A hearty meal in fall goes far in making everyone feel good after a long day of activities. Especially in the shorter days, and you get to sit around a fire while eating dinner.
Boondocking can be in an RV, a tent or even at a cabin – you’re roughing it, but still have luxuries. With using freeze-dried items you don’t have to carry much refrigerated items, nor handle raw meat while out. It lets you eat great, but have a lot less cleanup. More time for making s’mores after! Chilly nights in fall are made for this.
And yes, this recipe works great for backpacking if you have a crew to feed. This will truly feed 4 adults. No skimpy portions here.
Packed up and ready to go. We used an oxygen absorber for this meal, when we sealed it, as tomato powder loves to absorb moisture.
Beef Stroganoff
In a gallon storage bag:
- 1 pound cooked and dehydrated egg noodles
In a food vac bag:
- ½ cup diced dried onion
- 1 cup freeze-dried mushrooms, crumbled
- 1 ½ cups freeze-dried sliced or diced beef
- ¼ cup freeze-dried tomato powder
- 4 tsp low sodium beef bouillon
In a leak-proof bottle take:
- 4 tsp Worcestershire sauce or powder
Also pack:
- 4-ounces cream cheese*
One Pot Method:
Add 6 cups water to a large pot (3 Liter and up), add in the meat and vegetable bag and Worcestershire sauce. Bring to a boil, add in pasta. Return to a boil, stirring constantly. Cover tightly, take off stove, and let sit for 10 minutes.
Stir in the cream cheese till smooth.
Serves 4 large portions.
Notes:
Instead of carrying fresh cream cheese (which does carry pretty well, even backpacking – as long as it’s not in summer and super hot) you can use freeze-dried cream cheese powder and make cream cheese with it easily. See here for how to. This makes the meal very shelf stable.
So why do I not add the noodles to the freeze-dried ingredients? Two reasons: One is dehydrated items have more moisture in them than freeze-dried does and can cause sogginess in those items (not good for long-term storage), but two, is that the noodles are sharp when dry, and can puncture the Food Vac bags.
If you can’t find tomato powder, you can use ¼ cup ketchup. Different taste for sure, but it works! You can use packets as well. The packets are often 1 Tablespoon in size.
When prepping recipes using freeze-dried ingredients (versus dehydrated) you want to ensure the bag is well sealed. Particularly with freeze-dried meat. If you are making the meal to use that weekend, a plastic bag will work great. If longer, I highly suggest using a FoodVac sealer and precut quart size bags.
FTC Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links that give us commissions on products purchased. These items are what we used in the recipes. This includes both Amazon and Thrive Life.
~Sarah