Cache Bucket Rice and Beans
A rice-and-bean dinner built from the same shelf-stable stuff you would stash in an emergency bucket.
- calories
- 720
- weight
- 5.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 131
- protein
- 22 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 3 min
- cook
- 10 min
- total time
- 13 min
- water
- 600 ml boiled
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Canister stove
- Liquid fuel
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Backpacking
- Winter / snow
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
- Gluten free
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Dump and stir
Ingredients
| Instant white rice | 1 cup | parboiled, not raw long grain |
|---|---|---|
| Dehydrated refried beans | 1/2 cup | |
| Tomato powder | 2 tbsp | or a crushed sun-dried tomato handful |
| Vegetable bouillon | 1 cube | check the label if you need it gluten free |
| Chili powder, cumin, garlic powder | 2 tsp total | |
| Olive oil | 1 tbsp | dropper bottle |
| Salt | 1/2 tsp | |
| Fried onions or corn nuts | 1/4 cup | packed separately, added at the end |
Method
- Bring 600 ml of water to a boil and drop in the bouillon cube. Stir until it dissolves.
- Dump in the rice, beans, tomato powder, and spices all at once. Stir hard so the bean powder does not clump.
- Kill the heat, put the lid on, and let it sit ten minutes. Wrap the pot in a jacket if it is cold out.
- Stir in the oil and salt. Scatter the fried onions over the top so they stay crisp.
This started as pantry advice rather than camp cooking: pick one starch, build every meal off it, keep it all in one place. Rice is the right base for that, and it is the right base on trail too. Instant rice and dehydrated refried beans both rehydrate off residual heat, so the stove runs for the boil and nothing else.
The changes from a home version are the wet ingredients. Canned beans and canned tomatoes are mostly water and steel, so they become bean flakes and tomato powder. Cheese is gone, and the oil replaces the calories it would have carried. The fried onions are there for texture, since a pot of this is otherwise uniformly soft.
Packing
Everything dry except the onions goes in one quart freezer bag. Oil in a dropper bottle, onions in their own bag so they do not steam soft.
Variations
- A foil packet of tuna or chicken pushes it past 40 g of protein.
- Swap the tomato powder for a packet of taco seasoning and skip the separate spices.
- Hot sauce packets from a taqueria weigh nothing and fix a bland batch.
https://thesurvivalmom.com/mini-food-cache