Wanna play chicken??
The Challenge isn’t too far off and it came as something of a rude awakening when I realised that my dehydrated meals stock was down to zero – time for some action.I dehydrate my own meals, it’s only a bit of a faff but you know what goes into the meals unlike some of the branded stuff.
Chicken is a meat that I’m fond of and although it dehydrates quite well, re-hydration is a problem – the stuff tends to come back as chewy, hard and, well, inedible.
A bit of research on t’interweb resulted in the discovery of Backpackingchef.com and in particular the article on dealing with chicken. They found that canned chicken worked and rehydrated well. A trip into Altrincham this morning and I soon had some tins of the stuff, two tins made two different curries and the contents of the other tin are all chopped up and drying nicely on the dehydrator.
Fortunately I’m in on my own.
The smell in the house is heavenly.
Well I think it’s heavenly!
The contents of a tin of Tesco Chicken Breast, smells of not a lot really
Chicken & Veg Curry, smells wonderful!
Chicken Madras, smells even wonderfuller!
Other meals that are on the cards: beef hash, beef bolognese, vegetarian bolognese, boring old meat and three veg, loads of puddings…..I like puddings.
I’ll report back with results of the chicken dehydrating / rehydrating.
In the meantime I think I’ll go out for a run, this kitchen smells.
I hope you made it back before the chicken overcooked!
ReplyDeleteIt took around 7 hours to dehydrate the chicken - my run wasn't THAT long! I just need to decide what to do with the chicken now. I'll dream up something.
DeleteI'll be interested to hear back on the result of the chicken experiment. No use for us for the current stint of dehydrating (only a handful of meals left to go, and we already have the ingredients in stock) but it'd be good to know for future reference.
ReplyDelete(Incidentally, we've got a dehydrator that looks remarkably similar to that. Is it an Ezi-dri?)
It's an American Harvest Snackmaster = Ezidri, I bought it on one of my visits to the States a few years ago, less than half the price of the same thing bought in the UK.
DeleteThe chicken dehydrated well - around 7 hours. I'll rehydrate it in the morning to see how it goes.
The two chicken curries are still drying, I'm going to put the dehydrator on a timer so it stays on for another 2 hours, that should do the trick.
I want to buy some dehydrated ingredients to make up some meals, Tesco have some stuff in but not too much. Smash + Beanfeast is all very well but you soon get fed up with it.
Tomorrow I'll make and dry a batch of tomato sauce. I know how to live!
So my big toilet roll may be needed after all.ha
ReplyDeleteItis dehydrating the beer that may pose a problem?????????? Looks good though.
ReplyDelete