camp meals

Thai Peanut Pork Wraps

Freeze-dried pork in a teriyaki-peanut sauce, spooned into tortillas at camp.

calories
720
weight
5.5 oz
cal / oz
131
protein
38 g
serves
1, scales
prep
5 min
cook
8 min
total time
13 min
water
300 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
  • Alcohol / Esbit
  • Backpacking
  • Basecamp
  • Canoe / raft
  • One pot
  • Pre-mix at home
  • Shelf stable
  • Basic

Ingredients

Freeze-dried shredded pork 2 oz freeze-dried chicken works the same way
Dried red bell pepper 1/4 cup sliced, not diced, so it reads like a strip
Powdered peanut butter 3 tbsp
Teriyaki sauce powder or soy powder 2 tbsp liquid teriyaki in a 1 oz dropper bottle also works
Rice vinegar 2 tsp small dropper bottle
Garlic powder 1 tsp
Red pepper flakes 1/2 tsp less if you want it mild
Cornstarch 1 tsp
Olive or sesame oil 1 tbsp
Flour tortillas 2 small
Sesame seeds 1 tsp

Method

  1. Bring 300 ml of water to a boil. Add the pork and dried peppers, stir, and take it off the heat.
  2. Cover and let it sit ten minutes. The pork needs the full time to soften all the way through.
  3. Put the pot back on low heat. Stir in the peanut butter powder, teriyaki powder, garlic, pepper flakes, and cornstarch.
  4. Simmer a minute, stirring, until it thickens and coats the spoon. Kill the heat.
  5. Add the vinegar and oil off the heat, then taste. Vinegar boiled off is vinegar wasted.
  6. Spoon into the tortillas, scatter sesame seeds over the top, and roll them.

The original is a pressure cooker recipe: whole pork tenderloin, eight hours or thirty minutes under pressure, then shredded into a sauce. Freeze-dried shredded pork gets you to the same place with one boil, because the shredding already happened. Lettuce does not travel, so tortillas do the wrapping.

Cornstarch is the piece people skip and shouldn’t. Powdered peanut butter rehydrates thin, and without a thickener the sauce runs out the end of the wrap. One teaspoon and a minute of simmering is the difference between a wrap and a mess. The vinegar and oil go in last for the same reason they do at home: heat flattens the acid, and the oil is carrying most of the calories.

Packing

Everything dry goes in one bag except the pork, which stays in its own bag so it does not pull moisture from the powders. Vinegar and oil ride in dropper bottles. Tortillas go flat against your back panel or they come out as gravel.

Variations

  • Freeze-dried chicken instead of pork. Same water, same soak.
  • Swap the tortillas for a bed of instant rice and it becomes a bowl.
  • A squeeze of sriracha at the end if the pepper flakes were not enough.

https://domesticsuperhero.com/thai-lettuce-wraps-instant-pot-or-slow-cooker