In this episode of the Primitive Camping and Bushcraft Podcast, Chris Speir dives deep into freeze-dried and just-add-water foods, breaking down their convenience, cost-effectiveness, and practical use in the outdoors. He shares personal experiences with making his own freeze-dried meals, tips for food storage, and insight into how to maximize nutrition while minimizing pack weight on camping trips.
Introduction
Freeze-Dried Foods
Just-Add-Water Foods
Prepackaged Foods
Edible Essentials: Beans & Rice
Cooking Staples & Oils
Foraging & Procuring Food
Welcome back to the Primitive Camping in Bushcraft Podcast. My name is Chris Speir and I'm gonna be your guide to enjoying the great outdoors. So if you have not, go ahead and pick this dude up. It is like number 41 in survival books right now, something like that on Amazon. The ranking, it just keeps going up and up. It's like 41 in survival books. It's like 50 in camping books or something to that effect. I don't remember what the stats were, but last one I looked at it. But anyway, it's $14.40 right now. Pick you up a copy right now on Amazon. The link is in the description of the video or the podcast. And today we're gonna go over the freeze dried foods. And then we're gonna get into the just add water foods and we're going to pretty much close out the food chapter of this book. And so if you're following along in your book, we're gonna be on page 194. Freeze dried food is easy. It's convenient as, whether it be scrambled eggs or beef stroking off or beef stew. If you think about it, when you go to these little camping places, like Sports' Warehouse or Academy Sports or Walmart or any of these places that have a camping section and you buy your freeze dried foods, you ever noticed how it's always the same stuff. It's like beef stew and beef stroking off. And then they have scrambled eggs, scrambled egg breakfast. It's always the same stuff. Some places you can get spaghetti or stuff like that, but the majority of the foods that everybody takes out into the woods is like beef stew and stroking off. Which I mean, don't get me wrong, I love beef stroking off. I love beef stew. Beef stew is one of my all time favorites, but I do want something with a little substance to it. So what I've done in the past is I have obtained my own freeze dried foods in containers. Now it's a little bit more expensive this way, upfront, but the cost savings throughout is so much cheaper and you can get it from like Thrive Life or there's other different freeze dried companies out there. As you can make your own. And I've been experimenting around. I bought a package of sour cream powder and that was pretty cool because I didn't have to use the powdered milk. I've been up until then I've been using powdered milk, but I made my own beef stroking off and I had, it was so much better than the stuff that you get at like Walmart or whatnot. And these other name brands, it was so much better. Now I put in my own, it was shredded beef. I put that in there, mushrooms, put that in there. And then some brown gravy powder, a packet of McCormick brown gravy and then a couple of tablespoons of that sour cream powder. And then, yeah, what else did I put in there? I think that was it for that. Some onions. And I put some onions in there, some dehydrated onions. And then I went to the Dollar General here. The dollar store has the Barilla, Barilla, B-A-R-I-L-L-A I believe it is, a Barilla, it's pasta that's already cooked and it's in a package. All you gotta do is just warm it up. So what I've done is I took that freeze drive meal that I made and purchased a, I did a video on this last August, I did a video. My friend Dave and I went on a kayaking trip and we cooked these meals, used these meals during that trip and it was pretty good. It was jam off, I ain't gonna lie, it was pretty good. So I took these meals and put them in the water, cooked it, brought the water to the bowl and just let them soak. And because beef, for some reason, the beef, freeze-dry beef takes a long time to reconstitute. It takes a while for it to reconstitute. Kind of similar to chickens. Chicken does the same thing. So, but anyway, so we get out there and I heat it up, I dump it in and I let it sit. And then when it's still warm, I turn it back on and I bring it right up to a bowl one more time while it was real thick and I poured them noodles in there and then I covered it up, stirred it up real good. I wanna tell you right now, that was the absolute best freeze-dry meal I ever had and I made it myself. And I was able to make six of these dinners out of one can of, I think it was like 17 or $18 for a can of beef. It was like $11 for a package of the sour cream stuff and I already had the brown gravy mix and it was 75 cents for the noodles. And by the time it was said and done and I made six meals out of it, that was still a lot cheaper than going and buying the six different meals at the store. So these freeze-dry meals were awesome. I mean, they're slightly expensive, but you have the benefit of making your own and making it the way you want it, to have the taste that you want it to have. You can just experiment around with it like I did. It's pretty cool. Doing it like that where you bind your individual portions in a container like chicken or onions or I've got jalapeno peppers, I've got all kinds of stuff. I've got onions, I've got broccoli, I've got spinach, got all these different things and you can purchase your own containers and you can make, with all the containers that I have pictured in the book, I can make about 40 or 50 meals. Those 40 or 50 meals are hefty, hefty big boy like me meals that you can go out into the woods and you get all the nutrients that you need. You're getting all the fats that you need, the carbs and the proteins and all the stuff is there. And that's what I like about making my own like that. You're not gonna get the value out of it from these 10 or $13 meals at these camping spots. These camping stores. Yeah, it's convenient because you can just run it and grab one and you don't have to worry about making it. But as far as the nutrition wise and how everything's going to be better for you and all that, it's not. I mean, there's probably so many preservatives and stuff in that, it's crazy. Whereas if you're making it yourself, you're not putting any preservatives in it. And I mean, there's gonna be debates about that because people love to debate anything. Yeah, but the gravy that you use has some kind of preservatives in it. And then this is gonna have preservatives in it too. Give me a break, give me a break. So freeze dried chicken or beef can be used to liven up some of the meals that you make over the course of a few days in the woods. Now, that's a little quick tip that is thrown in here. And you know, the little circled in red right up here. What I mean by that is that you could actually, forge for some mushrooms. And in my hands, for those of you that are not watching the video, I have a how to forge for mushrooms without dying book. And I did a whole video about this last week alive on Facebook, not on Facebook, on YouTube, sorry. I did a live on YouTube about this and it's pretty cool stuff. And I suggest that you go and check that out, watch it. And it's pretty good stuff. But anyway, you could forge for some edible mushrooms and you could catch some fish or you can pay some different edibles that you find in the woods and throw them in and cook them. And then throw you some of them freeze dried chickens in there or freeze dry beef in there or whatever you wanna do and just liven up your food with it. A small freeze dryer can cost between 3,000 and $5,000. That's for a small one now, which is why freeze dried foods are off the table for many campers. And unless you're going out to actually purchase a freeze dryer, plus the foods themselves can often cause sticker shock because one large can of beef can cost about 75 bucks. But you get so many meals out of that one large can. So you gotta weigh it out. How much is it gonna cost per portion? And I don't know about you, but my portions are bigger. So I tend to eat, you know, I'm a little fatty and I tend to eat enough for two people, you know, and I'm gonna eat enough to fill me up, especially when I'm out in the woods because I, you know, I'm 90 to nothing constantly going. I'm constantly walking around. I'm constantly looking for firewood. I'm constantly walking around fishing, hunting, doing whatever I'm gonna do in the woods. So I need all the calories I can get in the woods because if not, I'm gonna lose weight. Yeah, I need to lose weight. So probably I need to go out in the woods and not even bring food for about four or five days, do some fasting, just bring my Bible and do some fasting and sit up there and read the Bible. But, you know, it is the benefit though, is that you can make a bunch of meals for under $10. And if you can make it for under $10, there's a cost savings because these meals are anywhere from 10, 11 to $15 a piece. Some meals I've seen these, some of these camping meals, they're already freeze dried and the sporting's good or camping section is like $19 a piece. I mean, come on, man. I mean, I get it. I get it because if I go out to some of these fast food chains, you know, you're gonna spend $19 on a burger and a fry and a drink, you know, but God, Lee, I just can't see that for a camping meal, you know, because you're not gonna get as many calories. That daygum hamburger is gonna have 1300 calories in the daygum thing and then that freeze dried meal is only gonna have five or 600 calories in it. You know, one of the best options you can use probably is one of those MREs. You know, MREs are great. I've used tons of them, done reviews on them. MRE star, it reached out to me and sent me a couple cases and I've used both cases. But if you invest in a few cans of various meats and vegetables, you could save money in the long run by eliminating the need to purchase individual meals and you have added benefits of knowing exactly what ingredients you are adding to your food. And that's the big kicker. The older I get, the more conscious I am of what it is that I'm eating. And I know, you know, half of my life or my whole life, just didn't care, but now I'm really starting to slow down and I'm really starting to think about what is actually in that? What is in this food? And it seems like, I don't know, weird to think that some of these foods that you've been eating has stuff in it that has no reason to be in your food whatsoever and yeah, it's neither here nor there. But anyway, so, you know, when it comes to the cost effectiveness, freeze drying is easy, but it's not the most cost effective way to feed yourself. But it is the lightest, it is the lightest way. After that, it would be dehydrated. You know, then after that would be like you just add water meals and then after that would be your prepackaged foods. But freeze dried is king as far as weight. So if you are worried and conscious about how much your pack weighs when you're heading out into the woods, then freeze drying is the way to go because it's gonna be extremely lightweight. It can be kind of bulky depending on the amount that you're taking, you know. The backpack that I have, I have a 65 liter backpack. By the time you put everything in there that you need and you put your food in there, that thing's slam full. And I really don't take a lot with me, you know, because I've talked a lot in this book about how to minimize what you're taking. And I do take a little bit more than the average person because I'm bringing a lot of camera gear, stuff like that, but camera gear aside, I still, you know, I have a roll of bank line, I have my knife, I have a compass and a map, I have some bandanas, I have a metal container, you know, I have several metal pots and pans and stuff. Then I got my sleeping gear and then my shelter stuff. And then I got to change the clothes. And by the time you put your chain of clothes in there and then you put your food in there, it's like your backpack's full, you know, and it's crazy how fast the backpack can fill up. And it's really with a lot of stuff that's not, you know, it's not that heavy, it's just bulky. Yeah, it's just bulky. And I found that, you know, FlexTail sent me a pump to work on, to demonstrate, to do a video. And I did a video on YouTube for that. And they also sent some vacuum sealed bags and it allowed me to really take out some of the room in that bag, it was pretty cool. So, but we're getting off topic as far as that, you know, but freeze drive foods do take up some space. Now, when we turn the page into, we're on 196, when you turn the page into just add water foods, you know, your mashed potatoes, your hungry Jack hash browns. Let's see, what else we got? Baby red mashed potatoes, jalapeno and cheddar pastas, the instant oatmeal and chicken flavored rice, various pastas and stuff like that. You just add water to the meal and then it's a full meal. You can live off of mashed potatoes, you can. That's my brother, he did. He had something going on, he had diverticulitis or something like that, something to that effect. And the only thing he was allowed to eat was potatoes. The only thing he can have was mashed potatoes. He couldn't have anything with a lot of fiber in it, but potatoes have a little bit of fiber in it, but not enough, but they have all the other nutrients that you need. I mean, over the course of three or four weeks, he lost, what, I think he said 30 pounds, total of 30 pounds, but he ate all day, every day, and he ate mashed potatoes. So, you know, but mashed potatoes, if you augment it with other things, you can have a real good meal with the potatoes, you know. Just add water foods are lightweight, they're easy to use, they're prepackaged meals, and you can find them on the shelves in nearly every grocery store or convenience store out there. Now, many of these different items that you would use is a just add water food, you know. They make main dishes of their own. They, you know, you can always add some variety of meats, such as a summer sausage or some Spam or some beef jerky or something like that, but just add water foods can often be found for about a dollar, so it makes them extremely economical and affordable. And in the pack a punch, you can have tons of them, but the problem is you're getting up into your weight. If you're worried about it, if you're worried about your weight, it gets up into your backpack weight, not your scale weight. So, but when you get up into the just add water foods, it's not so bad, you know, it's not as heavy as some of the other foods, but you can pack a total, a bunch of food. You can pack a bunch of food, which it didn't take. And then you get out there and start fishing or hunting or foraging and do whatever, and you can just, you can continuously augment what you brought with you. And if you go for six, eight, 10 days or whatnot, you can have plenty of food and still be within your weight limits. The hash browns, I just recently did a video last week. Apparently I don't know what's wrong with that video because I ain't nobody watched it, but I did a video with me and my friend Dave went out and we used hash browns, these hungry jack hash browns. I mean, you can pick this box of hash browns up. If you're looking at the video, I'm showing you in the video, but the box of hash browns, just the hungry jack hash browns. It kind of looks like the old chocolate milk that you used to get at school, you know, but it is a hunger jack and it's got hash brown potatoes. And those things are cheap. You can get them for a dollar or less, and they have a lot, you could use those not just for hash browns, you can use them for soups. You can boil the fire out of them things, make mashed potatoes. You can, you know, there's so many options that you could use with those hash browns, but you know, making a soup out of it is easy. It's easy. You bring a couple of chicken bouillon cube, would you drop down in there and boil that thing till it turns into a thick soup? You're golden, you're good to go. And you know, a little Tabasco sauce and you're in heaven. Another thing you have to add then is some cheese and some sour cream to put on top, right? (laughs) So prepackaged foods. Now there's a difference between, you know, just to have water, prepackaged, dehydrated, freeze dried, all that good stuff. And hopefully my goal for this year is to buy a freeze dryer and to start doing the primitive camping freeze dry meals and start selling those if anybody's interested. So, but we will see how that goes. I don't even know what the requirements are, but prepackaged foods have their, they have their pros and they have their cons. The pros are they're tasty and they have, they include staples that you're already used to eating such as like sausages and, you know, let's say spam, that's a prepackaged food. Summer sausages, tortillas, Vienna sausages, beanie weenies, smoked fish steaks. These are just a couple of ideas that you can use, but the problem with these is they weigh so much. So what I like to do, and I've discussed it before, this is the second time we've talked about the food section in this book. Last year we did it, did a real quick flyover, but one of the best things that I love to take with me is a summer sausage, because summer sausage does not have to be refrigerated. And then once you open it, you have a couple of days before it'll go bad. And so you can still, you can eat that stuff. Like me, I'll take a one pound summer sausage, one pound. All right. That one pound, and I'm going camping when it's still cool outside, you know, and so I won't open it up until I need it for a dinner or breakfast, you know, and I'll slice that summer sausage up and I'll fry me some up with some eggs, powdered eggs or whatever, eat it. And then I'll make some red beans at night and I'll cut the rest of it up and put it in that red beans. So I've got a couple of meals out of one pound of summer sausage. And one pound summer sausage is only about this big. I mean, it's not big at all. Maybe six inches long or something like that, two inch diameter, six inches long. But, you know, and we're going to get in next talking about the beans, but you could cook that summer sausage in with some dry beans and man, and then you all met with a little bit of fish that you smoked over the fire. And my brother and I was talking the other day about that, a trip that we took several years ago now. And we were out there for a whole week. And I made some dry beans and we caught some catfish and we just hung them up and let them smoke all day next to the fire. And we just kept the fire going all day long, let it smoke and just let them fish just to turn smoke right next to that fire. And I'm telling you right now, that was the absolute best fish we ever had. And we've tried to replicate it since then in a controlled environment and have not. So the next time we went camping out there, we did the same thing and dude, let me tell you, it was amazing, amazing, amazing. Now, one thing that I like to consider taking with me is tortillas. And the reason why is because you get the small, you get the little small tortillas and you can break those up into several in a package and then you vacuum seal them. And that way you can put like three or four in a pack vacuum sealed and then you have them ready to go for each different meal. Now, before heading out, I always do some prepackaging of my own. And like I was just saying, I will place several tortillas in a vacuum seal bag and you can purchase a 40 pack of tortillas and divide them up and have 10 different meal sets. And they can be used for lunch, they can use for breakfast, dinner, whatever. And one of the prepackaged foods that you can take with you is peanut butter. And peanut butter weighs a lot, but it has a lot of nutritional value to it. It is extremely nutritional for you. Has all the fats, the sugars, it's got everything that you need. Peanut butter is pretty much the perfect food. It has everything that you need and you could take some of that peanut butter and wipe it on a tortilla and voila, you have yourself a little sandwich and peanut butter sticks. It sticks to you, it sticks to you for a little while. It makes you feel like you have eaten something. Now, the next page in page 200 is called Edible Essentials. And these versatile items are great for any primitive camper looking to make a variety of meals in the woods and they also don't weigh a ton. And essentially it's rice and beans. And instant rice is lighter in weight than the regular rice. It's still gonna be heavy, it's about half the weight of it, but you can bring some instant rice with you. One pound of dry beans is about six cups of cooked beans and it really, they expand. So one pound of beans makes a bunch of meals if you're cooking just for yourself. Now, there's somebody on my Facebook page, I forget who said it, on the Facebook group, Primitive Camping in Bushcraft, someone was saying that they like to take a peanut butter jar and they will put their dry beans in that jar with water, tighten it and throw it in their backpack. That way their beans have soaked up, has pre-soaked the water and are ready to cook whenever they get to their camping site. Now, I love that idea. The only thing is I didn't like the idea of the additional water weight, but it works. It can work and I think it's actually a pretty good idea. And they don't take very long to cook. Beans are, beans cook within a couple of hours, depending on how long you want. And, you know, soaking your beans tends to cut down on the cooking time and it cuts down on the amount of gas that it actually gives you. You know, my grandma used to say she soaks the fart out of the beans, she'd sit there and soak in beans all day long. But I place a half a pound of beans in a pot and I cover it with water. And I usually do that the night before. And then that morning I'll just put them on and let them hang over the fire and just cook all day. And they're not necessarily bringing to a complete boil. Well, majority of them, they're boiling, but I'll let them cook all day on the tripod. And then they're good to go in the evening, add a little bit of dehydrated onions and bell peppers to it, add a little bit of summer sausage to it and your beans are done. And that's the red kidney beans. You know, you could do the same thing with pinto beans and black eyed peas or any other different kind of bean and peas or lentils or, you know, anything of that nature. Now I touched on this here recently that peanut butter is one of the great, great staples to take with you in the food. It's a fantastic camping food because it's so rich in protein, minerals and vitamins. And it's also high in calories. So when you're very fatigued, I'm making up new words on this podcast, so we're gonna use the word fatigued. But whenever you're fatigued, fatigued from hiking or just physical labor or whatever around you camp, a couple of spoonfuls of peanut butter will do a lot for you. Now, there is an option out there if you want peanut butter, but you don't want the weight. And that will be the peanut butter powder. Now there is a peanut butter powder. You just add a little bit of water to it and then it reconstitutes into regular peanut butter. Now this powdered peanut butter is gonna have some, a very good amount of nutrients. It's not gonna be as good as the regular, the wet stuff that you already carry out there, but it will give you a lot of the same nutrients and the minerals and the vitamins and the proteins and all that good stuff. And we're getting down to the nitty gritty here about drink packets. So I like to bring, you can only drink water. I love water. I drink water all day, every day, but I start craving something else when I'm out there for several days. When I was deployed to the desert and all we had was water, boy did I crave something else. But drink packets, they're lightweight and they help. If you're having to bowl just straight water from the river, a drink packet mixed in with that is actually gonna help with the electrolytes and also the flavor of it if you don't like the flavor of the river or the stream or the whatever it is. And don't bother me, but I'm just saying that you could do that. Green tea is another option. If you have headaches from caffeine or whatever, you can bring green tea. Green tea is good for you. And it's always nice to treat yourself to a little comfort of home when you're away. Another idea is instant coffee. And some people frown upon that. Some people will bring their own bags of the primitive Campin and Bushcraft blend coffee and make it while they're out there. Me being one of those. But some people will actually bring instant coffee and I did for years. And it's real convenient to fix you a cup of hot water, warm water, and then pour your coffee in there and just stir it up and drink it. It's not the same as regular, but it's pretty good. And it has the caffeine in it and it'll help with the headaches and stuff like that. Another great option to have with you in the woods is powdered milk. Powdered milk is an awesome thing. I've used powdered milk mixed with some water and with some powdered eggs and made some biscuits. And powdered milk goes a long way and you can mix it in with your coffee for creamer. If you plan to make biscuits in the woods, on page 212 I have a recipe in the book on how to make biscuits in the woods. And powdered milk is a great asset to have with you in the woods whenever you're cooking different things. Another one, awesome, awesome, awesome. Boy, I'm having trouble talking today. I always have. I'm getting tongue tied. Shortening. Shortening is any fat that becomes solid at room temperature. So like vegetable Crisco, lard, rendered beef tallow or anything like that is something that you can take with you into the woods and margarine, bacon grease, tallow, lard, vegetable shorten is an excellent resource to have when you go camping because you don't have to haul in a jug of oil and to fry your fish or to fry this or stuff like that. You just get you what you need, put it in your pan and whenever you're done, scrape it back into a container and it'll re solidify or harden again. And that's the beautiful thing about it. Now, shortening is great if you wanna fry some fish or a mouse or a squirrel or any other critter that you catch. And I realize many people won't eat squirrels or mice or other rodents, but I do. (laughs) I do and I have. I've even ate the armadillos. But it's handy to have whenever you're out in the woods. Now, the last section of this is procuring your own food. And we talked about this at length, snakes, fish, depending on where you're at, be careful. Slow moving critters like porcupines or possums or whatever. You can procure your own food when you're in the woods. Squirrels are kind of hard to do, harder, that it's not impossible, it can be done, but they are a little harder to do. Fish is typically what everybody's going for. Fish is if you go out into the woods and you're going out there, usually a lot of folks go fishing and they're going camping on a river or a lake or something to that effect and fishing is the mission. And so, but another thing is depending on your location, I know here in South Mississippi, snakes are prolific and you can find snakes, you can find a snake in the springtime about every time you walk into the woods. And, you know, snakes, it doesn't matter if it is a venomous snake or a non-venomous snake, they're all edible, you can eat every one of them. Frogs, you can eat frogs. Here in South Mississippi, you know, but you can eat squirrels, you can eat mushrooms, depending on the mushrooms, you know, that's why I encourage people whenever I had that live and we'll talk about this book once again on how to forage for mushrooms without dying. It has, let's see, it's 29 varieties of mushrooms in here that are edible, that you can find and it tells you when, where and how, and, you know, and it's easy to identify. And so you can start off with that book and it is the Absolute Beginner's Guide to Identifying 29 Wild Edible Mushrooms. And, you know, mushrooms are amazing, mushrooms are great and they've got all the vitamins and minerals and all that good stuff in there. Now, this ain't a food, but pine needle tea, they're a pine needle, any kind of pine-bearing tree in North America, there is, you can make a tea out of its needles or, you know, and you can bring the water to a bowl, drop your needles in there, cover it, and then it'll be good to go. In a few minutes, the needles will look like a lime green and it will sink and once that happens, you can drink it and it is so many health benefits in that cup of whatever pine needle tea that it's going to, it'll keep you one, it'll keep you energized, keep you from getting sick in the woods and, you know, it'll keep you healthy and plus it tastes like Christmas. I don't, I can't explain that, it just, it does. It tastes like Christmas smells. So, one thing that you wanna look at too, when you head out into the woods and you're doing the camping thing is parts of any game animals that you can't eat, can often be repurposed. Entrails can be used for bait, for fishing and trapping other animals and it will give you some more food. So, but anyway, that is that. So, anyway, we've covered all the food section and then next week we will be getting into the cooking and then we will, pretty much be wrapping the book up and then after that, we're gonna just start open discussion. So, yeah, we're done with that. Moving on to the cooking and I hope you guys enjoying this. If you don't mind, swing by and pick you up a good five pound bag of coffee beans from the Primitive Camping and Bushcraft Land Coffee and then also swing by Amazon and get you a book, Primitive Camping and Bushcraft and this thing is on sale right now for 14 bucks. It's like 28% off. I think it's been stuck on sale. I don't know, I ain't got nothing to do with all that. Swing by Facebook and go ahead and join the Primitive Camping and Bushcraft Group and get involved in the conversation. I have one person that gave me a real bad review on one of the podcasting platforms because I promoted my book and my coffee and the group. So I won't be doing that too much no more. No, I'm gonna promote it every chance I get. Sorry, dude, you can leave the worst reviews you want but I'm still gonna promote my stuff. Anyway, so I wanna say thank you very much for taking your time out of your busy Monday to be here with me and I will see you in the next video or the next podcast. God bless you. (upbeat music)