Dehydrating your own backpacking meals for your next trip doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. I recently took my roommate’s mouthwatering spaghetti recipe and turned it into an easy DIY backpacking meal that’s delicious, hearty and easy-to-rehydrate in the backcountry.
Dehydrated Backcountry Spaghetti
Ingredients
2 lbs mild Italian sausage
1 small onion, diced
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
4 Roma tomatoes, peeled and blended
15 oz can of tomato sauce
6 oz can of tomato paste
1 cup water
4 tbsp Italian seasoning
1 tsp thyme
1 ½ tsp brown sugar
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp red pepper
¼ cup red wine
Cooking Instructions
- Brown sausage in large pot.
- Add onions and cook for 3-4 minutes.
- Add garlic, tomatoes, tomato paste, tomato sauce and 1 cup of water.
- Add Italian seasoning, thyme, brown sugar and red pepper.
- Bring to a boil.
- Stir in wine.
- Simmer on low for 4 hours, stirring once each hour.
- In a separate pot, boil water with a dash of salt.
- Break spaghetti noodles in half and cook for 10-12 minutes.
- Drain pasta.
- Add pasta to sauce and mix together.
Dehydrating Instructions
- Prep food dehydrator and add parchment paper to each tray.
- Measure out 1.5 cups of spaghetti for each tray and spread it evenly in a flat layer on the tray.
- Turn on food dehydrator to medium (135 degrees F) and dehydrate for 10 hours.
- Rotate trays once every hour while dehydrating.
- Remove each tray from dehydrator and let cool.
- Once cooled, break up spaghetti and package each tray into a storage container, Ziploc bag or vacuum sealed bag.
Rehydrating in the Backcountry
- Add dehydrated spaghetti to pot.
- Add enough water to the level of the spaghetti inside the pot.
- Let spaghetti sit in pot with water, covered, for 5 minutes.
- Bring water and spaghetti to a boil.
- Stir spaghetti.
- Cover and remove from heat.
- Put covered pot in stove cozy.
- Let pot sit covered in cozy for 20 minutes.
- Give rehydrated spaghetti a quick stir.
- Enjoy!
Serving Size: 1.5 cups
Recipe Makes: 5 Servings
Backpacking Meals DIY Recipe | Dehydrated Backcountry Spaghetti
Learn how to make your own backpacking meals with some of my favorite recipes:
Coconut Cashew Curry With Couscous
Dehydrated Pasta Penne Alfredo
Sweet & Spicy Homemade Trail Mix
Holy Molé Breakfast Bars
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This looks delicious! But how much pasta do you use? It’s strangely absent from the recipe and YouTube video.
It depends on how much pasta you want to use. I usually had a whole package to my recipe.
A whole package of how much? 16 oz, 24 oz?
You can use how ever much you want. I usually use a whole package of spaghetti noodles, but you can always freeze the sauce and add the amount of noodles based off of how much you’re preparing at any given time.
I would think 1lb for 5 servings.
I am amazed! I didn’t think about dehydrating meals. This could be life changing! Thank you, now our camping experiences have no boundaries.
Yay! Happy to help!
Hi! This sounds amazing and I’m definitely going to try this. One question though…. how long am I able to store this for? My trip isn’t until September. Thanks!
I batch dehydrate most of my food for the backpacking season in the Spring and then pull from my stash throughout the season for my various trips. I usually finish all of my food by the Fall and have never had a problem with anything going bad. I store each of my meals in a Ziplock freezer bag so that I can easily cook and rehydrate them when out on trail.
How long will it keep? We go on trail in 2 months.
As long as you store these in a long container, in a cool, dark place, these should last anywhere from 6 months to a year.
Thanks!
I have watched other dehydrating videos where they will boil the ground meat in water or pour boiling water over the meat after it’s cooked to get rid of any extra fats. Have you had any issues with spoilage due to the fats in the meat of your dishes? If I can keep some of the fats and be OK then that would be nice to have those add’l calories as well as the flavor. Thanks!
My SIL made this for my son who is thru hiking the Appalachian trail. He LOVED it and asked me to get the recipe from her. I have now made two batches, and vacuum sealed in individual servings, so he can just heat up in water on the trail. (and I have made it to eat without dehydration here at home. A hit here too!) Thank you!