Dehydrator 1, Debbie 0

I have learned over the years that my body functions best on meat protein, fruits, veggies and a limited amount of starches. I notice that many recipes for backpacking draw proteins from lentils and beans combined with rice, noodles, milk and soy. I am not real keen on eating this way for a solid week. So, I want to take some chicken backpacking with us without resorting to canned chicken.

I do my first dehydrator test on some cut up chicken. After baking two breasts, I cut up one into fairly small pieces and shred the other one. I place them into the dehydrator and turn it on. Mistake # 1 – DO NOT start dehydrating after supper at 7:00! By the time I want to go to bed, the chicken is still soft. I set my alarm for 1:00 and go to bed. When the alarm goes off, I pad out to the kitchen, unplug the dehydrator and go back to bed.

In the morning, I check the chicken and it is rock hard. Little pellets. Dark in color. Okay. I bag it and let it sit on the counter for a day or two.

I decide to rehydrate the chicken and maybe use it for our supper. Not knowing how long it will take to rehydrate, I put some water in the ziploc at about 4:00 pm, thinking it should be soft by about 5:00 when I start supper. 5:00 rolls around and it is still rock hard. I start supper, 5:30 and still rock hard. I dump it into a pot, put more water in the pot and heat it up. Still rock hard. Can’t even chew it. I let it cook while we finish prepping supper and then eat. It never really gets soft. Great! Into the garbage it goes.

Dehydrator 1, Debbie 0

I watch a You Tube video that says to use a slow cooker to rehydrate chicken in stews. Oh, so now we have to take a slow cooker backpacking with us! So, it is now obvious that it takes maybe a full day or a full afternoon to rehydrate chicken to be usable in a “quick to make” recipe. That is my next test on my chicken quest.

Shoulda kept that rock hard chicken!