Freeze drying complete meals for camping and storage

Complete meals are where freeze drying starts paying for itself. Stew, chilli, curry and pasta sauce all rehydrate almost perfectly, provided the fat content is low and you spread them no thicker than 15 mm. This is also the best use of the machine for camping and emergency stores.

What works

Meal	Result	Note
Chilli	Excellent	The benchmark. Rehydrates almost indistinguishably
Beef stew	Excellent	Trim the fat before cooking, not after
Curry, tomato-based	Excellent	Cream-based ones store far shorter
Pasta sauce	Excellent	Freeze dry the sauce, carry dry pasta separately
Cooked rice dishes	Very good	Rehydrates in 5–8 min
Soup	Very good	Dry it thick, add water back generously
Pasta bake	Good	Cheese content limits shelf life
Shepherds pie	Good	Potato topping goes slightly grainy
Anything creamy	Fair	Works, but the dairy fat caps it at 2–5 years
Anything fried	Poor	Oil does not sublimate
Salad, raw veg dishes	Poor	Texture does not survive

The method

1. Cook it as you normally would, but trim fat before cooking and skim any that renders out. Fat is the shelf-life limit and it is far easier to remove now.
2. Cool completely. Warm food entering the chamber wastes an hour of cycle.
3. Spread 12 to 15 mm on lined trays. Mounding it in the middle is the commonest error and it gives you a wet core.
4. Weigh a tray before the cycle. Meals are dense and the weight test matters here more than on fruit.
5. Run a full cycle, expect 20 to 28 hours, and be prepared for a second dry on anything thick.
6. Break it up before bagging, so it rehydrates evenly and packs more densely.

Portioning for the field

The reason to do this at all is convenience later, so portion accordingly. One meal per quart bag, with the water quantity written on the bag, means you or anyone else can make it without thinking. For backpacking, weigh the portions — the whole point is that a day’s food weighs a few hundred grams.

Rehydrating a meal

Add roughly 80% of the water you removed, hot rather than boiling, stir once, and leave it five to ten minutes covered. Dense meals need the full time. Add more water if it is tight rather than starting wet, because you cannot take it back out.

In the field, hot water straight into the bag works if the bag is rated for it — a plain mylar bag is not necessarily food-safe at boiling temperature, so check before you rely on it. A pot is safer.

Camping maths

	Fresh	Freeze dried
One stew portion	~450 g	~90 g
Three days, three meals a day	~4 kg	~800 g
Water needed to rehydrate	—	~2.5 L over three days