Short hike, want all new meals

[Papajohns2012]

So I am going on a hike in a few months and I want to try new meals. My hiking buddies and I have done the dehydrated bags of food and stuff, but I want to actually cook something while we are out there. What are your favorite recipes for meals while on a shorter hike where you are able to carry a little more food. There will be three guys there so please specify if your recipe is for one or more people. The trip is going to be six days in the sticks so no raw eggs or stuff (I guess powdered eggs would do fine) Im just looking for a few more opinions on what to make.

[Another Kevin]

Have you checked out the trailcooking.com web site? Yeah, there's a lot of dehydrated food in the recipes, but you surely don't want to carry six days worth of non-dehydrated! She also does a lot of hybrids where you carry mostly-dethehydrated together with pouch chicken, pouch fish, or real cheese. I like her mango chicken curry with lentils and rice. That's one of my "go to" dinners.

Another of my "go to"s is to do some sort of small pasta (get the kind that cooks in 5 min or less) and toss with olive oil, sun-dried tomato, garlic, reconstituted dried vegetables, Parmesan, and soppressata or pepperoni. Or maybe I'll whip up a sticky stew with rice or instant potatoes, dried peas, dried carrots, jerky or summer sausage, and herbs. (Start the dried stuff soaking in your pack with just enough water to cover an hour before you stop to cook.) Or go Lebanese with couscous, pouched salmon, mint (ideally fresh-foraged, but dried is ok), dried vegetables (maybe dried tomato, too), lemon powder and olive oil. Or, in the last, substitute stewed raisins for the vegetables, for a little different taste.

Or - well, on a trip that long I'd carry several starches (rice, pasta, couscous, instant potatoes, Knorr sides, ...) several kinds of dried vegetables, lemon powder, olive oil, herbs (seal them in drinking straws for lightweight packaging), and various proteins that travel well (hard cheese, pepperoni, soppressata, pouched chicken or tuna or salmon or Spam, dehydrated hamburger, jerky, ...) and I'd tend to just pick a combination that looks good for a particular meal. A given meal may be vaguely Indian, or Italian, or Greek, or whatever, depending on what seasonings I throw in.

Or if you want freeze-dried that's a little more interesting than Mountain House, check out Hawk VittleS (http://hawkvittles.com/). Tasty stuff, and it's essentially from a one-man operation. Redhawk is a strong hiker, and an incredibly nice guy. Also just read through the catalog, and maybe you'll get ideas for what to pack up in your own kitchen!

You didn't say where you'll be going. Is fishing or foraging an option? I've done dolmades on the trail (rice and olive oil and lemon powder in my pack, grape leaves and mint foraged), made berry cobblers (fresh berries, powdered lemonade, biscuit mix), and there's nothing, absolutely nothing, like just-caught trout. (Of course you have to have a fallback plan for when the bears got all the berries or the fish aren't biting.)

[gunner76]

Check out Bablefish5 and his DIY dehydrated meals. Great stuff

[fredmugs]

When we backpacked the back country in Yellowstone one of the guys brought in a dozen eggs. The next morning each person had a ziplock bag with two eggs, bacon bits, cheese, salsa and I don't remember what else that we boiled. That was some tasty stuff.