We often carried frozen chooks up to Jumbo wrapped in plenty of newspaper they stayed frozen if kept in a cool/cold place for several days. The only word of caution with chicken is camplybacter, very common and makes you very crook.Personally i keep away from it now and stick to steak which keeps for a few days if kept cool and cooked properly...cant beat steak,onions ,gravy ,mashed spud and veg.
A lot of the small tins used for meat are either aluminium or so light they might as well be. Apart from having to carry a smelly tin back out ( Im careful to keep the rice or pasta bag good for this) there is little penalty on tinned meat
I usually take chicken marinated for the first night(frozen) along with fresh carrot, red / green peppers,onions, chopped up for a stir fry, and add a Wox creation peanut sauce and singapore noddles( noddles only need to be warmed up) Next night I have slight variation with steak and a teriaki sauce. Steak keeps Ok but I would not have chicken on 2nd night. Then its down hill with slizzlers, packet pastas, dehy veges. Or Backcountry dehy's
Yup, frozen marinated chook has worked for me too. I carried it in a plastic marmite jar.
I am probably getting ;azy but those kaweka meals take some beating not that heavy and the butter chicken with rice is pretty good. Usually has anybody else in the hut salivating by the time we eat:)
Night 1 = anything you're prepared to carry in (The most decadent effort to date has been Fillet Mignon complete with mushrooms, eggs etc)
To get the best out of this make sure you walk the track back to front, the looks from the trampers on their last night as they scrap the last bits of rice out of the bottom of their packs is priceless ;)
Night 2 = Vacuum packed thin strips of beef in a marinade frozen the night before leaving.
Night 3 = REAL ham (not that water/preservative injected rubbish) wrapped in a proper muslin cloth to stop sweating.
Night 4 onwards = dried, preserved, dehydrated.
I normally pack bacon for bacon and tomato sauce sandwiches for breakfast.If frozen and wrapped in newspaper, this last until the morning of the 3rd day.
We always take fresh meat for the first few nights. When we did the Heaphy a few weeks ago, we took two of my children that are both vegetarian. This proposed a challenge for us for a while, but we worked through it!
Night 1 - Veal Schnitzel and fresh stir fried vegetables - Vegetarian frozen schnitzel for the kids
Night 2 - Rump Steak with dehydrated potato peas, carrots and corn - Vegetarian sausages
Night 3 - Smoked Chicken with dehydrated as above - more vegetarian sausages
Night 4 - Fish Pie (i.e. can of tuna with above potato etc) - the kids ate this as a compromise
Lunches we always take Ham and cheese for the first day and then salami and cheese for the next 2 days. Final day is usually just sesameals with vegemite, cheese or other spreads we have collected those little plastic things of (the ones that often comes with breakfasts etc).
We freeze everything we can and put it all in one of those cooler bags you get from the supermarket. I usually take the frozens and hubby takes the pots and pans. Frozens are usually heavier to start but dwindle to nothing while the pots and pans stay the same!
We have also have had sausages, bacon and various other things and have never had an issue!
Note - I have learnt from experience to make sure they are packaged well and I always put the supermarket bag at the bottom of my pack outside the liner and then put the liner on top. My pack allows me to unzip the bottom and pull it out separately which is good.
I find any processed meat, preserved and vacuum packed keeps for a long time in a pack. Always best to keep the meat cool as possible though. One trick I learnt is in summer to use a damp cloth bag (ham bag etc) on the outside of the pack, just remember to re-soak the bag every so often (chills the meat through evaporative cooling.
