Dried Chili Recipe

I've been putting together a dehydrated chili recipe for about 3 weeks now. Here is my account of all of this.

*I have a great veggie chili recipe that I love to eat at home. I've modified it for the trail and did all the leg work to dry the ingredients and combine for a quick and minimal heat required meal.

The original recipe calls for:
Smart ground (a meat substitute that simulates ground beef)
3 green bell peppers
2 jalapeno peppers
1 medium while onion
tomato sauce
tomato sauce with herbs
tomato paste
pinto beans
black beans
chili powder and other spices

I could have used "Smart Ground" and dried it for my dry chili, but I was enamored with the idea of using turkey. I did some research and the critics agree... Using a low fat ground meat like beef, turkey or chicken gives a product called gravel. At my local grocer I found 20.45 oz. of ground turkey breast with less than 1 % fat. First I cooked it on the stove top with .25 teaspoon of salt. This gave me a cooked weight of 15.75 oz. This I further prepared by paper towel drying it as much as possible. Into my drying rack I put 11.60 oz. of turkey. For 8 hours it dried at around 140 degrees. This yielded a 4 oz. dehydrated weight. Note: all of the ingredients combine for a 5 servings batch. I could have added seasonings to the turkey but I didn't. I figured the sauce would hold most of that.

The bell peppers and jalapenos were a tricky affair. I had in the ball park of 20 oz. of chopped and washed pepper and jalapeno. This is the yield from 3 large bell peppers and two normal jalapenos. I did blanch them quickly. The dehydrated product was 1.4 oz. of dried peppers. Based on the finished chili, I would easily double the peppers in the recipe. Perhaps I would add some red and/or yellow peppers. Ultimately, the other colors aren't important on the trail, but they may add some flavor.

The onion started as a large onion, but a small portion was used for some cooking I did before hand. I would guesstimate I had about a medium onion left. A starting weight around 10.5 oz. This part was chopped into pieces not exceeding an inch square. I blanched the onion quickly. Truthfully, I could have just heated and let the natural juices blanch the onion. The onion went into the dehydrator and yielded less than 1 oz. of dehydrated onion flake. In the future I will double the onion. Since it reduces so much and takes so little volume, it is a optimal thing to increase for caloric value.

The sauces are where I can tweak the recipe the most. In a large sauce pan I combined all of the following: 2 cans of tomato paste (total of 12 oz.), 2 cans of tomato sauce (no salt and no flavor total of 14 oz.), 1 can of tomato sauce with basil and other herbs (total of 7 oz.), 1 teaspoon of chili powder, and small amounts of garlic powder, red pepper flakes, black pepper powder and a salt substitute. This 33 oz. mix simmered on the stove for about 30 minutes before going into the dehydrater. I only have one sauce drying rack, so I had to do 4 rounds of sauce drying. The last round was a half try. The net weight was a 9.30 oz. of chili sauce leather. I then took this and froze it to make it brittle. After freezing over night, I cracked and broke it into sauce flakes that were easy to measure and seperate. Already I could tell the sauce was too tomatoey. An easy fix is 1 less can of tomato paste and more seasonings.

I took the easy-out with the beans. A true cook wouldn't have used a canned bean, but I was seriously invested on the time already. I used a pinto bean with the least amount of additives I could find. These were rinsed and put onto the drying rack with a foil liner. The black beans were given the same treatment. Both beans were 15 oz. to begin with. The black beans dried out more than the pinto beans. End weights were 3.05 oz. for the black beans and 3.25 oz. for the pinto beans. Both kinds split open while drying. I would have preferred them to not split. I will have to try a lower heat setting and longer drying time in the future. If half of them don't split, it would be worth the extra effort.

With all the ingredients dried, I set out to weigh and seperate into pre-combined chili mixes. Since my scale weighs in increments of .05 oz., I had to approximate some of the weights and the finished mixes were within .2 oz. of each other. The tomato flakes were the most difficult to deal with because the heat and moisture of my hands was making a mess. Each pre-pack of chili weighed about 4.5 oz. To each I would add 16 oz. of water and then heat to serve. This should give me a 20 oz. serving of chili totalling about 750 calories or more. On the trail I intended it to be served with a pita pocket to sop up the last of the chili and help the cleaning process. It also bumps up the calories to over 800 calories.

When on the trail, if everything works correctly, I can add the water and let the chili sit for an hour. Alternately, I can add the water an hour before we stop hiking for the day and it would be ready for heat as soon as I set up my stove. I'm thinking of trying a solid fuel stove on the trail. Since I may not get as hot a cooking and may not have as long a time to cook, I want the chili to require very little time on the stove. In my trials at home, I hydrate exactly one hour, and then heated on med-low heat for exactly 5 minutes. After that, I let it cool for 30 minutes with a pita pocket to cover. When I ate it, it was still quite hot and spicy to boot. First trail recipe is a success so far.