21st century hiker » food

MYOF – dried sausages, dried ham, and salmon jerky

Frank Spychalski — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 19:11:54 +0000

In the last two weeks I experimented a little more with my dehydrator. My first experiment was to find something meaty to add to mashed potatoes. In my local super market I bought three brands of sausages, cut them in small pieces and dried them. Experiment two was to dry pre-cut salmon and ham and see how tasty the result would be.

I used two sausages each from the 3 brands on the left, cut one in roughly 2cm long pieces and the other in 1cm thick, diagonally cut pieces because I wasn’t sure how well the dehydration will work.

Observation 1: Not surprisingly, there is a lot of fat in sausages. Even the ones which look like mostly meat contain a lot. So after 30 minutes I removed everything from the dehydrator and put paper towel under the pieces to soak up the fat

Observation 2: It takes a long time to properly dry sausages. At first I ran the dehydrator at 70ºC for 6 hours, the sausages shrank a little but the meat bits still looked pretty juicy to me and felt soft. After another 6 hours the result were crunchy sausage bit.

Observation 3: Drying sausage is one of the few things were size doesn’t matter. Both cuts looked, felt and tasted the same.

Observation 4: You can dry Sauerkraut, too. I guess this is a German thing, but I had to try it. As you can see from the image below, I had some room in the dehydrator so I added Sauerkraut for the first drying run of 6 hours. The result was eatable, better than a lot of other trail food I have tried.

Dried bits of all three brands tasted great, crunchy and still meaty, my personal favorite were the dried A&P Schinkenknacker. Add some instant mashed potatoes and some dried Sauerkraut and you have a pretty yummy instant meal on the trail.

My second experiment took was less innovative. I bought slices of salmon and turkey ham.

I dried both at 70ºC for 6 hours. When I checked after 2-3 hours I noticed that the salmon stuck to the metal grill of the dehydrator, so again I removed it all and put a layer of baking paper in (yes, the pictures below are staged because I forgot to take pictures at first).

Both the salmon (picture on the left) and the ham (on the right) turned out pretty good. The salmon tasted a little too salty and I will check the salmon and make sure that it’s not seasoned the next time. At first the ham was extremely dry, like crisps. But after a day it had drawn some moisture from the air and hat the normal jerky consistency.

Improvements for next time: unseasoned salmon and reduce time for ham to 4-5 hours.

I’m always looking for additional ideas to try, so please let me know if you have any suggestions on what to dehydrate…

Stoeckli dehydrator

Frank Spychalski — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 16:13:36 +0000

For Christmas I got a cool dehydrator. A few people asked me about the specific model and my experience so far.

So for everybody who is interested: I have the Stöckli dehydrator you see on the left.

Specs:

Temperature adjustable from 20ºC to 70ºC and a timer for up to 12 hours.
Power consumption 600 Watt.
3 levels with 32cm diameter (big enough for 6 sliced apple or 600g sliced beef).

Since I got it I used it perhaps half a dozen times. So far I dehydrated

vegetables: carrots, onions, mushrooms, cucumber, peppers
fruit: blueberries, apples, kiwi
meat: roast beef

All but the cucumber I would consider a success. The machine runs very quiet, most of the time I used it, I let it run over night and sleeping in the next room was no problem.

Summary: Highly recommended!

My first home-made beef jerky

Frank Spychalski — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 18:28:20 +0000

Yesterday I sliced ~600g beef and put it 7h at 70ºC in my dehydrator. Slices were too thick, I expected the meat to shrink more. But the result is still delicious and I will take it with me this weekend on a snowshoeing tour.

Next time I will experiment with marinade. This time I used just mustard, which turned out OK but a little more spice wouldn’t hurt…

Der perfekte Outdoor-Kaffee

Frank Spychalski — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 20:25:43 +0000

Ich bekenne, ich bin koffein-süchtig. Wie schon erwähnt wollte ich schon länger testen, ob man unterwegs griechischen/türkischen Kaffee machen kann.

Am Wochenende habe ich es nun mal ausprobiert. Laut der Packung braucht man einen Teelöffel Kaffee und einen Teelöffel Zucker, die in das lauwarme Wasser geschüttet werden. Das Wasser wird dann zum Kochen gebracht und fertig ist der Kaffee.

Ich habe für meine etwa halb mit Wasser gefüllte 200ml Tasse zwei Löffel Kaffee und nur einen Löffel Zucker genommen – ich mag Kaffee nicht zu süß, normalerweise trinke ich ihn schwarz. Die geringe Menge Wasser kocht verdammt schnell, ein weiterer Pluspunkt für den morgendlichen Outdoor-Kaffee. Danach lasse ich den den Kaffee noch einen Moment ziehen und fertig ist ein leckerer, intensiv schmeckender Mokka.

Outdoor espresso

Frank Spychalski — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 14:00:12 +0000

(über martintauber.com)

Es gibt einen fancy “outdoor” Espressomaker namens Handpresso Wild. Die 16 bar, die es angeblich erreichen soll, klingen schon beeindruckend. Aber “Light weight 476g” ist noch nicht mal knapp an akzeptabel vorbeigeschrammt.

Ich würde das Gerät ja wirklich gerne mal testen, bin aber nicht bereit, dafür 99€ auszugeben. Wäre interessant wie es im Vergleich zu unserer Faema E61 im Büro abschneidet.

Bisher bin ich unterwegs ganz gut mit löslichem Espresso zurecht gekommen. Aber das war auch bevor ich täglich 2-3 leckere Espresso getrunken habe. Eine Idee, die ich demnächst mal testen muß ist es türkischen/griechischen Kaffee zu machen. Dann muß ich nur Pulver mitnehmen und dieses mit dem Wasser in der Tasser zum Kochen bringen.