Giouvetsi in a Pot
Beef, tomato, and orzo, borrowed from a Greek oven dish and rebuilt for one burner.
- calories
- 900
- weight
- 8 oz
- cal / oz
- 113
- protein
- 50 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 2 min
- cook
- 12 min
- total time
- 14 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
- Backpacking
- Basecamp
- Car camping
- Canoe / raft
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Orzo | 3/4 cup | small pasta cooks fast and fails gracefully |
|---|---|---|
| Freeze-dried or dehydrated beef | 1.5 oz | shredded, not cubed, if you have the choice |
| Tomato powder | 2 tbsp | paste in a tube works too, it just weighs more |
| Dried onion and bell pepper | 1/4 cup | |
| Garlic powder, oregano, cinnamon | 1 tsp total | the cinnamon is a pinch, not a spoonful |
| Hard grating cheese | 3/4 oz | kefalotyri if you find it, parmesan otherwise |
| Olive oil | 1 tbsp | |
| Salt and pepper | to taste |
Method
- Pour 600 ml of water into the pot. Add the beef, dried vegetables, tomato powder, and spices. Let them sit off heat for five minutes while you set up camp.
- Bring it to a boil. The soak time means the beef is already halfway rehydrated by now.
- Stir in the orzo and drop the flame to the lowest simmer that still moves the surface. Stir every minute or the pasta welds to the bottom.
- Cook nine minutes. It should be thick and barely soupy, not swimming. Add a splash of water if it goes dry early.
- Kill the heat, stir in the oil, and grate the cheese over the top. Lid on for two minutes, then eat.
The original is a Greek oven dish that sits in tomato sauce for hours until the pasta drinks it all. That hour count is the whole point at home and completely unavailable on a canister stove, so the work moves elsewhere: tomato powder gives you concentrated sauce without a long reduction, and the five-minute cold soak before lighting the stove does the rehydrating that a slow oven would have done gently.
Orzo is the reason this works in one pot. It cooks in under ten minutes and releases enough starch to thicken the tomato into something that clings, so you never drain anything. Keep the simmer low and keep stirring. The cinnamon sounds wrong and is not; it is what makes this taste Greek instead of like generic red-sauce pasta.
Packing
Everything dry except the cheese and oil goes into one freezer bag at home. Label it, because dried beef and dried mushrooms look identical by headlamp.
Variations
- Swap the beef for a foil packet of chicken, added in the last two minutes so it doesn't shred to nothing.
- Dried mushrooms in place of the meat make it meatless; add a spoon of bouillon to replace what you lose.
https://www.bucatarmaniac.ro/retete/retete-la-slowcooker