Stop Buying Overpriced Backpacking Food. Here’s How to Make Nutritious, Dehydrated Camping Meals Yourself
Figuring out what to eat on a camping or backpacking trip can become its own adventure, especially in the backcountry, when access to civilization is limited. Sure, there are plenty of tasty pre-packaged backpacking meals you can take with you for a hot meal on overnight hiking trips, but they can be expensive and high in ingredients, like sodium, that you may want to avoid.
This is where DIY dehydrated meals come in. By using a dehydrator, which costs about $40, cutting your food into thin slices, making meals that avoid high-fat ingredients (think cheese, eggs, dairy), and packing them in Mylar bags, you can make super affordable, healthy backpacking meals on your own. This lightweight, cost-effective ($3 a meal), sustainable solution can help ensure you eat enough calories to power you through your journey, only eat meals that support your health goals, and also get to experience the coziness of a homemade dish in the presence of a predator or two. Here's what you need to know to make your own dehydrated or freeze-dried backpacking meals at home.
Can You Make Your Own Dehydrated Backpacking Meals?
You can always place an order online and have some dehydrated meals sent to your doorstep, ready for your next camping trip. But at $10 per meal on average, your camping budget can easily skyrocket, and you’ll probably end up eating the same three dishes over and over. That doesn’t make a happy camper.
After an initial investment of as low as $40 (or a couple thousand, if you’re so inclined) for a dehydrator or freeze-drier, each meal can go for as little as $3 a pop. This, added to the fact that you’ll be eating delicious homemade dishes adapted to your dietary needs, whose ingredients you know and can easily pronounce, makes DIY dehydrated backpacking meals an ideal solution—especially for large camping parties or long trips.
Freeze-dried or dehydrated meals may seem like some complicated sci-fi innovation, but they’re not, and you can make them as simple or as elevated as you want. You can start by processing leftovers and saving them for your next camping trip, or trying out specific recipes (like chillis or dhals) to give a gourmet touch to that upcoming hike.
How to Dehydrate or Freeze-Dry Camping Meals
Dehydrating and freeze-drying are just two methods for doing the same thing—taking out as much moisture as possible from food. The former uses air and high temperature to get rid of the water, while the latter uses low temperature and vacuum.
Each of these methods has its pros and cons (we’ll get to those in a bit), but they both require a similar approach: You cook your meal normally, put it in the machine, wait a while, and voilá—astronaut food.
However, no matter what machine you get, there’s one maxim you should keep in mind at all times—water is the enemy. Moisture enables mold and bacteria to proliferate, ruining your meals and putting you at risk of food poisoning, which is not a good idea even in an urban setting, let alone in the middle of nowhere.
To prevent moisture from lingering, you’ll need to do two things:
Process your food in thin, even layers
Lay out your food on the trays of your machine in thin, even layers (or slices, if you’re working with veggies or fruit).
The more homogeneous the layout, the more easily and evenly your machine will be able to extract water. This is crucial to ensure food safety and a long shelf life for your meals.
Be. Patient.
Dehydrating and freeze-drying take hours—several of them, in fact. Water content varies depending on the food, and dehydrating times vary depending on how potent your machine is.
Plan ahead and make sure that your food is fully dry before you pack or store it.
For dehydrators, consider around seven hours for lentils and rice, between eight and 10 for low-water vegetables (think carrots), and up to 18 for high-water ones (like tomatoes). You can consult useful dehydration guides online, but you should always double-check your machine’s instructions for accurate dehydrating and freeze-drying times.
If you’re making a meal with multiple ingredients, find the one that takes the longest to dry out, and that’s the time you should consider.
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Extra Supplies for Your Dehydrating/Freeze-Drying Journey
Most machines come with basic accessories for dehydrating your meals, but adding a couple of tools to your arsenal can make life easier.
Silicone sheets or parchment paper
If your machine’s trays are non-stick, you may skip this, but people online recommend using silicone sheets or parchment paper. This (shocker) will prevent your food from sticking to the trays and make it easier to handle.
Make sure to read your machine’s instructions carefully to check that either paper or silicone is safe to use.
Mylar bags
You can store your dehydrated or freeze-dried meals in whatever container you want, but some are more practical than others. For long backpacking and camping trips, Mylar bags are extremely efficient as they protect food from light, allow for air removal (air is another food safety enemy), and are light and not bulky. If you treat them carefully enough, you can easily reuse them, making them a somewhat sustainable solution.
You can also store your meals in mason jars (sustainable but impractical because of their heft and bulk) or zip-top bags (not as durable or protective as Mylar bags).
The best solution is the one that adapts best to your particular adventure.
A kitchen scale
When planning meals for a camping or hiking trip, a kitchen scale can be extremely helpful in two ways.
First, if you’re going on a long and arduous trip, it can help you calculate your calorie intake and ensure you’re eating enough. Just use a calorie calculator app, find your meal’s total value, and divide portions based on what you want your intake to be while in the backcountry.
Second, you can use the kitchen scale to calculate the exact amount of water you’ll need later to rehydrate your food. Just weigh a portion before and after putting it in the dehydrator or freeze-dryer. The difference in weight is the water you’ll need to add at the campsite to achieve the perfect consistency. Make sure to write it down on the bag or container for later reference.
Speaking of which…
A good ol’ marker and some adhesive labels
It should come as no surprise that dehydrated and freeze-dried food doesn’t look exactly the same as when you serve it fresh at home.
This might not affect your dish’s flavor or nutritional content (more on that later), but it’ll make it harder to know what you’re eating if it’s been a while since you cooked it. Labeling your food will make it easier to identify, and keeping a record of when you cooked and packed it will help you determine if it’s still good to eat.
Keeping track of dates will also allow you to consume your dehydrated meals more efficiently, prioritizing the ones that’ve been stored the longest and leaving fresher ones for future outings.
Oxygen and moisture absorbers
If you’ve ever wondered what that silica pack in your new InstantPot is, we’re here to inform you that it is a moisture absorber. It basically helps keep residual water at bay to protect your food from spoilage. Oxygen absorbers work in the same way but with air.
These can be very useful, but they can also be dangerous if you forget about them before rehydrating your meal.
What’s the Best Way to Store Dehydrated or Freeze-Dried Camping Meals?
Remember the “water is the enemy” maxim we mentioned above? Add to that air, light, and warmth.
Considering this, the best place to store your dehydrated or freeze-dried meals is the one that makes it most challenging for mold and bacteria to thrive. That is a cool, dry, and dark place—the cooler, drier, and darker, the better. If you have enough space, putting your portioned or unportioned food in the freezer is always a good idea, but if that doesn’t work, a dry, closed cupboard will do.
When it comes to controlling air exposure, zip-top or Mylar bags are great alternatives. Just fill them halfway and roll them gently but tightly to let all the air out before sealing them. If you want to go the extra mile, you can add oxygen absorbers or invest in a vacuum sealer. You’ll be stepping into prepper territory, which means you’ll be able to store your meals for years on end.
However, no matter how much you control the environmental variables, there’s one inescapable truth: dehydration and freeze-drying are different methods of preserving food with different baseline shelf lives.
Related: I Tested Over 25 Rain Jackets—These Are the Top Picks That'll Keep You Dry, Inside and Out
Dehydrating vs. Freeze-Drying Food
Now that we’ve got you all pumped about your DIY backpacking meals, it’s time to address the big question: Should you dehydrate your meals or freeze-dry them?
Both methods have pros and cons, and the choice will depend on factors like your budget and how often and for how long you plan to go hiking or camping. We’ll break it down for you.
Most cost-efficient: Dehydrating
Dehydrators have become a widespread kitchen appliance, and as such, you can easily find one for as low as $40. If you widen your search to include used machines, you can probably find one for an even lower price.
The same cannot be said for freeze-dryers, which can usually go for over $1,500. These machines are not plug-and-play either, as they require oil changes and filters, which add up to your final costs.
You should also consider that the freeze-drying process is, on average, a lot longer than dehydration (up to 20 hours in some cases), which might considerably impact your power bill at the end of the month.
Longest shelf life: Freeze-drying
Freeze-drying removes almost 99 percent of moisture from food, whereas dehydrators can only go up to around 95 percent. This difference might seem trivial, but as we’ve already established, moisture is the enemy, so a higher water content means food can spoil more easily.
Depending on what you’re working with and how you store it, dehydrated food can last you up to a year, whereas freeze-dryed meals can be good for literally decades.
This might be important if you’re currently in your prepper era, but it might not be nearly as relevant if you’re a casual camper.
A higher water content also means heavier food, but again, the difference might only be relevant if you’re packing for a long trip.
On the other hand, lower water content means you’ll need more water to rehydrate your meal later, which may become a problem if you have limited access to it.
Best food quality: Undecided
Freeze-dried food tends to retain nearly all of its nutritional value, along with its texture, flavor, and color. This technically makes it visually more appealing and tastier than dehydrated food.
However, you’ll still be eating a highly modified food, so it’s up to you to determine if the considerable cost difference is worth it for a prettier meal.
What might make the difference, though, is the broader range of foods you can freeze-dry compared to those you can successfully dehydrate.
Dehydrating is great for veggies, grains, stews, and soups, as well as fruits with a lower water content, such as apples and peaches. But these machines cannot handle fatty or eggy foods well—think some meat preparations, spongy pastries, or anything with significant cheese or dairy content.
Freezer-dryers, on the other hand, can handle mostly anything, so you won’t be limited to what you can pack for your trip.
At the end of the day, making your own dehydrated or freeze-dried backpacking meals is a choose-your-own-adventure kind of journey. The right solution will always be the one that fits your eating and hiking habits the most.