easy, tasty, nutritional dinner ideas for backpacking?

[adk joe]

trailfoods.com is where its at, I lived off of those things on the many trips to yellowstone.

[Kevin]

Bump!

[vakylclimb]

frying?

I haven't tried this, but my roommate has (he was one of the people in charge of freshman trips at our school). They ended up bringing some vegetable oil and potatoes, making homemade french fries in the backcountry.
And the next day they re-used the oil and added left over pancake batter to it to see what would happen. Turns out, it was funnel cake. Doesn't sound like a bad idea, defiantly something different.
Either way, most anything tastes good after a long trip

[Wldrns]

A Boy Scout buddy told me this just last weekend: stove top stuffing and can chicken. Make the stuffing with boiling water and toss in the chicken (juice from the can & all), mix, then eat. Simplicity!

Try also mixing the stuffing and meat with store bought instant mashed potatoes. It doesn't take any longer to prepare and the dry spuds weigh next to nothing. The mixture is quite tasty as one of my lightweight staples that bulks up nicely. For more variety I sautee mixed vegetables with onions, then dehydrate them to add to the mix. Another meat you can use is packets of dried corned beef, ala chipped beef. Just be sure to rinse the meat in cold water first to get rid of the excess salt.

Enertia food is very much like home dehydrated food, not freeze-dried. I highly recommend it if you don't dehydrate your own. It will give you an idea of the variety of food you can dehydrate for yourself - I do many casserole types of meals, Enertia is heavy on that type also.

[danceswithflies]

On a five day canoe trip last month, we used the freezer bag cookery technique exclusively for our breakfasts and dinners, and pronounce the system an absolute unqualified success.

I hate camp chores, and the most onerous of these is trying to wash a cookpot encrusted with glop, and to do it in the LNT approved manner, that is, well away from water sources. The only way I've been able to figure out how to do that is if I brought along a second, larger pot, and even then it always required several shuttles back and forth with rinse water, and I was always left with two pots that were less than antiseptic. The freezer bag system allows your cookpot to be used for nothing other than boiling water.

I made a couple of cozies out of a cheap closed cell foam pad, cut to the proper size by trial and error, and held together with duct tape. A separate piece of foam was cut to wedge into the top. This system apparently is extremely well insulating, as the food was still too hot to eat after ten or even fifteen minutes in the cozy. The cozy also makes an ideal container for holding the freezer bag while eating. Simply boil the water, add additional ingredients, stir very well, wedge the foam top into place, and wait ten minutes or so.

Our dinners were mostly based on Lipton/Knorr pasta sides, to which we added dried veggies, and dried whole milk powder (Nido brand, often found in the ethnic foods section in the supermarket). If they called for adding margarine, we added olive oil from a small plastic bottle just before cooking.
We boosted the protein of these meals in various ways. To the Pasta Parmesan, we added a foil packet of shrimp, to the Beef, we tossed in a small freeze package of Alpine Aire diced Beef that I'd had hanging around for a few years, and we added a small can of white meat chicken to the Cheddar and Broccoli. Our other dinner was a concoction of Instant Mashed Potatoes, powdered spinach soup, freeze dried veggies with some jerky on the side for protein. The dried veggies we got at a health food store, where they were sold by the ounce as soup additives.

We found that after about ten minutes in the bag, the pasta had cooked to the same consistency as if it had simmered for the same length of time, and the veggies had reconstituted well, as had the freeze dried beef from Alpine Aire.

Our breakfasts were Quaker Quick (not instant) Oats with some brown sugar, raisins, walnuts, whole milk powder and a dash of salt.

After eating, clean-up consists of placing the used bags into a gallon sized ziplock and rinsing the spoons. If we were having a campfire (which we rarely do) I might consider burning the bags, though I have mixed feelings about the ethics of doing so. Foil bags from the shrimp and chicken can would, of course, be carried out.

Additional benefits from the system include reduced fuel usage, and since much of the prep work is done at home, the chances of forgetting key ingredients is reduced.

The Freezer Bag Cookery website has lots of additional recipes, and we intend to experiment with other ingredients, including (real) bacon bits, tuna,
cous cous, etc.

Try it, you'll like it!

[wbwells]

Nope

Nothing is as good as Hot Pizza.... Yup....

Little alum foil and ya got a perfect oven.....

Bring the pre mixed flour yeast ect in ziplock bag
sauce in zip bag...some cheese..peperoni...ouh nice in the outback!!!

Worth the effort!!! When ya eat it!!!!!

Wowwwwwwww...ya Gotta try it!!!!

WB

[Sasquatch]

Try googling "Freezerbag cooking" You should get a decent site that's full of pretty good recipes for backpacking/canoeing. I tend to like the one mentioned above with the stove top, canned (or foil packed) chicken, but add some gravy and possibly mashed potatoes. Good and salty to boot.

[twochordcool]

Thanks guys - I'm also gonna get that Hamburger Helper brand "Chicken Helper" and add a can of Hormels chicken or 2 - should be highly edible!

[Little Rickie]

A Boy Scout buddy told me this just last weekend: stove top stuffing and can chicken. Make the stuffing with boiling water and toss in the chicken (juice from the can & all), mix, then eat. Simplicity!

[AdRegion]

This is all making me hungry. Again.

An ingredient I like to use is Couscous. It is easily packed, doesn't readily spoil, cooks up quick with hot water, and is edible hot or cold.

Most of my trips around here don't require freeze-dried as duration is not a factor. A little dab of olive oil, fry up some garlic, veggies, chorizo, whatever, add water, boil, dump in the Couscous. This becomes a cold salad for lunch/snack.

[lumberzac]

As far as the freeze dried meals, some are very good while others are terrible. Don't count them all out.

I have to agree. One of my favorite backpacking meals is the Mountainhouse lasagna. The dehydrated Enertia meals are also very good.

[fvrwld]

As far as the freeze dried meals, some are very good while others are terrible. Don't count them all out. On a recent backpack one night I had an Alpine Aire Fettuchini Alfredo wich was terrible. The next night I had Mountain House Turkey Tetrazini which was extremely good...probably one of my favorites. Other good ones are Mountain House beef stroganoff and Mountain House chicken teriyaki. I am a picky eater and for the most part don't like much pre-prepared and processed food.

[percious]

Chicken with Dumplings. One of my all-time winter favs. I use dehydrated veggies and chicken, but that is just me.

http://www.ziplink.net/users/24601/recipes/bprecipe.htm#CHCKDMPL

[Hollywood]

Make some goulash (to your taste) a day or two before you hike and freeze it in a boil & serve bag around your nalgene bottle (or whatever). By the time you're ready for dinner (boil the bag) it will have thawed.
You can eat it right out of the bag and enjoy a cold wine or even a martini if that floats your boat!

[adkfun]

I 2nd Enertia Trail Foods. Very tasty and no prep. I can't eat the freeze dried food - yuck.

http://trailfoods.com/