Dehydrating meals is a good way for preserving them.
Dehydrated meals are pre-cooked meals that are dehydrated so that they can be stored and then be re-hydrated when you're ready to eat. Dehydrating foods preserves it, retaining nutritional value and freshness. It also decreases the size of the food, which is useful when you're going on a backpacking trip and want to carry a light load. Bringing along dehydrated food on your trip is healthier and often more economical than purchasing packaged foods that may contain preservatives, MSG, large amounts of sodium, and trans fat. All you need to make your own dehydrated meals is a food dehydrator, which costs about $40 to $50 as of 2011. There are two types of food dehydrators: vertical and horizontal.
Instructions
1. Prepare a meal you intend to dehydrate. Smaller pieces of food dehydrate faster than large chunks, so you may want to slice or dice meat, vegetables, and so on, if you're pressed for time before you need to take the meal on a trip.
2. Turn your food dehydrator on and allow it to preheat for 10 minutes.
3. Place your prepared meal in the trays of your food dehydrator. Do not allow pieces of food to touch each other; keep the food spaced out to help it dry well.
4. Rotate the trays if your food dehydrator requires the rotation of its trays during the dehydrating process. Check the manufacturer's manual instructions to see if this or any other particular action is required during the drying.
5. Wait while your food dehydrates, which can take anywhere between six to 10 hours. Check on your food about every half hour after five hours have passed, so you can remove bits that have already dried. You can tell whether food is already dried if it's dried to the touch or hard. Dried vegetables come out quite firm, and fruit comes out a little firm but not as hard as dried vegetables.
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