Freezer bag cooking: cooking in a bag

Freezer bag cooking: dehydrated meals to rehydrate whilst travelling

The cooking with freezer bags It is a simple and practical way to prepare a hot meal whilst trekking, on a hike or during a day out in the countryside: you take pre-cooked and dried ingredients with you and, when it’s time to eat, add hot water directly into the bag you’ve been carrying them in.

The advantage? Dried foods take up very little space, are easy to carry and can be prepared in advance, allowing you to choose your own ingredients and combinations.

And this is actually one of the most interesting uses of the’home food dehydrator: not just for storing fruit and vegetables, but prepare real ingredients and meals to be rehydrated when needed.

Tauro designs and manufactures food dehydrators for over thirty years and with the line Biosec Home food drying can also be used for recipes of this kind.

What do you need to prepare a meal using the freezer bag cooking method?

The ingredients can, of course, be varied to suit your own tastes. In our example, we used:

• Basmati rice, which had previously been fired and dried. In our test, we used programme P5 for around 16 hours.
• Carrots, thinly sliced and dried, roughly using programme P2 for about 18 hours. If you’d like to find out more about preparing vegetables, you can also read the guide dedicated to’drying vegetables.
• Minced meat with parsley, first cooked and then dried using P4. In our case, this took about 14 hours. The meat requires special care: you’ll find further advice in the guide dedicated to’meat dryer and in our recipe for the beef jerky made in a dehydrator.
• Potato bark, a dish made from potatoes and stock, dried until it has a dry consistency and is easy to transport.

Drying times are always approximate: the quantity, thickness, moisture content of the food and environmental conditions may affect them. You should therefore always check how dry the food is before storing it.

For detailed information on temperatures, ventilation and the characteristics of the various cycles, please see the page dedicated to Biosec’s Dryset Pro programmes.

How to prepare a meal

Before setting off, place the prepared ingredients separately in the dehydrator and finish the drying process.

Once they are completely dry, you can portion them out in the quantities you need for each meal and store them until you’re ready to set off. At this stage, it’s important to prevent the food from reabsorbing moisture: you’ll find a comprehensive guide on this in our Wiki at how to store dried food properly.

During the walk, all you’ll need is:

1. bring the water to the boil;
2. pour it over the ingredients inside a a bag certified for contact with food and suitable for the temperature at which it is used;
3. seal the bag and massage it gently to distribute the water and ingredients;
4. keep them warm, for example by wrapping them in a sweatshirt or putting them in a sleeping bag;
5. Wait for about 10 minutes and check that it has rehydrated completely before eating.

And there you have it – dinner’s ready.

From the kitchen to your rucksack: why prepare meals with Biosec

For recipes like this, it’s not enough simply to “dry” the ingredients: it’s useful to be able to check temperature, time and air circulation depending on foods that vary greatly from one another.

Biosec Tauro domestic tumble dryers are fitted with an electronic system Dryset Pro, with automatic programmes and customisable temperatures, and use a horizontal airflow which acts on the various baskets simultaneously.

This means that Biosec can be used not only for dried fruit and snacks, but also for vegetables, cooked dishes, pasta, meat and ingredients intended for subsequent rehydration.

For those preparing small quantities, a compact model such as Biosec Domus B5, whilst those who wish to prepare several ingredients or meals at the same time can make the most of the increased capacity offered by the 10 baskets of Biosec Domus B10.

Both are part of the range of food dryers designed and manufactured by Tauro in Italy and can be purchased directly from our website.

Many different preparations, just one dryer

Freezer bag cooking is just one of the ways in which food preservation can change the way you organise your kitchen and meals.

With Biosec, you can prepare ingredients for storage in the larder, vegetables for rehydration, dried meat, snacks, fruit, powders, travel rations and many other recipes.

If you fancy having a go, you could start with our collection of recipes for the food dehydrator, or find out more about techniques, times, temperatures and storage in the Wiki Drying by Tauro.

And if you’re still trying to decide which car best suits your needs, discover the full range of Biosec Tauro domestic dehumidifiers.