I continue my experiments with dehydrating rice and making meals from it. The aim of this is to strike a balance between having convenient/light camping food while controlling cost, nutrition and flavour. This time I try to create one of my comfort foods - cheese and onion rice.
Let's start by laying the rice and some sliced onions out on the dehydrating tray. I will slice the onions up after dehydrating, this is to try and retain some of the flavourful juice within the onions. I know that the rice will dehydrate faster than the onions so I really should do them separately but this is fine for a test.
After an hour at 60 deg Celcius (140 deg Farenheit) the rice is dry and the onions are a bit mushy. I know some cultures will preserve onion by frying and keeping in an airtight jar, but I'm want to try the dehydrator. Anyway, this is sufficient to start assembling a dish.
First the dried rice goes into a dish, then the flavour sachet from an instant noodle packet. For some reason my pantry has an unlimited supply of abandoned flavour sachets. Then the dried onion is sliced and placed on top and boiling water poured on top under the dry mix is covered in water.
The mixture is left with the lid on and covered with a towel for about ten minutes. Then I stirred the dish, placed the cheese on top and left covered for another five minutes.
Finally, the cheese is stirred into the dish and the generously sprinkled with black pepper. Delicious!
The first note is that this dish does not contain greens. Over time, I will add some dehydrated vegetables to my repetoire, but for now just recall that nutrition isn't about getting all needs every meal. I'm also less likely to take vitamins because I know a few wild plants that provide vitamins.
The second note is that I need to work on my onion game and actually dehydrate some for much longer than the rice. The air-fryer is somewhat limiting in that it's timer will max out at an hour and the lowest temperature setting is 40 deg Celsius - I might need to get a proper food dehydrator at some point.
Until next time.
It remains interesting. The onion has more liquid than rice, it will need more time, and like you said, maybe a food dehydrator. Vegetables are also good ideas. I thought of the tomato, it should be good too. That's it, not every meal has to have all the nutrients. It is important to have nutrients throughout the various foods. Good meal!
Yeah, I'm taking my time. I have a camping trip coming up and will.see if I still like the dehydrated food before I purchase a proper food dehydrator machine. Too many gadgets in the kitchen already!