Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Freezer Bag Cooking 101

Mark your cup/bowl/pot.

How long after you open the bulf cans of MH will they be good for. Do you need to vacuum seal any left overs? Ziplock eveything right away?

NIDO powdered milk in the latino section of the grocery aisle at Walmart is really good powdered WHOLE milk.

You need to measure the water for most meals. If you are using a little alcohol burner you measure the water for the pot and just enough alcohol for the stove to get a boil. If it isn't real cold sometimes just bubbles and not a true boil is enough if your cozy is effective. Also, you need to check and see if your pot POURS, and doesn't spew the boiling water on your feet, all over the ground and everywhere but inside the bag. The little teapot/kettle idea is a good one. My MSR Titan Kettle has a little pour lip that works well, the water pours out in a nice little column that is easy to direct.

SM- Thanks for the tips. I do like summer sausage. Heck, I'm from German descent on both sides, so about any ground & spiced meat stuffed into an animal instestine is fine by me! I generally just do PB sandwiches/tortillas for lunches. However, by about day 4 it's getting pretty hard to stomach. Likewise with the oatmeal for breakfast. I've just about made myself not be able to eat oatmeal after a ten day sheep hunt TWO YEARS ago. I can just barely get it down anymore without gagging.

I've never tried it, but an old college professor would dry hamburger. They'd boil it so as to get most of the fat off then just spread it on a cookie sheet in the oven on low for a couple of hours. Something like that may be just the ticket to mix with the Knorr meals! Wife and kid are heading out of town for the next week so I may have to do some experimenting...

I also have that Freezer Bag Cooking book. If you want more ideas, you can also go to youtube and check out the videos (admittedly a little goofy but good ideas on food):

http://www.youtube.com/results?sear...=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&spell=1

Couscous is awesome in a freezer bag, by the way...I think that this year I'm going to try it with one of those pouches of salmon and I think I saw chicken pouches at one of the natural foods grocery stores. (I don't frequent them, so I'll need to go back and check to make sure I wasn't seeing things.)

halflife65:

I don't know where you live, but here in Colorado, we can buy pouches of chicken at the supermarket.

KC

does anyone use vaccum sealer bags for this? they may be a little more bulky but would resist poncture by a spork a little better. Just wondering if they will stand up to the heat

We have tuna, chicken, salmon, and shrimp in pouches around my way. Makes for some good variety, especially when you add them to lipton or knorr sides. Another good, quick meal is lipton instant soup mix (made a little thick) with chicken, etc added. Almost gumbo or stew like.

Fred Meyers (where I usually shop) doesn't seem to have the chicken. I'll check the other grocery stores, I guess. Thanks for the heads up.

Another plug for Sarah's work (www.trailcooking.com). I've known her since before she was even using FBC, and have spent time on the trail with she and her son. Good people.

If you are getting into this, I would really recommend a dehydrator. It's lots easier than you might imagine. I'm getting to the point that dehydrated backpacking meals are a by-product of the normal cooking process. If I make something (like the stew I'll be eating on the trail Saturday night) that doesn't go over too well with the troops, I just throw the leftovers in the dehydrator. Somehow, it always tastes better on the trail. Producing dehydrated ground beef is also an easy and cost effective proposition. If you get regular (as opposed to lean) ground beef for dehydrating, you can barely tell the difference between normal and rehydrated.

Evan,

I have been thinking about a dehydrator for a while how long does it take to do a stew? Do you cut the meat up smaller when you dehydrate it?

is there any tips for making sure you are not spilling water where you don't want it.

I would think it would be nice if you had some type of cup with the cozy on the outside, kinda like how the jet boil cup is but not as big, then boil the water pour the water into the bag, take the cozy off the cup this should allow the cup to cool very fast then stick the ziplock back into the cup and use the ziplock as a liner inside the cup, this way you have something to hold onto while your eating. I have never done it but does anyone have an idea if this would work??

another disadvantage of the moutain house meals, I can't tell you how many times the bags seem to get punctured and leak for some reason.

what do you guys do with the messy bags after you have used them??

Yea you can do that with the cup or you can do that with the cozy. I mentioned that in the first post but I should of taken a picture. The bag will fit right in a mug of pot but I like to use my mug for coffee. That's why I prefer a cozy. You just zip the bag back up. As long as you fold it down when you fill and eat there will be no food on the zipper part of the bag.

Practice makes perfect when pouring boiling water into a bag

You want everything to be roughly the same size. In this case, the meat was ground venison, so the holdouts were the carrots. I had to cut them down some so they'd dry out as quickly as everything else. A few hours, I don't pay too much attention. You can't really overdo it. If it is more dried out, it just takes more water to rehydrate.



I'm looking forward to seeing one of these in person (removeable cozy):
http://www.rei.com/product/798273

I've never had a problem with leaky mountain house bags; I even put them in my sleeping bag (carefully) while they're "cooking" to turn up the heat.

I dunno what happened, we had like 3 of them bust when I used them last year, it was dark when we did them up so I dunno what the heck happened.

the problem I see with that REI cookset is it is .6 liters, seems like most of the freezer bag meals at least the ones posted are centered around 2 cups of water. so after you add 16 oz of water plus once the contents rehydrate you need something bigger than half a quart, at least if you wanted to stick the bag back in the pot and use the pot as a holder, maybe the cozy is the best way to go after all, or is there another superlight weight insulated mug that would work, I could see myself having trouble getting the hot water into the bag without spilling it all over the place.

oh back to one other question, is there an easy way to get rid of the bags that you used for rehydrating, would they burn??

You dont need a mug big enough to hold the entire contents because thats what the ziploc is doing. Just big enough to for you hand to hold onto so you dont get burned by the contents in the bag. I have stuck mine in a 450ml mug without issues. Your over thinking the mug thing.

When your done you put the empty ziploc in your bag and carry it out.

Hmm, it was dark huh? You stir your pouches with a knife?

Spagetti sauce and cooked spagetti dehydrate real nice. Add some gravel and a few parmesan packets and you have a great meal.