Homemade Backpacking Meals- Beans and Rice Part 1

Vegetarian “Refried Beans”

Well, if you didn’t know it already, Sonny Wong and I love backpacking. With the onset of spring, I like to start preparing backpacking meals for our summer backpacking trips. Preparing food for backpacking is pretty easy, especially if you are making the food for dinner and then dehydrating the leftovers, and it’s a fantastic way to save cash!

We originally started making our backpacking food for a couple of reasons:

  • To save money (we have 4 kids)

  • I am a vegetarian (though Sonny’s not) and there’s not much aimed toward vegetarians or vegans

  • Ability to control what you are putting into your body

  • Eating the same MRE gets old

  • To help reduce our food waste

A couple of years ago Sonny and I were planning a trip to Zion National Park. During one of our planning stages, we were discussing food for the trip, and we discussed trying to make some food to bring ourselves. For me, the vegetarian/vegan options are pretty limited and become painfully redundant when you end up eating the same meal day after day after day.

Sonny’s dad had given us his old dehydrator so we thought we would give it a try. Rather quickly, we discovered that we wanted to upgrade our dehydrating ability. The dehydrator we had received from his dad didn’t have solid sheets or mats with holes, which pretty early on we determined were needed. Being on a tight budget I was able to find an eight-tray “Food Mill” Dehydrator that cost about $110. The “Food Mill” hit most of the features I was looking for reasonably priced, controllable temperature gauge, fruit-leather sheets, and breathable trays that can go on the metal racks.

Since the purchase of our new dehydrator, we always brought homemade backpacking meals on our trips. While sometimes we still purchase MREs, we break up the monotony of store-bought packs with our own. We prepare everything from “snacks” like breakfast oats, trail mixes, and fruit leathers to “fancy dinners” like chana masala, Thai curry (with noodles or with rice), and French onion lentil stew. After a lot of experimentation, we have decided that with dehydration, the options are limitless!

In this 2 part series I am going to share with you my beans and rice recipe that is perfect for backpacking The reason I am starting with rice and beans is because we made it for dinner the other night and we had a fair amount of leftovers. Instead of putting them in the fridge, I decided to put everything in the dehydrator. *Please note the recipe below has been modified for backpacking prep and most likely will not be suitable for both dinner and backpacking prep.

Vegetarian Refried Beans

Prep Time: Overnight + 15mins

Cooking Time: 6 hours

Equipment Needed: Crockpot & Dehydrator

  • 1.5 Cups of Dried Pinto Beans

  • 4 Cups of purified water (for soaking)

  • 3.5 Cups Veggie Broth

  • 3 Cloves of Garlic minced

  • 1 small yellow onion chopped

  • 1 tsp Cumin

  • 1 tsp of Salt

  • 2 Bay Leaves

  • 1 tsp dried oregano

  1. Rinse pinto beans (pinto beans are known for having small rocks, be sure to look through the beans and discard any rocks you may find before cooking (the last thing you need to do is break a tooth!).

  1. Place dried beans in the crock pot and cover with 4 cups of water. Let them sit overnight

  2. The next morning drain the beans.

  3. Add chopped onion, minced garlic, spices, and veggie broth to the crockpot.

  4. Turn the crockpot to high

  5. After the beans have cooked mash with any of the following: Potato masher, inversion blender or fork

  6. Beans should be mashed with little to no chunks (this makes it easier when reconstituting the beans)

  7. Once done spread thinly on a dehydrator sheet (I prefer using the mat with holes)

  8. Dehydrate for 10 hours at 150 degrees F

  9. If completely dry remove from the dehydrator and put into a glass mason jar or food storage bags. *We typically store in a glass jar and bag up what we need just before the trip.

How to Prepare for Backpacking

(Makes two small burritos):

  • 3/4 Cup of beans

  • 3/4 Cups of water

Put in pan over burner and cook until done. Put it in a tortilla with some rice or eat as is.

If you are planning to eat with rice, I suggest cooking rice first, then add beans and water to rice (once the rice has almost completely cooked down) and mix them all together.

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Homemade Backpacking Meals- Beans & Rice Part 2