[at-l] Beans and other dried stuff

[wb4pan at mindspring.com (Chase Davidson)]

David,
	I bought my first dryer in 1982. It was large enough to dry 30# of 
vegetables at once. It had 14 Teflon screen shelves, adjustable 
temperature and a circulating or fresh air vent. The dryer cost $135. 
and lasted 20 years. It was well worth the money and I was quite 
satisfied with it. When it quit I replaced it with a $20. round dryer 
from Walmart. It looks basically like three shelves and a hair dryer 
LOL. I really like this small food dryer. It is easy to use and easy 
to clean up. Add some plastic liners for drying stuff like tomatoes 
paste, spagetti sauce, apple sauce (fruit leathers) etc and it is all 
I need.
	I have dried most everything I can think of. My favorites are mixed 
vegetables, pinto beans, and roast beef.
	I don't really care for fruit leathers but a lot of folks by canned 
pie filling and dry it to make fruit roll ups. 		
	With pinto beans I use canned beans because they are easy and 
inexpensive. Lucks pinto's already have a great broth and are my 
favorite. On my dryer two cans will fit on one shelf. This makes it 
easy to bag them up one can to a bag and I have a clue of the 
nutritional content from the original label on the can. I prefer to 
keep the beans seperate from say tomatoes paste and chili powder etc. 
This way if I cook them on the trail using the boiling method it 
requires less stirring than if it had some thick tomatoes sauce mixed 
with it. That can be added later. Pintos do very well even with out a 
pot cozy. Just boil them a few min and set them aside to soak for a 
while. Bring them back to a boil 20 min later and they will be ready. 
The extra effort is well worth it. Lipton Dinners are way down on my 
list of good things to eat.
	Mixed vegetables are something I almost never tire of. A few veggies 
make a drab meal of Lipton s or Ramin a whole lot more appealing to 
me. I buy frozen veggies in 2.5# bags at the grocery store. It is best 
to avoid mixes that contain potatoes because they take a long time to 
reconstitute after being dried. Lima beans also take longer than some 
other veggies but I still use them sometimes. Favorite mix is corn, 
green beans, carrots, black eyes, green peas, hmmm seems like I am 
forgetting something. I spread the frozen veggies on the shelves and 
start drying. They will dry to approx. 1/4 their original weight.
	I have made jerky and its really good. I am lazy and it is hard to 
beat store bought jerky that is already packaged up nicely. With any 
prepackaged food you do get preservatives and additives....but Like I 
said I am lazy and preserved. I have dried canned chicken and ham and 
they work very well and the weight savings is nice on a long trip. On 
my first Long Distance hike I dried 21# of turkey meat that I ground 
up first. This is one of the cheapest proteins that you can get. The 
meat produced large quantities of gas!! Deadly gas bombs that lingered 
on the trail for the next hiker. We stopped eating the turkey on that 
trip for this reason and switched to canned meats we bought along the 
way. The 60# of veggies I dried we never tired of. Maybe I need to try 
turkey again now that I know about BeanO.
	My favorite meat to dry is Roast Beef. This method produces beef that 
is very similar to Freeze Dried Beef. Cook a very lean roast  adding 
more of your favorite spices than usual. Grind the cooked roast on a 
very course setting so that it looks something like ground beef. Avoid 
any fat because it will go rancid pretty fast and greatly reduce your 
storage time. Dry the ground roast add a little salt for extra 
preservative. The meat is great in the dried form or it can be added 
to other dishes. It reconstitutes in about 5 minuets in hot water.
	Some recipes suggest all dried meats should be put through a short 
high heat process before storage. Some suggest blanching raw 
vegetables before drying also. Mainly I just clean all work surfaces 
with a clorox solution to make sure I do not introduce anything that 
might want to grow later :-). I store everything in the deep freezer. 
Long term items are vacuum packed. Short term items are just put in 
multiple layers of ziplocks.

chase

David A Jones wrote:
> This whole do it yourself food dehydration thing is very interesting.  
> I'd like to know more about your experiences and equipment.  How long do 
> your dehydrated foods keep?  For beans, is it not more practical to 
> start with dried beans, soak and cook them, then dry them (rather than 
> start from canned)?  I like your segregated ingrediences approach to 
> trail cooking.  Rice and beans from scratch would be a trail favorite 
> for me, but the down side is presoaking beans, and long cooking times on 
> both items.  So, I can see how doing the cooking and dehydrating at 
> home, then reconstituting on the trail is desirable.  Kind of do it 
> yourself instant.  What is your opinion on the quality between cooked on 
> the trail and rehydrated on the trail?
> I bought some dehydrated dinners and bread mixes from online.  
> http://www.wildernessdining.com  I was impressed by the selection, with 
> organic and vegen choices.  And I thought the prices were reasonable, 
> considering little work on my part.  They also sell dehydrators.  What 
> makes for a good dehydrator?  Bulk dehydrated foods are also available 
> on this site, but the prices seem steep to me.
> 
> To take a stab at your question: seems to me you've caught a whiff of 
> some fermentation product, maybe acetone (a ketone), in those dehydrated 
> kidney beans.  Often chemistry is our friend, but personally I wouldn't 
> push it.  If you want to read some carbohydrate chemistry try 
> http://www.sparknotes.com/nutrition/carbohydrates/section1.html
> This web page also explains what beano does in more detail than you want 
> to know.
> 
> Chase Davidson wrote:
> 
>> HI Gang,
>>     Last night I dried some Kidney beans (from a can). Re dried pintos 
>> are one of my favorite hiking meals. So I thought I would give kidneys 
>> a try. Both beans reconstitute very well using the following 
>> procedure. Add two cups of water to a can of dried beans. Bring them 
>> to a boil for a few minuets then stick them in a pot cozy for twenty 
>> minuets. Usually I add some sort of  seasoning such as, tomatoes, 
>> onions, chili, spaghetti sauce.
>>     I noticed something strange while I was emptying the food dryer. 
>> The kidney beans had a strange smell, sort of a poly vinyl chloride 
>> super glue acetate smell :-). I noticed the same smell when I opened 
>> the ziplock of dried beans this morning. I have read that kidney beans 
>> (red) are poisonous if not fully cooked. But of course I used fully 
>> cooked canned beans to dry.
>>     Well I ate the can of beans I reconstituted today. No ill affects 
>> yet. But of course I ate a beano pill with them. Beano is supposed to 
>> help your body absorb the extra protein that usually is converted to 
>> gas. Ya guys that does take some of the fun out of them. Anyone have a 
>> clue about the unusual smell....before they are ate that is?
>>
>> chase
>> _______________________________________________
>> at-l mailing list
>> at-l@backcountry.net
>> http://mailman.hack.net/mailman/listinfo/at-l
>>
>>
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> at-l mailing list
> at-l@backcountry.net
> http://mailman.hack.net/mailman/listinfo/at-l
>