Four-Staple Cracked Wheat Porridge
Wheat, dry milk, sugar, salt. The whole pantry-storage doctrine reduced to one breakfast.
- calories
- 690
- weight
- 5.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 125
- protein
- 20 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 13 min
- total time
- 18 min
- water
- 500 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.
- Breakfast
- Canister stove
- Alcohol / Esbit
- Liquid fuel
- Backpacking
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Winter / snow
- Vegetarian
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Whole wheat berries, cracked | 3/4 cup | pulse in a blender at home until they look like coarse sand |
|---|---|---|
| Powdered whole milk | 3 tbsp | |
| Brown sugar | 2 tbsp | honey granules work and pack drier |
| Salt | 1/4 tsp | |
| Butter powder | 2 tbsp | or a tablespoon of oil from a dropper bottle |
| Raisins | 1/4 cup | optional, add them at the start so they plump |
Method
- Bring 500 ml of water to a boil with the salt in it.
- Stir in the cracked wheat and the raisins. Keep stirring for the first thirty seconds or the bottom scorches.
- Drop the flame as low as it will hold and simmer 10 to 12 minutes, stirring every couple of minutes. Add a splash of water if it goes dry before the grain softens.
- Kill the heat. Stir in the milk powder, butter powder, and sugar off the flame so the milk does not curdle into lumps.
- Put the lid on and wait two minutes. It thickens a lot in that time.
This comes out of the standard long-term food storage list, which is mostly four things: whole wheat, dry milk, sugar, and salt. Those four keep for decades in a bucket, which is a strange thing to have in common with a backpacking meal, but the reasons overlap. No refrigeration, no fragile fats, high calories per ounce.
Whole wheat berries will not cook in a reasonable amount of stove fuel. Cracking them at home is the whole trick — coarse pieces hydrate in about twelve minutes instead of an hour. The milk powder and butter powder go in after the flame is off, because both scorch and clump if they hit a hot pot bottom.
Packing
Crack the wheat at home and bag it with the salt. Milk powder, butter powder, and sugar go in a second bag, since they all get added at the end. Cracked wheat holds about six months before the germ goes rancid, so mill it near the trip, not near the bulk purchase.
Variations
- Cut the wheat with 1/4 cup of instant potato flakes to shorten the simmer by a few minutes.
- Skip the sugar, add a bouillon cube and a foil packet of chicken, and it becomes dinner.
https://theprepared.com/blog/review-lds-food-plan