Appalachian Trail Hiking Food – Part 2, Dinner

Whether you call it dinner or dinner, when I talk about hiking food, dinner is the big meal of the day. Side note: it may not even be at night. I was recently forced to eat a big cooked meal for lunch to avoid creating tons of food smells near camp.

I’ve really had a hard time discussing my eating plans, especially since they’re still evolving. However, while testing foods for my hike, I fell into a pattern of finding staple foods and adding more to them. I’ve seen this pattern on hikes, but I haven’t seen any common terminology, so I’ll just use «bases» and «mixins» or «plugins» to organize my choices.

You’ll notice that my bases are all starches. Calories are king.

My base meal for dinner during hiking.

couscous

• Cost per ounce: $0.25
• Calories per ounce: 101
• Mixtures: chicken, olives, golden raisins, sliced ​​vegetables, garlic cream sauce, cheese, sun-dried tomatoes

Couscous is almost the ideal starch to cook with hot water. You can quickly Google tons of recipes that are hike-friendly. Additionally, cous couse can replace pasta. Sure the mouthfeel is different, but the flavor is close enough for me. I’m considering doing a second post just to lay out all the options I have so far.

Dried Beans

• Cost per ounce:
• Calories per ounce:
• Mixins: Tortillas, Rice, Poha

With little use of mixins, it is basically beans with added rice (or poha) for a complete protein. I’m using canned refried beans and dehydrating them.

Mashed potatoes

• Cost per ounce:
• Calories per ounce:
• Mixins: Any package of seasoned tuna seems to work well.

Quick, easy, high in calories… what’s not to like? Well, maybe the fact that you’re eating instant mashed potatoes. But honestly? They’re not that bad. I was skeptical, but Idaho instant potatoes are pretty good. Not Betty Crocker though, I tried them and regretted it.

Poha (roasted rice)

• Cost per ounce:
• Calories per ounce:
• Mixins: Garam Masala, Chicken

Compared to instant rice, toasted rice cooks faster and easier. On the other hand, it doesn’t taste like anything. Like. Rice. You can still use it for hikes where you would use rice in, say, beans or dals. But if you want the feel and taste of rice in your mouth, choose instant rice. So far I have one dish for Poha, but it is pretty good.

Dal

• Cost per ounce: Varies
• Calories per ounce: Varies
• Mixins: None, complete dehydrated food

Covering a variety of different bean dishes, Indian Dals make great dehydrated meals.

japanese ramen

• Cost per ounce:
• Calories per ounce:
• Mixins: dehydrated vegetables, peanut butter powder

Oh, ramen. But you know, with some dehydrated vegetables and a tablespoon of powdered peanut butter, you’re close to “real food.”

mixes

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