Hiking Food - drying a curry

Our next hike is into the Walls of Jerusalem in Tasmania for a three nighter with a small party of friends. It is planned as a relaxed, pre Christmas trip, where the distances are short and we will be base camping for two nights. This will allow us to take some nice food and maybe a glass or two of wine or muscat as a treat.

There are seven of us so we have decided to do our own food in couples and a three. This is because the hiking cooking pots are quite small so a meal for more than 3 is difficult to fit in the pot.

We are planning on having curry one night so
last night we purchased a Daal Makhani (mixed lentils, butter, cream and spices) and a Chicken Korma (creamy sauce garmished with fresh coriander and almond flakes) while we were out for dinner. Today we have been drying them in our Fowlers Vacola Ultimate Dehydrator. Fowlers don't seem to have a website, but these units are readily available in "large department stores" and on the web.



The beauty of this unit is that it has fruit leather trays. This allows any moist/ runny curry to be spread out evenly for drying. We have four trays with 3 fruit leather trays so 3 different meals can be dried at once.



Preparation
The chicken in the curry was made from thigh meat. It is basically a sauce with pieces of chicken floating around. Through previous experience we know that the chicken (read any meat here) must be diced finely to dry OK , BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY to rehydrate properly.



So, (I suggest using kitchen gloves here) I diced the cooked chicken pieces from the curry into pieces that were no bigger that 1.5 cm * 1 cm * 0.5 cm. Yes, that small. I then remixed the chicken into the sauce and spread it evenly on the drying tray.


The Daal, (pictured above ) which consists of lentils and kidney beans in a curry sauce is REALLY easy. All that was required was spreading on the tray as the lentils and other beans in it are quite small.


Drying the Curry
The drying process is simple. Just let the dryer blast away with hot air and remember to stir the curry and move it around on the tray every 2 hrs or so. This is because the pieces tend to dry on the outside and ball into little clumps. Moving it around , breaks up the clumps and allows the dryer to do its stuff.

The process takes about 10 hrs + (because there was so much liquid in the curry sauce) so I always try and start it early in the morning on a day we plan to be home. If you forget you have left it on, it does not really burn, just goes REALLY crunchy!


I have mentioned Freezer Bag Cooking before and reinterate, it is the best resource I have found on the Web for information about drying hiking food. There are step by step instructions and excellent photos. It is well worth a look.


To the right is a picture of the finished product, bagged up and ready to go. The consistancy of the chicken when it is dried correctly is like soft rubber. Because there was a lot of oil in the curry, the texture is a bit "slimy", so rubberised slime MAY be the best way to describe it! Keep it refrigerated until you head off and it should keep well. We usually dry food about one week before we go so between drying and eating, the time never exceeds 2 weeks.

Rehydration
Complicated process here!! We have discovered the best way to rehydrate the meal is, as soon as we hit our overnight camp site, we boil the billy and have a cuppa. We use the excess boiling water and cover the dried meal in the cooking pot. We put the lid on the pot and leave it sit for about an hour stirring occasionally. As the meal rehydrates , we add more water, stirring to ensure all the dried meal gets access to water. If the rehydtrating process is slow, or we want to eat, we gently heat the meal, stirring and adding water as required. We try and allow at least an hour for rehydration, two is better. Being gentle is the solution, not boiling the meal while it is rehydrating, but gently heating it to allow full hydration.

We will serve this with some "Continental" rice (whatever flavour works for you). It is so easy to cook, light, filling and cheap.

This type of hiking food is quick to prepare, very tasty and an easy meal. Will go down well with a red!