Dehydrating Pasta - Help!

[KarenM982]

I recently dehydrated a 1-pot meal - thai noodles. They came out great! The recipe included angel hair pasta, sesame oil, mushrooms, shallots, ginger, and soy sauce. I dehdrated for 4 hours and packaged each portion into ziploc bags. I tested it out the other day...it took only 2 minutes to rehydrate and it tasted great.

Because that meal turned out so well, I tried a new recipe - linguine with pesto/tomato sauce. I used linguini, pesto (which has lots of oil in it), shredded parm cheese, tomato sauce, and red pepper flakes. I dehydrated for 6 hours (just like the recipe called for), and it seems to be dry although the pasta is VERY oily! I let it sit in the dehydrator trays for 24 hours, and tried bagging the portions into ziploc bags. The inside of the bags were so oily and one of the dried linguini strands actually poked through the bag which made my hands and the outside of the bag oily.

Has anyone had this issue with dehydrating pesto sauce? I wonder if I need to soak up the oil with paper towels (seems like a lot of work), or if should just double-bag each portion, or just forget dehydrating pesto or other oily sauces all together. Also, I wonder if the oil will make the pasta go bad.

Any similar experiences/thoughts/suggestions?

Thanks!
Karen

[Frolicking Dinosaurs]

Anything containing lots of oil is best dehydrated without the oil and then rehydrated and the oil added when preparing in the field. This is from personal experience.

[KarenM982]

Thats what I thought also, but Ive been using a great book called "Backpack Gourmet" and most of the recipes contain cheese, oil, butter, milk, even eggs. The recipe I used described above, it called for basil leaves and 1/4-cup oil, but instead I used pesto because its basically the same thing. Hmm......

[KarenM982]

I just had another thought - I dried my pasta meal on the fruit leather trays. I wonder if I had dried it on parchment paper if that would have absorbed the oil.

[Frolicking Dinosaurs]

It will absorb the oil, but then the finished product isn't right when you rehydrate. For Pesto on the trail try adding just enough water to rehydrate to dried basil - let set about ten minutes and add olive oil & pine nuts

[weary]

In my experience, some things should be assembled on the trail, rather than assembled at home and dried.

This especially includes pasta and basil mixtures. basil is available dry -- or if you grow your own just hang it for a week or so. Pasta is already dry. There's rarely any advantage to cooking it and then drying it. Oil is oil. It doesn't dehydrate. Always add it to the food after cooking the pasta.

Weary

[sarbar]

Oil is just one item that you should use minimal of if dehydrating (such as leaving oil out of hummus till rehydration time).
Pesto is pretty easy to make on trail fresh :) Just bring the dry ingredients and the oil and mix up in a bag - then toss with your pasta.

[Appalachian Tater]

Oil has essentially no water in it so you can't take the water out!