Category: Trail Recipes

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again…trail cooking is not my forte.

It’s a game I’m committed to improving, for the sake of enhancing the experience for my children when I manage to fool them into venturing forth to the wild places.

Here are some recipes I’ve been experimenting with lately. In this series, we’re going to cover easy camp stove variations on categories of Jewish cooking. Since I’m Ashkenazi, we’re going to lead off with the recipes I’m most familiar with.

Trail Borscht

Who among us Ashkenazi doesn’t love borscht? Though likely invented by Ukrainians, our time in the Pale of Settlement herded this sour soup into the pantheon of Jewish foods.

Many of us attach strong emotions to this food. In a phenomenally challenging episode of the show, “Blackish”, the main character is upbraiding white dinner companions about soul food, and one of the characters softly shares that they serve beets for a similar reason. Our foods are the foods of beleaguered peoples. Stirring a small pot of borscht on a camp stove, for me, connects me with Jewish partisans living in the forests of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. A simple pot of food becomes a reminder that our plenary amusements vis a vis venturing into the woods, was once, for our people, a stark choice for survival.

2 tablespoons dehydrated beets
2 tablespoons dehydrated beef (optional, I add another 2T beets)
1 tablespoon beet powder
1 tablespoon mashed potatoes (I use these, they’re parve)
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon chicken consomme (I use Osem brand)

In your home, mix all of the ingredients in a sealable bag.

On the trail, mix with 1 cup of water. Boil for 5 minutes, and let stand for 5 minutes.

For shorter trips, you can also bring some sour cream and omit the beef. For pescatarians/vegetarians this is the best option. Omit beef and sour cream for a fully vegan recipe.

Trail Cholent

Cholent may be my least favorite food to cook on the trail, for the primary reason that it’s a long-cook recipe. For those of you that want cholent without the work, here you go.

There is a corresponding Sephardi dish, lest anyone think we are “Ashkenormative” here at the Kosher Backpacker.

From Wikipedia:

Ashkenazi-style cholent was first mentioned in 1180, in the writings of Rabbi Yitzhak of Vienna. In the shtetls of Europe, religious neighborhoods in Jerusalem and other cities in Israel before the advent of electricity and cooking gas, a pot with the assembled but uncooked ingredients was brought to the local baker before sunset on Fridays. The baker would put the pot with the cholent mixture in his oven, which was always kept fired, and families would come by to pick up their cooked cholent on Saturday mornings. … The unique cooking requirements of cholent were the inspiration for the invention of the slow cooker.

We need this to be a fast cooker recipe, however, so let’s get to it.

Note: You’ll want to vary portions up depending on the number of folks you’re feeding. Backpacking is a solo-effort for me, usually, so these portions reflect this. Practice it at home first. I’ll be honest, it’s only an approximation of cholent, but it’s close enough when you’re on the trail.

1 tbsp olive oil to sauté the onions, garlic, and spinach
1 tbsp olive oil in cholent mix
1 8oz assortment of beans (kidney, black, and chickpeas)
1/4 cup barley
1 small can diced tomatoes / dice your own
1 chopped onion, or if you want to get crazy, a shallot
1 clove of garlic
Dried spinach
Equivalent of 1 or 2 dried potatoes
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp cumin
Cayenne to taste
1 bay leaf
1 Knorr Vegetable Bouillon cube
Mrs. Dash to taste
FOR FLEISHIG: Add dehydrated meat or jerkey to taste

I soak all of my dry ingredients (beans, barley, potatoes) in a Nalgene bottle at the start of my Friday hike, though if you start later than 8, I can’t promise anything but chewy ingredients. Since I don’t do meat, it works a little easier. I start the day with enough mixed bouillon so that I don’t have to add water later – but sometimes I have to adjust.

I heat up a small skillet with 1 tbsp of olive oil, and sauté the onions, garlic, and spinach, and a little Mrs. Dash.

In my larger pot, I dump my soaked mix, along with olive oil and diced tomatoes and the remainder of the ingredients that weren’t sautéed. Season with the paprika, cumin, and cayenne. Once that’s mixed, add your onions, garlic, and spinach.

I bring it to a boil and then let it simmer for 10 minutes, otherwise we’re just wasting food.

Is it awesome? No, but it’s always been “close enough” for the trail.

Trail Teiglach

A Litvak Rosh Hashanah favorite, this recipe requires you prep the dough at home ahead of time. It’s worth it, however, if you plan a hike during the Days of Awe! Call the kids to chow with the shofar, it’s dessert time!

Ingredients for Dough:
3 eggs
3 tbsp oil
1 tsp kosher salt
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder

AT HOME:

1. Beat the eggs gently with oil and salt. Mix in 1 cup of flour and all of the baking powder. As you mix, slowly add the remaining flour, until the dough is soft. If you still have flour left over, you can still safely stop once the dough is pliable.
2. Knead dough until it is smooth, and cover for 10-15 minutes.
3. Roll out the dough and cut into small pieces. You can either cut into shapes or roll the cut pieces of dough into little balls.
4. You can fry or bake the dough. For frying, drop the dough pieces into oil until they puff up and turn golden. To bake, grease a cookie sheet, spread them out, and bake at 375º for 15 – 20 minutes, or until they are golden brown.

ON THE TRAIL:

1 cup dried fruit and nuts
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup honey (or a mess of honey packets)
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp kosher salt

1. Place honey, sugar, ginger into a pot and bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer for 10 minutes.
2. Add in the dough and dried fruit and nuts and stir until your mixture coats everything, and cook for another 10 minutes.
3. Cool for another 10 minutes.

More Recipes?

If you have additional Ashkenazi recipes that you’ve perfected for the trail, or variations on the recipes here, please feel free to add them in the comment sections.

Stay tuned for our next in this series, which will cover Sephardic backpacking recpies!

Here we present a set of instructions for dehydrating popular food staples for use in your recipes.

The cost of pre-dehydrated foods is high. For the wilderness enthusiast concerned with kashrut, the availability of certified foods is a problem.

Kosher dehydration requires that you use certified kosher ingredients, especially meat. You should use separate trays for meat and dairy, and ensure you clean your dehydrator thoroughly between each use if you do switch between milchig and fleishig.

Dehydrating Meat

Dried meat is a valuable trail staple. It’s light, rich in protein, iron, zinc, magnesium, and vitamins B and E.

You can dry just about any kosher meat, raw or canned. You’ll want to use the leanest meat possible.

NOTE: If you use a dehydrator, please ensure that you either have fleishig-designated trays, or that the whole dehydrator is fleishig.

1. Cook your meat. Steam, pressure cook, simmer, whatever. During the dehydration process, harmful bacterias will usually not be destroyed.
2. Slice, grind, or cube your meat. Obviously, it will dehydrate the fastest with ground meat.
3. In your oven or dehydrator, spread your meat over trays and, using 140˚ F temps, dry for six hours. Lower your temperature by 10 degrees and continue drying until hard, this time with the door of your oven slightly open.

Rehydrating your meat can vary. Unlike other dried foods, like beans, rehydrating meat should be soaked with hot water, never cold. It’s been a long time since I’ve eaten meat on the trail, but my practice was to boil my meat and water in a covered pot. Full rolling boil, and then let it soak for a half hour.

Dehydrating Tuna

Solid white tuna packed in water works best. As with meat, you’ll want to avoid fatty tuna cuts.

1. Drain the tuna.
2. In pieces, spread on small layer of oven or dehydrator tray.
3. Dehydrate at 140-145˚ until it’s crispy.

This is going to stink, by the way.

Dehydrating Salmon

This is a skill I picked up while stationed in Alaska. I could fish right on our post for all the runs—King, silver, and sockeye—and I’d make salmon jerky out of whatever I wouldn’t eat of my limit.

1. Make a kosher salt brine. I like a recipe that calls for 1T kosher salt, 1T molasses, 1T lemon juice, 2t black pepper, and maybe some liquid smoke (1t).
2. Using 1/4-inch thick slices of salmon, I marinade them in a freezer bag in the fridge for 4 hours.
3. After straining the salmon, I pat them dry, and then commence the dehydration in my oven or dehydrator at 145˚ for 3-4 hours. We’re aiming for chewy, not crunchy

Dehydrating Fruits and Veggies

This is perhaps the easiest and least risky.

1. Wash, peel, core, slice, or shred (especially for beets).
2. Fruits and some vegetables will brown, so it’s worth dipping them in lemon juice ahead of time.
3. Broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, asparagus, pumpkin, and again beets should be roasted or steamed prior to drying. Canned veggies and fruits should be completely drained ahead of time. It’s worth noting frozen veggies and fruit don’t need the pre-treatment.
4. Spread these on your trays or dehydrator trays covered with non-stick sheets in a single layer.
5. Veggies I dehydrate at 130˚, fruits at 135˚. Drying times will vary, especially between fruits and veggies.

Dehydrating Beans

Dried beans (black, red, kidney, lentils, etc) do not dehydrate well. Canned beans do not require you to cook them first, and typically rehydrate a little easier. Drain them, and dehydrate them on a sheet in the oven or in your dehydrator at 125˚ for 6-8 hours. The beans will actually split open when they are dried, which will help with rehydration.

Ingredients

• 4 or 2 pieces matzah
• 1/2 or 1/4 cup water
• 4 or 2 eggs
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 2 or 1 tbsp butter
• 2 or 1 tbsp KforP veggie oil / olive oil

Directions

In your pan/lid, break the matzah into small pieces. You may want to halve this recipe for smaller rigs. Bring water to a boil, and pour it over the matzah pieces. Quickly toss the matzah (this has to be fast especially on Pesach), and drain the excess water.

Perhaps ahead of time, beat the eggs with your spork, and then mix that, the peper, and the eggs into your matzah. Put your stove on hot (depending on how it adjusts), heat the butter and oil, and then add the matzah and fry until it’s crispy.

On the trail, I like to serve it with tiny syrup packets (if I can find pure maple because of kitniyot), or even OU-certified jam packages.