Hunter's Slow-Cooker Mountain Meal
Freeze-dried game meat, rice, and a cream soup base rebuilt from powder for one pot at camp.
- calories
- 720
- weight
- 6 oz
- cal / oz
- 120
- protein
- 38 g
- serves
- 2, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 20 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
- Backpacking
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Winter / snow
- Nut free
- One pot
- Dehydrate ahead
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Dehydrated cooked game meat | 3 oz | venison or elk, cooked and dried at home; jerky chopped fine also works |
|---|---|---|
| Instant rice | 1 cup | parboiled, not raw long-grain |
| Cream of chicken soup mix | 1 packet | the dry condensed-style powder, about 2.5 oz |
| Cream of mushroom soup mix | 1 packet | about 2.5 oz |
| Dried mushroom slices | 1/4 cup | |
| Freeze-dried peas | 1/2 cup | |
| Dried minced onion | 2 tbsp | |
| Dried celery flakes | 1 tbsp | |
| Soy sauce powder | 2 tsp | or 4 tsp liquid soy in a leakproof bottle |
| Olive oil | 1 1/2 tbsp | |
| Salt and black pepper | to taste |
Method
- Put the dried meat, mushrooms, onion, celery, and peas in the pot with 600 ml of water. Bring it to a boil.
- Hold a low boil for eight minutes so the meat and vegetables take on water. Add a splash more if the pot goes dry.
- Stir in the rice and both soup powders. Bring it back up, then cut the heat.
- Cover and let it sit ten minutes. Stir once at the halfway mark or the powder clumps on the bottom.
- Add the soy powder, oil, salt, and pepper. Stir and serve.
The original is a slow cooker recipe: cubed game meat browned in oil, two cans of condensed soup, a ninety-minute simmer. None of that travels. Canned soup is water and steel, raw rice wants twenty minutes of real fuel, and fresh onion and celery rot. So the cans become soup powder, the raw rice becomes instant, and the meat gets dehydrated at home after it is cooked. What survives is the thing that made the dish work: a thick, salty cream base holding starch and meat together.
The two soup powders are doing separate jobs. Chicken carries the salt, mushroom carries the body. Use one and it reads thin. Rehydrate the meat and vegetables first, before the rice goes in, or the starch thickens the pot while the venison is still leather. Twenty minutes of stove time is a lot for backcountry cooking, but most of it is off-heat soaking under a lid.
Packing
Meat and vegetables in one bag, rice and soup powders in a second. Keeping them apart means the rice does not start absorbing before you want it to. Oil rides in a dropper bottle.
Variations
- A splash of dry red wine from a small bottle, added with the rice, gets close to the original.
- Swap the game meat for a foil pouch of chicken if you have no dehydrator.
- Instant mashed potato flakes instead of rice cut the simmer to nothing.
https://www.hunttalk.com/threads/huntermans-mountain-meal.215930