Cooking in the field

We are not professionals at cooking, but over the years in the woods and fields, we have tried a few different dishes that enhance the adventure. Of course, there's a certain nostalgic shimmer to a gold tin of "dead man's fingers" (a infamous can in the swedish army) and liver pate, but it's neither the smoothest nor the tastiest really. Below we present a few different types of food, in some sort of order of difficulty. We have a wide range of both outdoor food and accessories for cooking your own food, you can find it here under Tents and Cooking

Soft canned foods MRE with chemical heater

You can't fail, the food is ready in the bag and you don't even need to add water. A classic canned food type but with a soft bag for packaging instead of metal can. Ideally it should be heated, but can be eaten cold. Often supplied with a heating bag, a flameless chemical heater that is activated by a tablespoon of water. The bag is used a lot in the military and can be cooked in vehicles, observation posts and other places where it might not be so convenient to have a kitchen.
The bag can also be heated in hot water, on a hot engine block, on an element or the like. In order for the bag to warm through faster, it can be insulated with the heat source, turned over after half the time and massaged. After a maximum of 10 minutes, the dish should be hot.

Freeze-dried food in bag

Freeze-dried food is a good way to bring a lot of food to a reasonably low weight. If you are out for more than 3-4 days, the food quickly becomes heavy, if you are out for more than a week, it is almost impossible to have canned goods. Freeze-dried food then gives you the opportunity to have good, nutritious and varied food during the trip.
You pour in boiling water, the hotter the better. Stir THOROUGHLY and seal for 10 minutes or more.

Home-dried food

If you can afford it, it is cheaper to dry your own outdoor food. You then dry in a special food dryer or in the oven. If you use an oven, set it to 50-70 degrees, put a wooden spoon in the oven door so the moisture escapes and dry for about 6 hours. Drying time and temperature depend on what you are drying.
Some foods suit better than others. I think chicken without fat and lean minced meat is best. Steak gets tough easily and fish was a disaster when I tested it. Carrots, mushrooms and onions work great, while peas are difficult to get soft again. Things that need to be sliced ​​should be sliced ​​as thin as you can, preferably even thinner than in the pictures.

The dried food (meat and vegetables) is conveniently mixed with broth and spices in a small bag. Then you have bulgur, cous cous, pasta or the like. I usually have dried meat+vegetables+spices in one bag and bulgur/pasta in another as they don't need to cook as long. On the outside of the bags I write how much water to add, count on 1-2 dl more than what is needed for the bulgur couscous. First I boil meat+vegetables in the indicated amount of water, then I add bulgur/couscous, if it becomes dry pour in a little more water. Pasta may be cooked separately and drained. Therefore, bulgur or couscous is the easiest to have.
It is certainly not difficult to dry your own food, but you should try your hand at it.

The food may need to be cooked for 10-20 minutes. You can also soak the food in water for a couple of hours to shorten the cooking time, I used to put the dinner in a Nalgene when I prepared lunch, then they had to soak during the march. Dried food for two people during a one-week mountain hike. Worked great!

Some lessons and tips:

Fry chicken, minced meat and the like before drying to avoid bacterial growth.

Use lean meat and do not have animal fat in the food. Vegetable oil works well.

Dry properly, if the food is moist it will mold and you will get sick.

Spice a little extra, most things taste a little less dry.

Bet on safe cards, rather a bit monotonous than to eat some failed stone-hard fish dish.

Sausage stew over an open fire.

This sausage stew is a good base that you can work on, add to and remove. In its simplest form, it's a can of beans in tomato sauce, classic cowboy fare. Top it off with several kinds of beans and corn and you have a prairie stew. Regular plastic sausage lasts for a day trip. If you are going to be away for a longer period of time, you can take a cold-smoked ditto.

You need:

An onion

A package of sausages of a fatter variety, such as chorizo

A can of white beans. Heinz chili variety is spicy and tasty..

Chop sausage and onion. Place the sausage in a sufficiently hot saucepan or pan and stir. The sausage then releases its fat. Add the chopped onion and fry until translucent. Pour in the beans and cook just enough. Serve!

Bake bread in a dutch oven, over an open fire

Baking bread may not be something you do on every hike or forest adventure. But it's fun to know and you practice your firing techniques. Make a bread dough of your choice, but it is good to have some graham flour, rye flour, cumin and other things that make the bread good.
Heat your dutch oven slightly, have a little glow underneath, but have quite a lot on top. Preferably use charcoal from hard wood. Add the bread and wait about 45-90 minutes, rather a little longer and a long time than the other way around to avoid charring your bread.

Check out our video below to see how we did it in practice.