Taste of dehydrated Vegetables

[Lynx]

I wanted to see about the taste of dehydrated vegetables before I started my cruise so I bought a few cans to try out for dinner. I was very supprised. Most have little salt and not to many spices. and cooks from no water to fully done in less than 30 min. By adding spices, I can change it to whenever I want.

So far I have tried  -
Vegetable noodle soup, Spanish rice casserole, Beef (not real beef but TVP) stew, TVP Beef Jerky and the Mixed fruit.

That is just 80 coffie size cans for a 6 month supply for 1 person.  I can fit that into a long locker and I will not have to buy much along the way.

[pura vida]

What brand are you using?

[Lynx]

I bought from http://waltonfeed.com/

The celery tasted like celery, the potatoes tasted like fresh, the peas was tasty and crunchy. Carrots tasted like carrots and was crunchy. The fruit mix I ate right out of the can and had more flavor than fresh. I am very supprised.

What is really nice is that there is little salt and no preservatives and it cost less than caned.

[AdriftAtSea]

It also weighs significantly less than canned.  How much water does it take to reconstitute the veggies???

[Lynx]

2 cups water for 1/2 cup beef stew. (it really needs more beef)

1 cup water for 1/2 cup soup.

The web site has a label link to give you more specifics.

I am planing on getting the potato soup mix and different things to add what every else I want.

[skylark]

I tried making a soup of dehydrated vegetables.

Note the vegetables are all dehydrated amounts:

2 Tbs onions
1 Tbs green peppers
1 Tbs celery
1/2 Tbs garlic
4 Tbs lentils

Salt
Ground pepper
Spanish pepper
Chicken bullion
Dash olive oil
Dash sherry
3 cups water

Cook in pressure cooker, 10 minutes under pressure

It was a good two bowls of onion-lentil soup.  I would not say the vegetables came out as if they were fresh but the resulting soup was very good.  The soup was slightly overcooked but I am using a German pressure cooker which seems to be higher pressure than my old pressure cooker on the boat. Next time with this pressure cooker I would go 8 minutes and see how it turns out. The soup could have used a little instant brown rice or whole wheat alphabet letters to give it some more texture.

I have an order coming in from Walton's with carrots, mushrooms and hash browns, which should be good for more variety.

I found another site for mushrooms which has more variety:

http://fungusamongus.com

[Tedsomango]

Also humus is great dried if you have a little garlic salt and cayenne, i was a trail crew leader and ate all dehydrated for years! black beans and refried beans work out, but do yourself a favor never try dehydrated broccoli my gosh its so painsfull!! i guess i just really like beans alot!

[skylark]

Forgive my obsession with dried vegetables but I'm trying to find a cheap way to cook without refrigeration.  Sort of trying to figure out Annie Hill's cooking method in Voyaging on a Small Income, in which she never quite tells you exactly how they manage to live on a few dollars worth of food for a week.

I spent the evening on the boat with the Fab-All diesel heater going and made a nice curry with all dehydrated ingredients:

T = Tablespoon
t = teaspoon
All vegetables are dehydrated

Lentil Curry
Serves one hungry sailor or two light eaters for lunch

2 cups water
a dash of oil
heat it up in the pressure cooker, add:
4 T lentils
2 T instant brown rice
1 T textured vegetable protein, sausage flavor
1 T green peppers
1 T celery
1 t onion
1/2 t garlic
1/4 t chicken bullion
1/4 t salt
a few grinds of black pepper
1/2 t curry
1/4 t tumeric
1/4 t hot red pepper seeds
dash spanish pepper

Cook under pressure 7 minutes
After getting it up to pressure, use a flame tamer and/or turn down flame as low as possible while still keeping the pressure up.

I figure if I can get about 5 decent recipes using dehydrated veggies, I can last a long time without refrigeration.  So far I have pea soup and lentil soup.  I'm going to try a lentil based spaghetti sauce soon.  I also received my Walton foods delivery so I can try dried mushrooms, carrots and hash browns in my recipes.  The one down side of dehydrated food is the lack of food texture, the resulting food comes out like gruel, although the curry makes it pretty tasty.  Add some flat bread or crackers to the meal and it is fine.

The thing about this recipe is that it could be prepackaged in single serving portions using a Seal a Meal type thing.  It would be easy to put together a months worth of meals that are easy to store and cook.

Tonight was 40F with lots of dew, and inside was toasty warm with the heater going.  I love my diesel heater!

[CharlieJ]

Keep working at it Skylark. We almost never keep foods in the icebox, except for perhaps a day or twos worth of frozen meals just after we leave home. And we go as much as 30 days or more.

There's a good web site that talks a lot about non refrigerated foods on boats, but I have it bookmarked on the laptop, which is on the boat, with Laura, 100 miles away this evening!!

[Lynx]

I have found it hard not to overcook dehydrated Veg's. I have bought seperate cans of all veg's and do not pressure cook them. I think that if you start cooking the harder veg's and then add the softer ones latter that it will reduce the mush. I will post this when I get it down. Sometime in Nov/Dec.

[Oldrig]

Just one word of warning about dehydrated food: Methane.

When we were younger, my wife and I would try to spend at least two weeks a year camping and hiking in the Southwest. One year, to save weight and space, we decided to rely exclusively on dehydrated food.

Well, we thought we were doing fine, except for the -- ahem -- methane. One time we stopped at a convenience store in White Rock, New Mexico, to get some non-dehydrated supplies, and everybody else had to leave the store.

Just keep that in mind . . .

--Joe

[AdriftAtSea]

Oldrig-

Thanks for the warning...

[Lynx]

Processing have changed over the years with dehydrated foods. So far Methane has not been a problem.

[skylark]

http://www.heathershikinghiatus.homestead.com/Food.html

[Lynx]

Nide link, Thanks.

[skylark]

I have been experimenting some more, and have found that if you start a soup with real onions, the result tastes a lot better. Real potatoes are good too.  Also, after cooking the soup, add a packet of sauce mix: Hollandaise, Bernaise, Hunters Sauce, etc.  This thickens the soup and gives it a gravy type base, which the dried vegetables on their own do not seem to create.

For example, I made a big pot of soup tonight.

A triple shot of olive oil
two onions, diced, simmer until soft.
Add a handfull each of dried celery, green peppers.
Two handfulls each TVP "sausage", dried carrots, dried hash browns, lentils, and dried mushrooms.
A good portion (1 tsp each?) dried garlic, ground black pepper, some salt, Hungarian paprika, cumin.
A couple of Tbs chicken bullion.     
About 2 quarts water
Simmer 30 minutes
Add one packet Bearnaise sauce, simmer 15 minutes or until thickened.
Add salt to taste.

So everything in this soup is storable without refrigeration, and everything except the onions and olive oil is dry.

An excellent soup. Six to ten servings.  A thick soup with lots of food value, a real meal, worth putting away a few mason jars for nights when you don't want to cook. 

When using dried vegetables, the sauce or gravy is what makes the meal, so learn how to make gravy.  I'm sure there are ways to make a homemade gravy instead of using a package, I just don't know how.  I think it starts out with lots of hot butter in a frying pan, then fry a diced onion, add some flour and spices, brown, add water little by little while stirring. Maybe someone else knows the right way to make a gravy.

The boat is out of the water now, waiting on the big freeze.  I was thinking about leaving it in, because I have a heater now, and probably could keep the cabin warm all winter.  But I had her pulled, didn't want to risk damage to the hull from ice.  Counting down till April or May.

PS did not use a pressure cooker on this one, cooked at home, not on the boat.

[Cmdr Pete]

The thickening ingredient in those sauce packets is probably wheat or corn starch. Corn starch is often used in Chinese cooking. Dissolve a bit of corn starch in water and add it to the bubbling brew.

The butter and flour mix is called a roux. Cook about equal amounts of each till golden (to get the raw taste out of the flour). Then whisk in the liquid.

You can make up a batch of roux and save it. If made with butter you need to refrigerate it. You can also make it with oil and it will keep at room temperature.

Happy cooking!

[CharlieJ]

 

I see the "trinity" in there also.

Onion, celery, Green pepper


Sounds kinda Cajun to me, which ain't a bad ting cha

[Auspicious]

I have been experimenting some more, and have found that if you start a soup with real onions, the result tastes a lot better. Real potatoes are good too.  Also, after cooking the soup, add a packet of sauce mix: Hollandaise, Bernaise, Hunters Sauce, etc.  This thickens the soup and gives it a gravy type base, which the dried vegetables on their own do not seem to create.

This sounds a little like the old stone soup story. <grin>

[skylark]

Yeah, it is made up of a lot of different ingredients but I'm not sure you could take any out without reducing the flavor or texture in some way.  There might be a better way to thicken it than packets of sauce mix, but I haven't figured out a way yet.

It actually tastes better each day it gets reheated.  No problem eating it for several days in a row, it is yummy and does not cause indigestion.

I haven't worked out the cost but I think I am hot on Annie Hill's trail.  If I was trying to live on little to no money, I could live pretty well on this stuff.  And no refrigeration needed.