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Mountain House Dehydrated Chicken Breast

By Dave Roberts   

on September 23, 2011    No ratings yet.

Posted in Food, Outdoor Gear Reviews, Wild Camping Articles and Tutorialscamping gourmet, cooking, mnom mnom, mountain house, wild camping

Mountain House Dehydrated Chicken Breast

We recently reviewed the Mountain House dehydrated meals and while we like the choice, it would be great to be able to cook an even wider variety of meals on the hill. This is where the Mountain House dehydrated chicken breast comes in handy. I’ve looked at this on American sites with envy in the past as they cannot export it, but now Mountain House have an agreement with European Freeze Dry they can offer the same items in the UK.

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For £4.89 you receive 100g of dehydrated chicken breast. The instructions say to add five times this amount of water, but no way do you get 500g of chicken out of it! You do however get enough for two hearty meals and here’s our attempt at making two different meals that would not be much more effort than just pouring hot water into the bag. While we did cook them indoors, in the kitchen and not on the hill as we try and do with every item, we did use only our camping gear (the exception being the kettle and the stove as to do otherwise would just be stupid). Just for the record, the reconstituted chicken reminds me of roast chicken left overs which I sometimes use to make a curry, but may not be to everyone’s taste.

1. Chicken Madras

Ingredients:

50g Dehydrated Chicken

1 tbs Pataks Curry Paste (madras works well, but try a milder one if you like)

Dehydrated onion/mushroom/pepper (optional)

Instructions –

Add 200ml of boiling water to the chicken – you’ll be surprised at this point that it smells strongly of chicken. The instructions would suggest 250ml, but this was too much as you can see below.

Then stir in the curry paste – if you’ve only got one camping pot then pour the mixture into your mug so you can use your main pot too cook the rice or noodles.

Leave the chicken to re-hydrate for 10 minutes, this is more than long enough.

Eat with carb of choice – we made a curried noodle dish. We think it would taste even better with chinese curry sauce. The addition of dehydrated veg would certainly be welcome on a wild camp! The perspective on the second image below is a bit off, but that really is a titanium kettle and not an espresso cup.


2.BBQ/Jerk Chicken and Rice.

Ingredients:

50g Dehydrated Chicken

1tbs Reggae Reggae sauce or similar.

Dehydrated onion/mushroom/pepper (optional)

Garnish (definitely optional!)

Instructions –

This one is even easier!

Hydrate the chicken as above.

Stir in some Reggae Reggae sauce or bbq sauce.

Serve with rice.

This one’s a little dry on the sauce, but the Reggae Reggae sauce is a little bit spicy so you don’t want to add too much.

Summary. This is a no nonsense camping food that means you can cook up your own meals on the hill. It smells and tastes of chicken  and hydrates in minutes. We only tried this out with a couple of no nonsense recipes in order to see how edible the result was, and you could confidently substitute this for chicken in your favourite recipe and end up with a meal that’s probably better than a pre-made dehydrated meal (presuming you’re not an awful cook).

Mountain house also sell dehydrated minced beef, but it is only available in huge tins which only last a few weeks once opened. The chicken also comes in large tins and is ideal if you’re going on a long backpack. They also do dehydrated shrimps.

Visit:http://www.mountainhouse.eu/ for more details and to order.

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Dave Roberts

Dave Roberts founded Walk Eryri in 2004, with the aim of providing routes that are off the beaten track. Walk Eryri is now part of Mud and Routes which continues to provide more off beat routes and walks in Snowdonia and beyond. Dave has been exploring the hills of Eryri for over thirty years, and is a qualified Mountain Leader. Dave also established Walk up Snowdon, Walk up Scafell Pike and Walk up Ben Nevis just to mention a few.

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