People so often ask me this question, ‘But what do you eat…? I hope you will forgive me if I post about it fairly often and repeat myself…We have a home dehydrator, so this gives us a few more options, but you CAN dehydrate things in your home oven (if you are careful). Dehydrating cooked rice which then rehydrates simply by adding boiling water is a case in point – I am really surprised that no-one sells ‘instant’ (dehydrated) rice; maybe that’s a business idea for you.
Here is our recipe for ‘Coconut Rice’ which works well as a lunch mixed eg with a Sweet Chilli Tuna or as an accompaniment to the evening meal. (We add the boiling water at breakfast to a snap lock bag and eat it cold for lunch). As you can see from the picture Della vacuum seals the rice (you need to double bag it eg with a freezer bag to prevent it from piercing the outer bag) and adds her own label for when we take these meals eg to NZ. NB: we need to add country of origin barcodes in future; see: http://www.theultralighthiker.com/hiking-food-customs-gestapo/
For many other hiking food ideas try a search for ‘food’ in the search space (above)
DELLA’S COCONUT RICE
Ingredients:
1.5 cups chicken stock (eg Continental/Oxo stock cubes)
1 cup coconut milk (eg reconstituted powder)
Half teaspoon salt
1 cup long grain rice
Grated coconut, lightly toasted, for garnish
Method:
- Rinse the rice in cold water
- Combine stock, coconut milk and salt in a large saucepan and heat over a medium heat until near boiling
- Reduce heat to low
- Add rice and stir for one minute
- Cover pan and simmer over a low heat, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes or until the rice is almost tender and most of the liquid has been absorbed
- Remove pan from the heat and let the rice stand, covered, for 10 minutes or until it is tender and all the liquid has been absorbed
- Lightly fluff rice with a fork.
The dehydrated rice rehydrates quickly and easily by just adding boiling water. We both recall a memorable lunch like this at Little Deadman’s Bay on the South Coast Walk, Tasmania.
See Also: A Hiking Food Compedndium
