We are hiking a lot, and food is a key element. We (mainly Clem) negligated for a while, but for this hike we decided to invest more time! We planned 14 days of food in full autonomy. Although in winter, with the sled you can pull a lot of food, and heavy one, in summer, you have to reduce the weight. And it's how we tried dehydration!

After planning our food, not all of it worth the dehydration. It can be useless (the porridge in the morning) or the dehydrated food in the shop is not too expensive (the noodles, mashed potatoes, for example).
Here is a list of the food we dehydrated:

• hummus (mashed chick peas)

• mushroom

• lentils with vegetables

You can dehydrate all a lot of food if it fits those conditions:

• It doesn't have oil/fat: because you cannot evaporate it)

• It not meat or eggs (possible, but harder and doesn't last long outside)
  

The goal is to remove as much water as possible. If it's a proper dish, like a lentil sauce with carrots. Cook it until it becomes this paste that you could spread on a bread slice.

Then, if it's still wet and tick, put it in the hover at the minimum degree for 30 min.

Spread it on the rack of your dehydrator. Not bigger than half a centimeter. The thinner, the better!

Depending on your machine, the room temperature and the element you want to remove water, you will have to test! But our experience says that about 8h to 12h at 70°c work's for most of the food!

Tips ! If it's the goal is to get a powder (like hummus), you can grid it with the machine and put it again in the dehydrator for an hour to be sure that is dehydrated !

We experimented a lot of ways to use the dehydrated food. But we found our method, even though is not the most light one !

We use a small food thermos, both of us. We throw all the food in there, pour the water and let it soak. For the morning we can warm up the water and put it with the porridge, then warm up water for the lunch and make it ready to eat. And the same for the evening at the tent. The dishes are super easy and fast to do: water, shake it, a litte clean and hop ! It's done !

To rehydrate the food, just pour water and let it soak for fifteen minutes to half an hour. It's better to have a bit more than too less water in general.