Backpacking Dehydrated Curry - at 100 posts!

Decided it was time to get serious about testing some potential backpacking dried meals.  Found one for Thai Curry at Brett on Stuff and decided to follow it a little bit.  Sort of.

So, instead of getting coconut cream, I thought I'd take coconut milk, and try to get the cream from it.  You can do this by opening the can, and letting the cream solidify on top.  I tried to do it fast by putting the entire can in the fridge, which basically makes solidified coconut milk, not coconut cream.  Ah, well.

Put about 1/2 cup in a dish over medium high heat and let it bubble away for a while.  Added some green curry paste and similarly let it bubble away for a while, stirring occasionally.

Delicious Curry Paste!

Bubbling milk.

Meanwhile, open and drain two cans of chicken.  (Costco-sized cans).

Peel and shred a sweet potato.  Put it in a microwave safe bowl with some water, cook for about 3 minutes.  Drain as best you can, press some of the water out.

Open a bag of frozen veggies.  I did the "spring mix" from Smiths.

Pull out your dehydrator and make additional "screens" for it with parchment paper.  Spread all ingredients out on screens, parchment paper, or trays.

2 trays of chicken, 1.5 of veggies, 1 of sweet potato, and .5 of curry paste.  This still left over some chicken, some sweet potato, and about half the bag of veggies.  Huh.

And you might be thinking that the veggies seem giant.  You are correct, but I was too lazy to try to chop them down more.  And everything in general might be a little crowded.  Whatever.

The idea for this recipe is to add some dried minced garlic and onions, some spices like turmeric and ginger, and see where it goes when I re-hydrate it.  We'll see.  Stay tuned for updates.

Scooter

24 hours later: The sweet potatoes seem to be dry, the chicken is getting there, I'm not sure the paste will ever actually be dry, and I was right about the veggies being giant.  They are close.  I will let it spin overnight just to make sure on everything.

Trays after drying.

Rehydrated spicy goodness!

The bag o' dried stuff.

36 hours later:  I put everything (dried stuff, some dried garlic, dried minced onions, turmeric, ginger, and salt) in a gallon ziplock bag, and tried to smush it all together to break down some of the bigger pieces.  Will taste test tomorrow.

Taste Test: Added the dried mixture (which came to 9.4 oz in the bag) to 6 cups boiling water.  Covered, let simmer for 10 minutes.  At 10 minutes the chicken was still a little chewy.  At 20 minutes it was a still a little chewy, but we called it good.  And called the whole thing good overall.  Super spicy.  Like, really, nose-blow-inducing-make-you-fan-your-mouth-spicy.  Next time, less curry paste.  And that's a long simmer time for backpacking.  Might try chopping the chicken into much smaller pieces to see if that helps the re-hydrating process.  Made about 3 servings.