How Do You Make Freeze Dried Backpacking Meals?

By Michael Ferguson

Freeze drying has become a popular method for making backpacking meals that are lightweight, nutritious, and convenient. Freeze drying involves removing moisture from food without compromising its nutritional value, flavor, or texture.

This is done by freezing the food and then subjecting it to a vacuum environment. The vacuum environment lowers the air pressure, allowing the frozen water molecules to sublimate (turn directly from a solid to a gas). As the water vaporizes, it leaves behind an extremely light and shelf-stable food product.

Freeze dried backpacking meals are easy to prepare, as they require only boiling water to reconstitute them. They are ideal for backpackers because they are lightweight and take up very little space in a pack. Additionally, they provide the nutrition needed for long hikes in an easily digestible form.

The process of making freeze dried backpacking meals starts with selecting the ingredients. Freeze drying works best with foods that contain low amounts of fat and sugar as these substances can cause off-flavors due to oxidation during the freeze-drying process. Vegetables such as peas and corn work especially well as they retain their flavor and texture after being freeze-dried.

Once the ingredients have been chosen, they must be cooked or blanched before being freeze-dried. Blanching helps preserve nutrients and prevents discoloration of the food during freeze-drying.

After blanching, the food is loaded into trays and placed in a vacuum chamber where temperatures below -50°C (-58°F) are used to freeze dry it over several hours or days depending on the size of the load. The length of time required depends on how much moisture needs to be removed from each ingredient in order to achieve optimum dryness levels for storage stability.

The final step of making freeze dried backpacking meals is packaging them into sealed containers or pouches for storage and transport. It’s important that all containers be airtight in order to prevent moisture from entering them during transport and storage; this will help ensure that your backpacking meal remains shelf-stable for extended periods of time without spoiling or losing its nutritional value or flavor profile.

Conclusion: Making freeze dried backpacking meals requires careful selection of ingredients followed by cooking/blanching, freezing at extremely low temperatures in a vacuum chamber, and finally packaging into airtight containers or pouches for storage and transport. When done properly, these lightweight yet nutritious meals can provide sustenance for long hikes without taking up too much space in your pack.