Backpacking Meals - Development Approach

My goal is to create lightweight, great tasting, easy to prepare food that is much less costly than buying the same type of food from a specialty manufacturer. I use multiple approaches when developing a recipe. In some cases I will start with an inexpensive off the shelf product to get me close to the end result and in other cases I'll do everything from "scratch". This approach allows for a great deal of flexibility and the results can be surprisingly good. 

My go to off the shelf products are mainly Bear Creek Country Kitchens, Knorr Rice and Pasta sides and instant pudding items. You are certainly not limited to these products. Anything is fair game. I also use instant rice products and single serve meat products like tuna fish and spam. 

Note: Any product with pasta larger than a grain of rice will need to be separated from the other ingredients and cooked along with the boiling water for it to be cooked properly.

• Bear Creek Country Kitchen food items generally contain 2-4 servings and range in price from $1.75 for a two serving envelope to $3.99 for a four serving envelope. I have found the four serving envelopes at the Christmas Tree Shop for $1.99 which is how I discovered these items in the first place. If you can't find them on sale at a store, I have found ordering them from Walmart.com is the cheapest avenue. Amazon.com has been very expensive when I have checked there.
• Knorr Rice and Pasta Sides are usually used for a single serving camping meal. I can find these at local grocery stores and Dollar Tree for $.99 per envelope. I mainly stick with the rice sides because it is less hassle during the home preparation stage.
• Instant pudding products make for great desserts. You can get a lot of mileage out of these items because of the number of flavors that are available. If a dry milk product is added to the pudding mix then cold water is the only ingredient needed to prepare the pudding when on the trail. Then all kinds of other items can be added for variety.

If I start with an off the shelf product, I will generally add more primary ingredients and sometimes I'll add more spices for a richer flavor. The Bear Creek "Darn Good" Chile for instance tastes pretty good out of the bag, but adding a few more beans, some freeze dried sausage or hamburger and some cumin makes it much better.

Getting the right consistency in the final result for a "just add water" meal can be tricky. When cooking in your kitchen, thickening gravies, soups and stews is pretty simple, but when you are on the trail it is quite a different story. The hottest the meal will usually get is when the boiling water is added to the dry ingredients, but many thickening techniques require some amount of continuous heating which you probably won't have on the trail if you are minding strict weight allowances on fuel and your are trying to keep things simple. In addition, if the thickening agents are in the food from the beginning, they can interfere with the other dry ingredients ability to re-hydrate. Fortunately we can overcome these issues by adding the thickening agent at the end of the preparation process in the form of "Thick & Easy". Thick & Easy is the perfect thickening agent for just add water backpacking meals!

In general, calories, fat and sodium are not as much of a concern for these meals since the point of these particular meals is to refuel someone who is hiking, sweating and generally exerting themselves. If these issues are a concern, there is certainly a lot of latitude with the recipes and most people who are even mildly familiar with cooking should be able to adapt any recipe to their liking.

General portion and preparation goals are to aim for using two cups of boiling water and about 600 calories for a dinner and 1 cup of boiling water and 300 calories for a breakfast or dessert item. The calories can certainly vary, but I try to stick to the water requirements, so water and fuel planning is easier to do.

For pasta meals that don't come from an envelope to start, I use regular pasta products. I try to use types of pasta that require shorter boil times. For instance, I recommend using angel hair pasta rather than spaghetti, since it cooks faster. I have tried precooking pasta and then drying it, since I had read that it made pasta preparation faster, but I found this technique too much of a hassle and now I just keep the pasta separate inside the main meal bag, so I can put it in the boiling water pot to get a head start on cooking. Then I just dump it in the bag with the water when it is ready.

I always include a food safe desiccant pouch in the main bag just in case the meal doesn't get used immediately. These are pretty cheap if you shop around a little.

The meals do not have to be prepared inside the special bag, but it can be used if desired. I tend to use the bags because cleanup is easier. The contents can easily be prepared in a cooking pot if desired, but make sure you have an insulating cozy for the pot. Most meals will need to sit in an insulated cozy for 10-20 minutes regardless if the meal is prepared in a pot or the bag. 

There are instructions on youtube for making a pot or bag cozy. They are typically made from windshield sun shades. The picture above is a bag cozy I made.

TTFN
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