Dehydrating mince

[Nuts]

Tried Dehydrating mince for the first time. Panfried quite dry, with just a little garlic and a few herbs and then dried on high setting. Found that the mince took 10-12 hrs on the solid plastic sheet, the book recommended 6-8hrs but I found that the meat was not dry enough. Also found that the mince took a while to re-hydrate. Otherwise, the mince was very much nicer than the freeze dried stuff Iv'e been buying, more like the real thing, less powdery. Thanks for the tips corvus. I put two cans of diced tomatoes with the meat. It dried away to nothing but wondering if this is the best way (drying the tomatoes in with the mince (for the spagg sauce)))

[bibtracker]

That's encouraging, Nuts. I have not yet tried dehydrating mince and I look forward to giving it a go with the added tomatoes.
I have seen reports that it looks like Kitty Litter when dried, which was not very appetising!
Did you cook it, then rinse with boiling water to cut back on the fat? Or did you just cook it?
Cheers, Tony

[Nuts]

I just cooked it (lean beef mince). Needs some fine tuning but yes, pretty good. 500grams mince 500ml diced tomatoes ended up as about 400ml dried and was pretty much back to original (in every way) once rehydrated/cooked. Any other comment welcome though as i'd be interested in how other's do it.... I ended up giving it a blast on the mesh tray once it had started drying as it doesnt seem to dry out quick enough on the solid sheet/wax paper? And it took heating and sitting for an hour to be fully soft/tender. ?

[corvus]

Tip on drying mince (mince your own is best) just do the meat on its own dry pan fry b4 the dehy ,then you can assemble your dish as you would from scratch at home .
It can be Bolo ,Curry ,Chile or just Savoury from other things you have dehydrated .
I used to do the whole meal dehydrated for larger groups in the past which were successful but you need to ease up on herbs and spices as they tend to become more intense when the meal is dehydrated however if you do your meat seperate you can produce different meals based on a couple of simple things

[frank_in_oz]

We have been dehydrating whole meals for a while now and have been pretty happy with them.
The most important things we found are:
1) make sure the meat portions are cut up small or preferably minced (we get the butcher to mince chicken breast for a chicken chilli dish we dry)
2) make sure all fat is trimmed off any meat as it won't dry
3) When we cook mince we than wash it under really hot tap water to get rid of all the fat. It can then be used for spagetti etc
4) We tend to dry slow and long , turning every 2-3 hours
5) We USED to cook bolognaise sauce and then cook pasta seperately in camp. Last time we cooked, dried and rehydrated together and it worked really well
6) To rehydrate we just cover with boiling water when we have our arrival cuppa and leave it sit (covered) until we are ready to eat. We add more boiling water as it rehydrates and then gently heat before eating

We have blogged a couple of times about drying meals
This one is spagetti bolognaise : http://frankinoz.blogspot.com/2008/06/d ... cheap.html

This one is drying a curry: http://frankinoz.blogspot.com/2007/11/h ... curry.html

There is also a great resource called Freezer bag cooking here: http://www.freezerbagcooking.com/index.htm

[Nuts]

Do you use a dehydrator (circular style) frank? Do you use sheets/paper etc. under things like mince? This seems to block a lot of the airflow?

[frank_in_oz]

Do you use a dehydrator (circular style) frank? Do you use sheets/paper etc. under things like mince? This seems to block a lot of the airflow?

Hi Nuts,
We use the circular style dehydrator

Depending on the volume of food we have to dry:

We use the fruit leather trays as the first preference. They have a lip and stop the excess fluid dripping into the unit
or
we add oven proof paper to the spare trays and fill the whole unit up with food.

It is just more efficient (time wise) to have the unit filled.

We also move the food around a fair bit as it tends to dry from the edge (maybe, as you note, because the air flow is restricted)

We also change the shelves around a bit after we have stirred the food.
Hope that is a help

Half dehydrated spag bol on a fruit leather tray

dehydrated_spagetti.JPG (56.03 KiB) Viewed 15899 times

[Nuts]

That is interesting, thanks frank. I didn't think of drying the pasta just as in/with the mince. I guess it doesn't matter as nothing can really be 'over-dried'. Thanks for the other info (I think we have the same dehy. unit) will take a look at your other blogs.

[Nuts]

Just out of interest.
I dried 3kg of beef mince yesterday.
It now weights 800grams.
In addition I estimate it will take around 300grams less fuel to cook....
It looks (and tastes) like beef mince.

I have noticed it takes forever on those silicone/parchment trays.
I like the fine mesh screen (supplied), nice even drying and lot's quicker. May need to find some more of those.