Home-Dehydrated Chili and Rice
Chili you cooked in your own kitchen, dried flat, and brought back with a pot of water.
- calories
- 620
- weight
- 5 oz
- cal / oz
- 124
- protein
- 34 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 15 min
- total time
- 25 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
- Alcohol / Esbit
- Backpacking
- Canoe / raft
- Basecamp
- Winter / snow
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Dehydrate ahead
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Lean ground beef or turkey | 1/2 lb raw | 90/10 or leaner; fat goes rancid in storage |
|---|---|---|
| Canned beans | 1 cup | kidney or pinto, rinsed |
| Crushed tomatoes | 1 cup | |
| Onion and bell pepper | 1 cup total, diced small | |
| Chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, salt | 2 tbsp total | |
| Instant rice | 3/4 cup | packed separately |
| Olive oil | 1 tbsp | added at camp, not before drying |
Method
- At home: brown the meat, drain every bit of fat off, then simmer it with the beans, tomatoes, vegetables, and spices until thick. Cool it.
- Spread the chili thin on lined dehydrator trays. Dry at 135°F for 8 to 10 hours, until nothing is tacky and the beans rattle.
- Break it up and bag one meal per quart bag with the instant rice in its own bag.
- In camp: bring 600 ml of water to a boil. Stir the dried chili in, cover, and pull it off the heat.
- Wait 10 minutes. Return to a low flame for 2 minutes if it still has crunch, stirring so it does not scorch.
- Stir in the rice, cover again for 5 minutes off the heat, then pour the oil over and eat.
Commercial freeze-dried dinners are mostly air and money. A home dehydrator turns a pot of real chili into flakes that weigh a fifth of what they did and keep for a year in a sealed bag. The limiting factor is fat: it does not dry, and it will go rancid in the bag. So the meat gets drained hard at home and the calories come back as oil poured on at camp.
Run the whole thing once in your kitchen before the trip, using only the pot, stove, and water you plan to carry. That is where you find out that the beans need twelve minutes instead of eight, or that you needed a second container to soak the chili while the water boiled. Rehydration time depends on how thin you spread the trays, and nobody else’s number will match yours.
Packing
One quart bag of dried chili, one small bag of rice, oil in a dropper bottle. Vacuum-seal the chili if you are storing it more than a couple of months; otherwise a double freezer bag is fine. Store the bags in the freezer at home until the trip.
Variations
- Skip the meat and double the beans for a vegetarian, vegan version. Protein drops to about 20 g.
- Dry a batch of spaghetti sauce the same way and carry angel hair pasta instead of rice.
- Rehydrate in a wide-mouth jar over the afternoon of walking and you only need one short boil at camp.
https://www.canoetripping.net/threads/food-dehydrating-the-secret-to-packing-light-small-eating-better-in-the-bush.442