Ok so round 2 on this venture and gone for a pasta bolognese, steps as follows.
1. Made the bolognese as per usual with one change. I browned off the mince in a separate pan then placed it into a sieve, followed this by pouring over 2 kettles worth of boiling water so as to wash off any excess fat. I noticed with the shepards pie mince when rehydrating the fat split and floated on the gravy/water.
2. Placed a good size portion of pasta in a tub then ladled an equally good sized amount of bolognese over the top. Left this to cool then covered and left over night. This helps most of the sauce to be absorbed otherwise you get a runny mess in your dehydrator.
3. Spread out everything over the dehydrator trays and left for just under 24 hours on 70 degrees.
The original start weight for this was around 900g and my finish dried weight was around 250g. Not quite as much of a drop as I had hoped but still significant pack weight savings. Due to my mylar bag sizes I split the batch into 3 bags. This gave around 212g of water needed for each bag. I learned last time that the exact amount of water was slightly too much and so played things safe by using 200g. Got a good rolling boil going and poured it into a bag. Again from last time I learned that you don't need to do a huge seal for the bags as you loose it all when cutting open. So I only made a tiny strip of seal and instead of tearing I used a knife to cut a slot at the top, this meant I still had the full bag height. Once the water was added I rolled down the top as tightly as possible and left it.
Here is where I think this style of cooking needs a little more preparation than other methods. If you setup your camp then start making dinner you are going to be left waiting around for it to rehydrate. This is fine if your with folks and chatting away, but I find nothing worse than being hungry waiting on food while others are already eating. So unless the weather is terrible I think the best method is to make your food up as the first thing you do when you arrive at your camp site, get on with the tent etc and then you should only have to wait another 5-10 minutes before it's done. This should mean you get to eat along with everyone else too.
For the most part things worked perfectly, however the top 20% of the food was not fully rehydrated. This was not really a fault of the method but more the user, I was doing this at home while getting on with other things. I had simply filled the bag then left it, what it needed was a stir up to swap the top and bottom around so everything got a good soaking and could absorb the water. If I were outdoors then this would be something to remember to give things a quick stir halfway through to ensure all the food is even. This was probably also a fault of the bag size. These small bags are really not suited for main meals like this, and even less so using them upright. I'm not sure why but they come with a tear tab at one end so you have a vertical top & bottom as it were. This makes no sense now as you have food that does not mix evenly, small stuff falls down and gets lost. What seems far more logical is to flip it to the horizontal and make a slit along one length. This will give a greater base area and less depth, I think this would also reduce the amount of stirring needed and prevent the issue of trying to scrape out all the stuff from the bottom of the bag with a long spoon.
I have some larger bags on order and will be testing the idea of using them sideways, but generally I think I have it nailed with regards to this particular meal. I haven't a clue on calorie count and I never really check things like that on food at home, so have no basis to compare this on a nutrition level. I did a quick check online and the figures have a dramatic variation but at an average guess I would say there is around 550 calories per portion. But cost wise is as follows.
Mince = £3.00
Sauce = £2.30
Peppers = £1.00
Mushrooms = £0.80
Onions = £0.75
Penne Pasta = £0.30
Extra seasons = £0.50
Total = £8.65
This will generally make enough food for 5 portions giving a portion cost of £1.73 + electric. Considering the average for dried meals is around £5 I have the better part of £3.25 spare change to cover the cost of cooking and drying. Pretty sure even my cooker doesn't guzzle that much electricity and so I think I'm on a winner on the price front. As before I have no basis to compare the taste on this as I generally don't want to get into a pishing contest on which is better on a fork. But I can at least be sure that if I take a bag of this with me and make it up I will have a good meal I know I will like. No doubt plenty of folks have suffered the experience of food you weren't fond of but had no other choice than to force it down.
So now that one is all sorted and put to bed it's time to move onwards and upward. Next challenge to crack the method for doing oaty porridge.
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Topic: Tests with drying food (Read 21826 times)