Cheeseburger Hash
A casserole flattened into one pot: beef, potato, cheese, bacon, and a pickle on top.
- calories
- 790
- weight
- 5.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 144
- protein
- 42 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 2 min
- cook
- 12 min
- total time
- 14 min
- water
- 450 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
- Backpacking
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Dehydrated hash brown potatoes | 3/4 cup | the shelf-stable carton kind, not frozen |
|---|---|---|
| Freeze-dried ground beef | 1/2 cup | cooked crumbles, not raw |
| Dried minced onion | 1 tbsp | |
| Bacon bits | 2 tbsp | real bacon, the shelf-stable pouch |
| Tomato powder | 2 tbsp | or a single-serve ketchup packet stirred in at the end |
| Dry mustard | 1/2 tsp | |
| Worcestershire powder | 1/2 tsp | the liquid works too, in a dropper bottle |
| Cheddar cheese powder | 3 tbsp | |
| Olive oil | 1 tbsp | |
| Dill pickle chips | 4-5 | a shelf-stable single-serve pouch, packed dry |
Method
- Boil 450 ml of water. Dump in the hash browns, beef, onion, and half the bacon bits.
- Cover and pull it off the flame. Ten minutes. The potatoes need the full time or they stay gritty.
- Back on low heat for a minute, stirring, until most of the free water is gone.
- Kill the heat. Stir in the tomato powder, mustard, Worcestershire, cheese powder, and the oil.
- Scatter the rest of the bacon over the top and lay the pickles on last.
The original is a casserole: browned beef under cheese under a layer of frozen tater tots, forty minutes in an oven. None of that survives a pack. Frozen potatoes need a freezer, Velveeta needs a fridge, and a 13x9 pan needs a kitchen. What is left once you strip those out is the actual idea, which is beef and potato bound by cheese and sharpened with mustard and Worcestershire.
Dehydrated hash browns do the potato work and rehydrate in a covered pot off the flame, which saves fuel. Cheese powder and oil replace the melted block cheese; the powder alone tastes thin, so the oil is not optional. The pickles matter more than they look. Everything else in the pot is soft, salty, and the same temperature, and a cold sour bite at the end is what keeps it from reading as mush.
Packing
Everything dry except the pickles goes in one quart bag. Cheese powder clumps if it gets warm, so squeeze the air out. Pickles ride in their own pouch or the whole bag ends up wet.
Variations
- Freeze-dried ground turkey swaps in at the same volume.
- A packet of yellow mustard and a packet of ketchup from a burger place cover the tomato powder and dry mustard for free.
- Crushed corn chips on top get you the crunch the tater tots were doing.
https://mealswithmaria.site/cheeseburger-tarter-tot-bake-recipe