Beef & Potato Hash for BACKPACKING

One of my favorite meals I have always loved when camping is the classic tinfoil dinner with hamburger meat, slices of potatoes, onions, and carrots.  I have used freeze dried ingredients to make this foil dinner and it has come out excellent in a fraction of the time it takes to cook raw meat over the fire.  For a backpacking meal, however, I decided to eliminate use of a campfire for cooking since there are so often fire restrictions when backpacking.  That, along with backpackers wanting the option to not deal with washing dishes and just eat out of a bag, made for the challenge of putting together ingredients that don't require as much cooking time so that all they need is to sit in boiling water for 5 minutes to soften.  This means I can't use any dehydrated ingredients like carrots or potatoes, because those would require more cooking time. Here's what I came up with:

Beef and Potato Hash for Backpacking 

One serving

1/2 cup freeze-dried potato dices
1/2 cup freeze-dried ground beef OR freeze-dried shredded beef (break up the bigger chunks of shredded beef)
1/4 cup freeze-dried green beans
1/4 cup freeze-dried mushrooms
2 Tbsp. freeze-dried chopped onions
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. chef's choice all purpose seasoning
1 Tbsp. espagnole beef gravy mix

Measure all ingredients into a freezer gallon sized ziploc bag.  When you're ready to eat, boil 1 cup of water and dump it into the bag of ingredients.  Let sit for about 10 minutes until everything is soft.  Caution: don't get carried away with squishing the water into the food, or the potatoes will disintegrate and turn into mashed potatoes!  Just let it sit.  :)

Comments