared in much the same way. Carrots ad other root vegetables work well. Cauliflower is unbelievably good. You must blanch your vegetables for a couple of minutes in boiling water before you slice and add to a dehydrating tray.

A vegetable mix is great to have in a pack pocket to munch on as you walk.

Dried, mixed, vegetables can also simply be added to carbs for a quick meal, either for a quick lunch (with couscous) or in the evening. Chillies, peppers and onion work well here.

Fruit Leathers

These are amazing things. You simply spread out a fruit puree onto a baking tray and then dehydrate. You end up with a leathery-kind of product which is very concentrated and taste gorgeous. Simply break off a bit and chew.

Some soft fruits can simply be blended together and then dried. Other fruits such as apple and rhubarb work well but need to be cooked first (and you may need to add some sugar). Apricot is a good base for a leather

I also find that fruit and yogurt smoothies work really well too. Simply blend up your mixture and then dehydrate. Comes out like a leather.

Vegetable Soups

I’ve added these because they can also be lovely. Ingredients need to be chopped quite small but in many ways the simplest thing to do is to simply liquidise them. Drying then proceeds as for potato.

Leek and potato, lentil and tomato, pea, brocolli (surprisingly good) and mushroom all work well.

Remember to use milk for taste rather than butter or other fats. TRy and keep oil to a bare minimum when sweating leeks or onions (or simply simmer them in water first).

When we eat our home dried meals we will be eating with a portion (or two) of carbs, pasta, rice, couscous, potato and so on. These can be added to the sauce (and I will provide some recipes that do that) or they can be stored separately.

Couscous is an old favourite for backpackers. It is very quick, light and works brilliantly with the pot cozy system. But over a week or two you can get, well, very fed up of couscous. Fortunately by pre cooking and drying other carbs we can have something that is just as quick and easy to prepare as couscous .

Rice

Quick cook rice that you buy in the shops is actually prepared this way, i.e. it is pre cooked and dried. I think tasty rices such as basmati and Thai rice really works well like this.

Simply steam your rice. Now there are many ways than this, but these two will always work

1. Add a measure of rice to a pan and the add twice the volume of water (or just under twice). Bring to a rolling simmer, turn down heat and leave to steam for about 20 minutes.

2. Add a measure of rice to a bowl and add twice the amount of boiling water. Cover with cling film. Leave to absorb for 20 mins (fine with white long grain rice).

When the rice is cooked, and the water absorbed, place on a drying sheet. Dehydrate until thoroughly dry. Place in zipped bags and crush to break up the grains.

NOTE: make sure that all of the rice is dry. If some feels a little damp break up the clump and dry some more. Wet rice goes off quickly and you will find a green-infested rice when you come to cook it.

To use, simply add to your food when you place it in the cooking pot. It will quickly rehydrate as you cook the food.

Pasta

This works in a similar way. Cook your pasta of choice (tagliatelle and penne works best I think). Drain. Place on drying sheet and dehydrate until thoroughly dry.

This rehydrates very quickly and, of course, the pasta has already been cooked. Pasta in a few seconds.

Potato

I don’t know about you but I hate commercially-dried potato. It is full of salt and has that unmistakable taste of preservative about it. The French are much better at it. Most French supermarkets sell a range of dehydrated soups and potato purées (mouseline) that are fabulous. They tend to cook their potatoes in milk before it is dried. Of course, you can’t add butter before you dry something but it is surprising how well milk works.

You can easily replicate this at home.

The tick is to make a potato purée — quite a wet one — rather than traditional mash. You don’t want lumps in it. Using a ricer gives great results, or when drained add more milk until it is very smooth. It doesn’t matter how thin it is as you’re going to remove the moisture anyway.

You will end up with a kind of thickish pancake like mixture. This can be broken up and placed in bags. It will take a while to reheat. If you have a food processor simply grind to a powder.

Add to cooking pot to taste.

You can make more exotic mash by cooking the potatoes in milk with a bay leaf or two to infuse (a bay tree in the garden is always a good thing to have). Add a clove or two of garlic with the potatoes and mash with them

Don’t add too much salt. Salty food takes longer to dry (a rule for all dishes). Carry a little sachet of salt and pepper with you when you walk if you must).

Virtually all carbohydrate sources can be dried this way although there’s probably no benefit in pre-drying those foodstuffs (such as couscous and quinola) that cook very quickly.

For a difference try replacing rice with bulgar wheat occasionally.

So, let’s start thinking about the food. We’ll start at the most obvious place for UK hikers — dried casserole-type meals.

Take Your Favourite Recipes

The first thing to make clear is that you start with one of your favourite or usual recipes. You can just dry these are they are but it is beast to tweak things a little. These tweaks will give you the best results and food that is reasonably long lasting.

Effect on Taste

Dehydration does have an impact on taste and this works more or less in the opposite way to freezing. If you freeze a garlic rich dish and leave in the freezer for some time you will often find that once it is thawed that the taste of garlic overpowers everything. For this reason lots of recipes will suggest that you omit the garlic and then add it prior to consumption after it has thawed.

Dehydration deadens taste somewhat. You will end up with eatable food but not quite as tasty. I find that spicier food dehydrates better in that it is still packed full of taste when you eat it. I’m talking spice and herbs here not necessarily chillie heat. I do think that chillie heat is reduced a little but not that much — don’t over compensate here. I’m thinking about subtler flavours such as basil, coriander, cinnamon and so on.

In general well spiced food works best.

Be Very Careful with Fat

Fat is a problem. Firstly, it doesn’t properly dry as there is not that much water to be lost. As a result the fat in your food will deteriorate at a faster rate than the rest of the food. This does mean that when you rehydrate you may find the food tastes fatier than usual.

So, be careful with fats.

Some people will, for example, simmer onion and garlic in a little water before they add it to a dish I find this is not really needed if you are going to be consuming the food within a month or two. But do be very light on the touch with olive oil or sunflower oil.

Secondly, use leaner meat than you might normally.

I often make a Bolognese sauce with 50 percent beef and 50 percent pork, or I include pancetta or streaky bacon When ‘m dehydrating I’ll make my own mince, buying reasonably lean frying steak and pulsing it in a food processor. If you don’t have a food processor then buy lean beef mince from the butchers. Leave out the pork and the bacon.

The same goes with lamb. If you’re using lamb use lean lamb steaks as your base.

Mince Your Meat

Not everyone does this, but I strongly recommend you to mince or pulverise all of your meat.

Big chunks of meat not only take a long time to dry they take forever to re-hydrate. Chicken is a particular problem here. It takes a long time to dry and a long time to reconstitute. I tried slicing chicken breast very thinly but this didn’t help. Eating chicken that hasn’t been properly reconstituted is horrible with stuff just getting stuck in your teeth and which takes days to get out (or hours with a tooth pick).

In general mincing is pretty straight forward. I do find that chicken is a bit messy though. The meet tends to ‘congeal’ in the sauce and I use a hand blitzer to bring it all back together.

If you are adding vegetables it also a good idea to ensure that they are added i reasonably small pieces rather than huge chunks.

Dehydration Times

It does take a long time to dehydrate a meal and you just have to be patient. It is difficult to give real trying times although some things take longer — the more tomato in a dish the longer it will take to dry. It is not unusual to come towards the end of the recommended drying time to find that some of the food is still a little moist. Simply break it up a bit and dry some more.

I nearly always follow the same system. I make my food in the evening and start drying it towards the end of the evening. I let the machine run overnight. In the morning I check the food, break up any clumps that have formed that will retain moisture and then leave the machine to continue running until I get back home in the evening. That will usually have done the job.

Storage

After switching off the machine let the food cool. I then add it to those zip locked freezer bags.

It is a good idea to be clear about portion control before you start — one tray for two portions or something like that. This means it is relatively easy to store the food in sensible single or double portions.

Stored like this the food should happily last a couple of months but you can extend shelf-life by storing the dried food in a freezer. Stored this way the food will last indefinitely.

Rehydration

It does some energy to re-hydrate your food. Just add water and soak and you’ll wait a long time. Here are three tied and tested backpacking methods for re-hydration.

Version 1. A very traditional method. Half way through the day take out your food and add a little water to it — this is nearly always less than you think you need. But with practice if gets easier to judge the amounts. The food probably needs transferring to a tougher container like an Aloksak (backackinglight.co.uk or hike-lite). Be careful how you store the package in your pack or pocket in your pack. That afternoon’s walking will gradually agitate the food and you should find that it is properly re-hydtated when you stop for the evening.

Version 2. It is not always easy to stop half way through the day — in really bad weather you will want to just keep going. When you make camp simply empty the dried food into your pot and add water. Bring to the boil, turn off the heat and leave the food for 15 minutes or so. Turn on the heat again and stir and you should have perfect food. Takes longer of course and uses more fuel.

Version 3. This is what I tend to do these days. This final method utilises the Pot Cozy system that is becoming more and more popular. First, you have to make your own pot cozy. Cheap but effective material for making your pot cozy is available from backpackinglight.co.uk.

You do have to make your pot cozy which is pretty straightforward. You want something into which your pot fits snugly. Fashion a bottom and also a lit for the pot.

When you make camp add dried food and water and bring to the boil. Then place in the pot cozy and place the cozy top on the pot and lid. Simple leave for 10-15 minutes. You’ll find that the food is perfectly cooked through and is still piping hot. Very fuel efficient.

Next up: Carbohydrates.

So, you fancy a dehdrator? What should we be looking for, how much should we pay and what options do we have?

Price

Dehydrators are not cheap, rather they are a long term investment. It is important to clock this straight away as you may well find yourself buying a cheap dehydrator initially and then quickly replacing it with something more robust. This is what happened to me. My initial dehydrator was quite cheap but it only really lasted me twelve months before I replaced it with one of the most robust models on the market. This is a purchase that it is worth thinking about.

Two good places to look on the web are UK Juicers and our own Backpackinglight.co.uk. These will give you a good guide but as ever you can shop around on the web.

Types

In simple terms there are two types of dehydrator. The first type use circular trays with a whole in the middle. The motor pushes warm air up through a central shaft and this is spread across the food when the dehydrator lid is in place. Here is a picture of one such machine.

The second type uses a filament at the back of the dehydrator giving you access to large dehydration trays. This style is dominated by Excalibur dehydrators which are general reckoned to be the toughest and most robust you can buy, but at a price.

So, let’s look at cost and range (as of 2/2/09)

Choices

The cheapest dehydrator you’ll find in the UK is the basic Hottop machine which sells at £69 at UK Juicers and only £63.61 at backpackinglight.co.uk.

Both companies then offer the Stockli machines at £83.18 (BPLUK) and £89 (UJ). These seem more robust machines and have a good following. You can easily buy extra trays — these just stack on top of each other. This might be important as once you start preparing food for any lengthy trek you need good capacity.

BPLUK also offer the machine that was my first buy. This is out of stock at the moment. Won’t mention names but I’d avoid this one!

Having used a variety of these machines now I have settled on the Excalibur machine. These machines are made in the USA and are very tough. The basic 5 tray model (which is capacity enough) comes in at £199. This is quite a price hike and puts these machines in a different league. They are superior machines but this might be just too much for a first machine, although if you think you’ll be using it a lot — and the price tag hasn’t knocked you out — I’d recommend it.

Trays

Basically the machines work in the same way. Cooked food is placed on trays that have mesh bases, allowing the hot air to circulate efficiently throughout the machine. Special trays or sheets of Paraflexx should be included to allow you to dry wet food stuffs. These have micro perforations in them that let warm air move through without letting liquid drip on to the floor of the dehydrator.

What am I paying for?

So, there you have it a simple range of dehydrators. Basically, the more expensive the dehydrator the better motor you’re buying.

There are some extra frills that you can buy which are pretty worthless. The most prominent of these is a ‘timer’. A timer seems a useful thing but you’ll find that the dehydration of most wet food dishes takes about 18 hours or so. I tend to start dehydrating in the evening and leave the machine running all night and the next day. One of the good things about dehydration is that you can’t overdo it — you can’t ‘burn’ food by taking it too far.

So, that’s the hardware dealt with. You can get started for just short of £100.

Next I’ll move on to start looking at the food!

Whenever I’m asked what is the best piece of backpacking kit I’ve ever bought there’s no hesitation. By far my best buy has been my food dehydrator.

This strikes some people as odd but dehydrators are wonderful for preparing for those times when you are backpacking away from shops and civilization. Home dehydrated food has little in common with commercial products and — certainly in this country — it really enhances the camping experience.

I can remember when I’d finally had enough of commercially dried food. I was in the Pyrenees, camping at the side of a high tarn. I stopped walking at midday, a chance to do some washing and just have a relaxing day in some coolish weather. I opened a packet of chicken curry. I seldom remember eating anything as dire as this. The food tasted very peculiar, the overwhelming taste being one of cinnamon; it was more apple pie than curry. The protein in this dish was supposed to be chicken, but it could have been anything. And with all commercially dried food there was a pervasive taste of pot-noodle type salts and preservatives. If you like pot noodle, then look away for the next few days!

Home dehydrated food is wonderfully versatile. Not only can you produce complete meals a dehydrator can be used to dry a range of ingredients that can simply be mixed with couscous or some other grain. Home dried fruit is a simply wonderful trail food, indeed, it is so good that you will want to produce this all the year round; it’s simply too good to be just left for backpacking trips.

If you are a reasonably proficient home cook then you’ll find dehydrating pretty easy. There are some rules for preparing food for dehydrating and I’ll cover them in this series. But it is remarkable what you can dehydrate yourself.

For me dehydration comes alive when I’m backpacking in this country, particularly in Scotland and Wales. At the end of long day of trudging through Scottish bogs, let’s face it, you’re looking forward for something to eat. And you do look forward to eating your own home-prouced food, not least because you can prepare proper sized portions!

Looking at my trial diary I see that my last TGO Challenge was powered by: Thai Chicken Green Curry; Bolognese sauce; chilli con carne; lamb and spinach curry; beef and ale casserole; vegetable curry; and lamb provencal. I was also carrying a home-made, fruit, trail mix and home-made fruit leathers which are amazing things. I also carried some home-dried carbohydrate as well. Pre dried rice is reconstituted very quickly and home prepared mashed potato was a revaluation. When you begin to experiment it is amazing what you can take with you. Rose Cartwright produces home made deserts and has even succeeded in producing a very decent fish pie.

If this has captured your imagination then home dehydrating might be for you.

While a dehydrator is a great buy they are not cheap. Dehydrators come into their own when they are used. Over a couple of years they will save you a lot of money. But they are probably not something to buy on a whim. In these credit crunch times dehydrators make a lot of sense, but they are a purchase that needs proper consideration.

So, to start the project we will look at the different kinds of dehydrators that are on the market.

The snow is falling hard. The back is still immobile. It seems a good time to start the Dehydration project.

What I intend to do is to post the contributions here in the first instance to allow you to comment and feedback. Eventually, I’ll create some dedicated web pages with some recipes and so on.