easy to cook dinner options

jdeerfoot said:

We always take a few bags of ready-to-eat cabbage salad mix on trips and use them in the early days of the trip. Cabbage holds up much better than leafy salad mix which goes slimy quickly.

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A cabbage salad actually denydrates and rehydrates quite well, remaining criispy. Add a small bottle of dressing of your choice after rehydrating.

I think I saw someone mention NOLS, maybe it was a different forum or topic but they’ve been making a book for years called Cookery. They’re on a newer edition now but it’s a great book for recipes, packing, measurements, solo to groups sizes. You can download an earlier edition but the book is nice to have and easy to pack

Thanks for the link, just ordered it.

recped said:

These days there are lots of vegetarian options for freeze dried meal in a bag

For example

https://www.rei.com/c/backpacking-dinners/f/f-vegetarian?ir=category%3Afood&r=category%3Afood%7Cbackpacking-food%7Cbackpacking-dinners%3Bf

Can't get any easier....boil water, add to bag, wait 15 minutes, enjoy!

If you haven't used them before take note that the 2 serving versions are really only good for a single person, if you do split them between two people then you probably want some supplement with something like wraps of one sort or another. Some brands are now producing single serving versions which are usually a little bit more than half of the traditional 2 serving versions.

My favourite brands are Backpacker Pantry, Alpine Aire & Mountain House. Happy Yak is a Canadian brand that are very good, kind of pricey and maybe not easily available in the USA.

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We used the Mountain House freeze dried meals and they are delicious and quick. I like oatmeal in a package for breakfast if we are planning to get on the river quickly but I love having lots of time to cook bacon and eggs on my cast iron frying pan on my wood burning rocket stove. Dinner is usually trout that we catch. Supper is sometimes a freeze dried meal but mostly it's moose burgers, deer steak, or bear sausage. My buddy makes October Fest sausage from a spring bear he usually gets and god are they good. He usually put about 15 percent pork in with the bear meat. Around 1 a.m. in the morning we are usually into the whiskey and we put on a couple of more bear or moose sausage on the grill. We eat and drink really well. 5 days on the Cains River, NewBrunswick, Canada.

Gamma1214 said:

The trick to chicken is to use canned. I can my own with a pressure canner (1 lb boneless= 1 pt canned) and it dehydrates very well.

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Can confirm.

Find some neutral canned chicken that you like, drain well, shred, season, and dry. We have also had luck pressure cooking (basically canning) chunks of whole breast meat and then drying.