Home dehydrating of tramping meals
Original post
Who has a home dehydrator, who is using it and how?
bernieq mentions creating cooked meals and then dehydrating them, also dehydrating ingredients like veggies.
I tend to 'semi-dehydrate' a cooked meal or two for a 2 - 4 day trip, bag and put it in the freezer, figure it will last for those first three days, go to homemade dehy meals with bought dry ingredients - freeze dried mince, dried veggies and mushrooms from the supermarket, soup packets, curry block, herbs, coconut powder... from then on.
I've dehydrated mince myself successfully, but after counting yield / cost starting from fresh mince it wasn't worth the trouble.
@bernieq (and anyone else): Do those dehydrated meals you make last for say day 10 or 12 of a 14 day trip? I'd hate to get to that point on a trip and pull out a liplike (ziplock - spell check is funny!) bag and find it full of green fur.
38 comments
"Having read these things one begins to feel as if life is rapidly becoming a game of russian roulette where food is concerned."
So true...I still eat that stuff but I know it's wierd stuff. I try to stick to the 80/20 rule but even bread can have strange ingredients such as chicken feathers and porcine pancreatic enzymes, and it's not compulsory to list these type of ingredients.
"I actually wish I hadn't looked this up. I am having a terrible time getting my head around the fact that we are boiling stuff in hydrochloric acid and then neutralising it with caustic soda to make an edible substance that is claimed to be healthy. It just doesn't add up in my books. "
That's pretty much the process that goes on naturally in your digestive system to break up protein into amino acids in any case - warmth and stirring around in quite concentrated hydrochloric acid before neutralising with alkali. I think the alkali your body uses is Bicarbonate of soda (NaHCO3) rather than caustic soda (NaOH)
Stomach acid is sulfuric not hydrochlouric. Ever tried that Swedish delicacy of fish preserved by marinating in Lye which is otherwise known as caustic soda of oven cleaner. Its meant to be quite nice as long as you eat it outside. Im afraid I will never be able to bring myself to taste it.
" I am not comfortable with words like toxic no matter what the quantity where food is concerned. "
Ever looked up the MSDS sheet for water. Apparently taken in one go 42 grams water per kg of body weight can kill you
"Stomach acid is sulfuric not hydrochlouric"
No, it's hydrochloric acid according to my memory and sources like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastric_acid
So, for those doing a reasonable amount of dehydrating, what brand dehydrator are you using? Last time I looked at getting one, one brand came up most obviously, but then I looked at reviews of it and the majority were quite negative.
I have a sunbeam like everyone else and they are terrible. I don't know how everyone is getting the results they are if they are using one of these.
There are really good ones avaliable that I've seen online, but obviously cost much more.
"I actually wish I hadn't looked this up. I am having a terrible time getting my head around the fact that we are boiling stuff in hydrochloric acid and then neutralising it with caustic soda to make an edible substance that is claimed to be healthy. It just doesn't add up in my books.
I am not comfortable with words like toxic no matter what the quantity where food is concerned. "
Every single thing in the universe is a chemical, mate, and every single thing has a toxity level. Water is a chemical. Drink enough of it and it will kill you. As mentioned above, HCl digestion goes on in your stomach all the time.
There's no need to be a chemiphobe.
... and air is a mixture of chemicals but you won't last long without it. However, you'll last just a sniff longer if you inject some in a vein. One could say air has a very high toxicity indeed.
back to the thread ... my dehydrator is a Sunbeam. I've had it nearly 10 years and I've never had a problem - works fine for me.
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| Forum | Food |
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| Started by | Ian_H |
| On | 12 May 2017 |
| Replies | 37 |
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