Bushwalk Australia

Food dehydrators. I figure they come under "equipment", even though they are not specifically hiking equipment.

I am wondering what people use. There are many on the market. I'm also wonder what people prepare using these and how they incorporate the dehydrated food into their meals while on the trail as well as cooking methods. Being new to hiking and the concept of dehydrating food I'm keen to learn!

G'day Rosseth,
Welcome to the Forum,
Dehydrators I have a Fowlers Vacola which I am very happy with.
I make Beef Jerky and dry Stews which are easy to rehydrate ,thin sliced roast meats are also good with an instant gravy mix

We have a Luvelo with temperature control that has done everything we needed it to do.
Get one with a thermostat that will run up to about 68C which as I understand it is the temperature required for safely dehydrating meat.

Hi Rosseth,

I also use a Luvello. It's a reasonable entry level machine but if you're looking at dehydrating lots consider one of the more expensive models. I'm on my second Luvello as the element on the first one died. Next time I'll pay for a more reputed model. With that said, they're a good way to get into dehydrating on the cheap.

All of my hiking food food is home made, so dinners are all dehydrated, and anything not dehydrated is already dried when bought (eg. oats, nuts etc...).

In terms of cooking methods, there are a few and what you go with depends on your preferences and your equipment. In a nutshell there are one pot meals, two pot meals and cook in the bag. The carbohydrate you put in your mains can also influence this.

I've posted the recipe for one of my go-to meals on here and it's worth a look as it gives you an idea of a dehy meal that has some complexity in it's prep:

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=12329&p=162900&hilit=curry#p162900

Feel free to drop me a message if you want some advice.

We use one of the Ebay ones. There are many sellers. They look like a box with 8 drawers. It has a thermostat and works well. It's surprising how much surface area you actually need. We used to have one of the round ones with about 4 trays you might see in a retail shop. It was ok but there was a lot of heat variation, the central hole took up a lot of space and the trays were not so easy to fill. The 8 tray box is much easier to use and a lot more room. The only down side is that it's a big box to store.

Pongo that green curry recipe looks great! We will do a batch for our assault on the South Coast Track in Jan. We need 9 nights food which is stretching my repertoire a bit. There's a recent post for a chicken and pomegranate looks interesting too.

Chris

Rosseth, there's an article about dehydrators in August 2014 BWA. From the home screen on this website, move to the right to the magazine, a sinous ridge in South Australia. Below that are old editions. Find August 2014, a lady in a lime top and reaching up. Page six is a good place to look.

I have a Harvest maid dehydrator, quite good. After reading the BWA article I had a thought. Heat rises so the heat and fan should be at the bottom. However, if food is dripping then the heat fan unit becomes sticky. Might it be better to have the heat fan at the top?

I have a 9 tray Excalibur, because I tend to do a lot of dehydrating at one time. An excellent brand.

I got a Lumina brand one from Aldi. Had it working hard all week and havent killed it yet! I am new to dehydrating but am definitely a convert. For example, I worked out this week that tinned tuna dehydrates a treat; heaps cheaper than buying the foil packets and heaps lighter. Happy days.

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Consider wether you want a 'through draft' or 'cross draft' model.
An over simplified explaination is that through drafts are cheaper, cross drafts are better.
Cross drafts typically have square trays and are configured a bit like a low temp fan forced oven. They can do fruit leathers, youghurt and other 'runny' stuff. No need to swap tray positions around during use.
Through drafts tend to have round, stackable trays. Harder to load than square trays, need to swap tray positions during drying to get an even result.

For my (possibly confirmation biased) $0.02 worth I went with the "Sodona" and am very happy with it.
Friends who have borrowed it have since bought their own. There is no way I would willingly go back to off the shelf freeze dried food rather than home made and dehydrated meals.

As for meals... Mostly curries... Penang, Rendang, Massaman etc
Also lots of fruit, in particular home grown bananas and fruit that is not normally sold dried (strawberries, kiwi fruit). Home made muesili bars.

For rehydration (of curries), I use a jet boil, boil the water, cut open plastic bag with meal in it, pour hot water into bag, place bag into jetboil with a little bit of hot water, put lid on. Leave it like this for a while while you set up camp etc and every now and then just fire up jet boil and add a bit more heat. Essentially the meal gets soaked in hot water for half an hour or so, this could be quicker but I prefer to give it plenty of time to rehydrate.
Pour meal from bag into bowl, enjoy!

Btw, this method leaves teh jetboil clean as the food never touches it. Remaining water can be reheated for a cuppa with dinner.

Hope this helps...

Oh, and one more thing... if you use meat in the meals, make it lean, as it is the fat that goes off. I just buy lean cuts and trim well (my dog loves it as she gets all the off cuts)

Kangaroo makes the best jerky (buy it from Coles when on special). Also buy a vacuum sealer and with the food sealed and frozen it will last for years unless of course you eat it. Soak kiwi fruit in orange juice before drying. Nice. A good V slicer also helps keep fruits even in size which means they will dry more evenly. Make sure you have facility to do wet things like soups and roll ups. Usually a solid sheet insert. Blend the dried soup for easier re-hydration. Try roasted sweet potato and pear. If you weigh the food wet and then dry it will help as a guide to how much water you need to add to re-hydrate if not then add hot water gradually. Less is more. Broccoli and carrots do well but not too big. Cooked rice dehydrated weighs less than uncooked and it only takes a few minutes to come back. On some of the longer trips it is fuel that matters so saving time on cooking helps. Same thing with pasta but you can buy 3 minute stuff already so we don't usually bother. We also buy lots of bananas when they are a bit older and they sell them off cheap. They seem to do better than the just ripe. Soak in orange juice or lemon juice first. Apple in lemon juice is good and it stops them browning. We also bought one of those rotary apple peelers/slicer/corer for $20 and it makes doing apples so much quicker. The horses get the core. Having a proper spag bol in the bush is amazing. Even done a sheppard's pie using deb for the top. Not the biggest fan of deb but the one with onion is OK. A bit of instant gravy for the top but you could also make your own. As mentioned, lean meat is best so for mince meat recipes only buy the best mince or make your own.

There is also an entire section devoted to this subject in 'bush tucker' dating back 8 years. You will have to weigh up the cost of doing it yourself but I think it is healthier and I do not have to pay for electricity. The pre-packaged freeze dried meals are not enough of a serve and not all are good.

Do any of you have any experience with dehydrating mango? I'm thinking about eventually doing that myself, as it's rather expensive to buy it from the market.

I have an Excalibur 5 tray. Its great with square trays that you dont need to shuffle around.
I got the timer but realistically I dont need a timer, and I could have gotten the 9 tray in hindsight.
I got some Exalibur Paraflexx ultra silicone non-stick sheets which are great for dehydrating soups and liquids.
I also got some Sedona Silicone drying sheets which are thinner and more flexible than the Paraflexx sheets.
If you have a Kindle consider spending $11.01 on The Ultimate Dehydrator Cookbook by Tammy Gangloff - just for the instructions and information on prepping food, food safety, food storage and also step by step how to dehydrate every type of food imaginable. Note this is not a hiking food book! Its also quite OTT and some of the rehydrated food is very "interesting" but it is a wealth of information and a great reference.

benjabimon wrote:Do any of you have any experience with dehydrating mango? I'm thinking about eventually doing that myself, as it's rather expensive to buy it from the market.

No but here are instructions....

Awesome, thank you!

We have a sunbeam. Had it for several meals (meat) we've taken hiking or overseas. Been great so far.

Mango ?
I used to go to the South Melboune market on a Sunday at around closing time.
I came back once with a tray of mangos for some silly price like $5 .
No way I could eat them all so Y dried most of them.
VERY nice.
(goggle would have told me how to do it...)
Did loads of VERY cheap bananas and even sultana grapes as well as apples and apricots.

jobell wrote:I got a Lumina brand one from Aldi. Had it working hard all week and havent killed it yet! I am new to dehydrating but am definitely a convert. For example, I worked out this week that tinned tuna dehydrates a treat; heaps cheaper than buying the foil packets and heaps lighter. Happy days.

Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk

I guess you used chunks in brine or spring water ? I tried the slices many years ago and they would just not rehydrate properly

Yup chunks but I drained it all really well in a sieve, them mashed it with a fork into much smaller bits - flakes really - then as it dried I broke it up more to ensure no bigger clumps remained. It's been a couple of weeks now since I did the tuna and vacuum sealed it with a silica sachet and it's still looking and feeling really dry - "crunchy" through the pack. Only downside is the wonderful fishy smell that you have to live with while you dehydrate.

jobell wrote:Yup chunks but I drained it all really well in a sieve, them mashed it with a fork into much smaller bits - flakes really - then as it dried I broke it up more to ensure no bigger clumps remained. It's been a couple of weeks now since I did the tuna and vacuum sealed it with a silica sachet and it's still looking and feeling really dry - "crunchy" through the pack.

This is the main reason I'd like a dehydrator. Mackerel, salmon, tuna, to add to cous cous or pasta with some dehy veg. Cheaper than bought meals.

Aldi has the Lumina dehydrators in their catalogue for sale from this coming Wednesday 11 November at $39.99. It's been working really well for me so far and I've been giving it quite a workout. I use baking paper to line the trays if I want to do a sauce.

And as soon as Aldi set up down here in Tassie, I'll be looking at their gear.

jobell wrote:Yup chunks but I drained it all really well in a sieve, them mashed it with a fork into much smaller bits - flakes really - then as it dried I broke it up more to ensure no bigger clumps remained. It's been a couple of weeks now since I did the tuna and vacuum sealed it with a silica sachet and it's still looking and feeling really dry - "crunchy" through the pack. Only downside is the wonderful fishy smell that you have to live with while you dehydrate.

Good to know if you want to keep it longer put it in the Freezer.

jobell wrote:Aldi has the Lumina dehydrators in their catalogue for sale from this coming Wednesday 11 November at $39.99. It's been working really well for me so far and I've been giving it quite a workout. I use baking paper to line the trays if I want to do a sauce.

How noisy are these things when they're operating?

Not very. They just run a heating element and a small fan. It's the smell you have to worry about. Depending on what your dehydrating the food smell can become rather all-consuming in the room(s) housing the dehydrator.