r/Backcountrygourmet

Last night I wrapped up my 2026 dehydrating spree. I made 17 meals at a cost of $42.84. That's $2.52 per meal!

Meals include:

• Jerk chicken with pineapple, veggies black beans and rice (3)
• Thanksgiving dinner (4)
• Cuban coconut chicken with black beans, veggies, bananas and rice (inspired by Backpacker's Pantry Cuban coconut black beans & rice) (3)
• Spanish chicken, black beans and rice (5)
• Mulligatawny (new recipe) (2)

I have a 10-night trip coming up in June, then a 9-night trip in July, so it made sense to do one mass dehydrating marathon.

These meals are seasoned and proportioned to my liking; feel free to adjust them for your palate.

Is this gourmet enough??

The back country cherry pie:

Wild blueberries from the top of maple mountain. (Highest point in Ontario)

Beer is always worth the weight!

I wanted to know if I could use shelf stable, light, packable, beef jerky as the beef in camp cooking. So I did some experimentation, and here's what I found out. (TLDR: You can! It's delicious!)

There's a recipe in the google doc, but you can make your own recipe with the following information: Take beef jerky, cut it into bite sized pieces (you COULD use a knife, but scissors work best) then soak it in boiling hot water for at least five minutes (don't boil the meat. Take the water off the fire before you put the meat in). I put beef bullion powder into this hot water to make my final beef taste extra beefy, but that's optional. When the five+ minutes are up, pour off the water, I guarantee it will be sweet, and unless you have a use for super sweet hot water, just chuck it. Now you have fully cooked, hot, tender beef that tastes like it's been marinated in something sweet and mildly spicy. Put it in your dinner. You're already ready to eat.

This is what I made with it:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XChsQgsTWt7NuAcHi2HQzaz8n-HkzYX7519qo4rrN80/edit?usp=sharing