Backpack Gourmet Good Hot Grub You Can Make at Home Dehydrate and Pack for Quick Easy and Healthy Eating on the Trail

Backpack Gourmet Good Hot Grub You Can Make at Home Dehydrate and Pack for Quick Easy and Healthy Eating on the Trail

Meals on the trail can be as delicious and varied as meals prepared at home. You can create meals to suit your tastes or diet–vegetarian, low fat, Asian, Italian. Meals prepared and dehydrated at home are compact and lightweight, perfect for the backpacker, and safer than packing perishable foods. The author shows how to prepare the meals so that they will travel well and will be easy to reconstitute in camp. The easy step-by-step instructions detail how to cook and dry lightweight, satisfying meals at home and then prepare them easily in camp–truly complete, instant meals. Paperback, 160 Pages, Stackpole Books

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars LOVED the recipes! And the directions!
Loved the recipes in this book! Probably my favorite recipe book that I have. The pesto recipe was better than any other I have ever made. The entrees are delicious enough to serve at a dinner party, not to mention on a backpacking trip. Tons of great vegeterian recipes too. And all super healthy and delicious and creative. Very good instructions on how to dehydrate too. Even easy in the oven!

4 Stars excellent book…
I got this book to get started into backpacking again after many years of not doing it. The recipes and instructions in this book sure beat the MRE’s and expensive stuff you get from the store. I’ve tried a number of the recipes at home and so far so good. I’m not a fan of TVP, which a number of the recipes call for, but hey we all can’t like the same stuff–that would be boring wouldn’t it? so I just substitute and move on…

2 Stars Not for everyone
This book is okay if you want to spend several days prepping food before you go on a trip that was planned ‘way in advance.

If you’re the type who only goes off when you get a chance, which might be three weekends in a row, then nowhere for 2 months because of work or other commitments, the recipes in the front of the book are not too time-intensive, but the cook-and-dehydrate recipes you can pretty much forget about unless you have a large dehydrator and don’t mind pulling an all-nighter just before a trip.

I did not care for the author’s views on campfires. True, not all places allow them, but not everyone makes a mess and if one is that adamant about polluting the environment, then don’t take a stove either–go raw food on a trip.

Recipes aren’t too bad but, if you backpack a lot, and have other friends who do, it would be much less expensive both in time and money to go in with your friends to buy the basic plain dehydrated or freeze-dried foods (not necessarily the meals) in bulk, and go from there.

Check out from the library first.

4 Stars A great place to start
This is a great book for backpackers looking to save $$$ on freeze dried foods. I consider it a starting point as after you make a few of these recipes, you realize that you can dehydrate anything you cook at home and turn it into a backpacking meal. I often found myself adjusting the recipie seasonings to suit my personal taste. The breakfast eggs weren’t a big hit, but the dips/spreads, jerky, pasta recipes, etc are quick, easy, nutritious and tasted great after a day of hiking.

3 Stars Useful, but not to my taste
This book will be a benefit to people enjoying long hikes deep into inconvenient territory. Beyond that, it is mostly useful only for the helpful hints and a few product reviews. I recommend finding this book at a library or paging through it at a bookstore to make sure it is really what you’re looking for before buying.

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