trail-food · recipes
Dehydrating Plant Based Backpacking Meals
Cook and dry each ingredient, weigh the finished batch and test one portion before packing the rest. Drying time, shelf life and rehydration water depend on the food and the machine. Add oil at camp and work out the cost from the batch you actually made.
Begin with one dinner
Make a small batch before you dry a whole resupply. A kitchen scale, the right trays and a few notes on what you did make it easy to repeat. Use your dehydrator’s instructions for temperature and tray liners.
The method below draws on REI and the National Center for Home Food Preservation.
Drying depends on the ingredient
REI’s dehydration guide gives these examples for cooked ingredients:
| Ingredient | Drying example | Endpoint |
|---|---|---|
| Cooked rice | 125°F, about 5 hours | Hard; break up clumps |
| Cooked quinoa | 135°F, 8 to 10 hours | Check throughout the batch |
| Cooked, drained pasta | 135°F, 2 to 4 hours | Hard |
| Prepared, drained beans | 125°F, 6 to 8 hours | Check throughout the batch |
Treat these times as rough guides and check the food before you switch the machine off. Spread it evenly, break up clumps and check the middle of bigger pieces. A thick stew needs its own method; one time and temperature won’t cover everything.
Build a meal you can repeat
Start with ingredients dried separately. Rice with beans, pasta with tomato sauce, or lentils with a grain are good places to start. Keeping them separate shows you which one needs more time to rehydrate. Add oil when you make the meal in camp.
Weigh the finished batch before you divide it. Make one portion with a measured amount of water and note any extra you had to add. That tells you how it cooks hot. Whether it works as a cold soak is a separate test.
Store the batch carefully
The National Center for Home Food Preservation says to let dried food cool before packing it, use containers that keep moisture out, and store it somewhere cool, dry and dark. Check stored food for moisture and throw out anything moldy.
Its storage times are for fruit and vegetables, so they don’t tell you how long a mixed dinner will keep. Heat, leftover moisture and the ingredients all change that. An oxygen absorber won’t save a meal that wasn’t fully dried.
Weigh and price the batch
Add up the calories and protein of everything in the batch, then divide by the number of portions. Drying changes the weight, and the math stays the same. Count the oil and toppings you add in camp too.
Cost per dinner is the ingredients, packaging and a bit for electricity, divided by the number of portions. Add the dehydrator if you’re buying one for the trip. Compare that with a pouch you’d actually buy at about the same calories, and you’ll know the real savings.
Write it on the bag
Note the meal name, batch date, dry weight per portion, how to make it, how much water, how long it takes and what you add in camp. Keep the ingredients and allergens with the batch. Measure the drying yield for each recipe, because it changes from one dish to the next.
Sources checked October 8, 2026. If you’d rather buy dried ingredients, the protein table has label data for several.
If you would rather buy meals ready-made, here are the vegan backpacking meals you can buy in 2026, checked brand by brand.
