I finally broke down and bought a dehydrator. I’ve played around with dehydrating food in the oven and that works fine most of the time, so for the longest time I couldn’t justify buying yet another kitchen appliance. I also had my heart set on an expensive one, so that further delayed my purchase.
I never imagined that it would be something that I use so much, but we’ve got this thing running at least three days a week! We’ve been trying to eliminate junk food from our diets and my dehydrator has become my secret weapon. My kids LOVE dehydrated fruit and kale chips. The stuff we make in the dehydrator is so much better than what we can buy at the grocery store and much more affordable (especially in the quantities we eat!).
The reason I bought the dehydrator though, is so I could get into making backpacking food. Dal was what I was most excited to try dehydrating, and I’m so happy with how it turns out. In this recipe, I add sweet potatoes and some kale for an extra boost of nutrition, because I always feel like we’re lacking veggies on the trail.
Before you dehydrate this, make sure that the sweet potatoes are broken down enough so that there aren’t huge chunks of them in your dal. If you start with a small enough dice, they should break down pretty quickly, but if it seems like the dal is pretty chunky anyway, you can mash it up a bit with a potato masher. This will prevent chewy bites of sweet potato in your rehydrated dal.
When the dal is dehydrated, it will be crumbly. You can just throw it in a bag. Don’t worry about breaking it up in small pieces or blending it.
If you’re car camping, you don’t have to dehydrate this. You can make it at camp or even make it at home ahead of time and freeze it. Then use it as an ice pack in your cooler for the first day or two of your trip.
Red Lentil Sweet Potato Dal
Yield
2 servingsPrep Time / Cook Time
/Activity Guide
Backpacking, Bike TouringIngredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 cloves garlic
- 1-inch piece of ginger, grated or minced
- 1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
- 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
- pinch of red chile flakes (or more to taste)
- 1/4 teaspoon turmeric
- 1/4 cup finely chopped tomato
- 1 sweet potato (about 6 ounces), peeled and diced small
- 1 3/4 cups water, plus additional water for rehydrating
- 1/2 cup red lentils, rinsed and drained
- 1 cup finely chopped kale or spinach
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Tools
- Cutting board
- Knife
- Medium pot
- Stove
- Vegetable peeler
- Dehydrator
- Parchment paper or nonstick dehydrator sheets
- Zip-top bag or other container
Method
At Home:
- Heat oil over medium heat in a medium pot. Add the garlic and ginger and stir fry for about a minute. Add the mustard seeds, coriander, red chile flakes and turmeric. Stir fry for about 30 seconds or until fragrant. Add the tomatoes and cook for a minute or two, until the tomatoes break down a bit. Add the sweet potatoes, water, and red lentils. Increase the heat to high and bring to a boil. Then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, partially covered, for about 20 minutes, or until the sweet potatoes and lentils are tender. Add the kale or spinach and the salt. Continue cooking for about 5 more minutes. Taste and add additional salt and/or chile flakes.
- Let the dal cool slightly (just so it’s easier to handle), then spread on a parchment-lined (or use a nonstick dehydrator sheet) dehydrator tray. You may need to use a couple of trays depending on the size of your dehydrator.
- Dehydrate at 135 degrees F for about 8 hours, or until completely dry.
- Package dehydrated dal in a heavy duty zip-top bag or container of your choice.
At Camp:
- Place dehydrated dal in a pot with 1 1/2 cups water and let it sit for about 5 minutes. Heat dal on a stove until hot and fully rehydrated. This should only take a minute or two. Serve hot with rice or flatbread.
So how much of the Dal do you rehydrate? all of it? is this a single portion meal? I would be cooking and packing for one so not sure about portion size. Thanks!
Hi Terry,
The recipe serves two people. If you’re not going to serve it with rice or bread, it might only be enough for one person though. Hope that helps!
Aimee
This was stunningly delish. Grateful I stumbled across your blog. Me and my kiddo will continue to make a.lot of your recipes. Insanely good.
I’m so glad you liked it! Makes my day to hear it.
The family and I are planning a 28 camping spree in the next week and have used almost all your recipes.
I love to cook and these are amazing for the trail. I hope you keep up making and posting recipes as we will continue to use, share and add them to our trail cookbook.
Breakfast is one we find hardest to switch up.
Once again thank you for all your recipes and sharing them to the public
Have a great day
Tyler
Thanks @Tyler! We’re so glad you’re enjoying them. Please let us know if you make any variations or new recipes that we should test out. We love to hear how things are adapted for others’ experiences. It’s good to know that breakfast needs to be a focus. We’ll keep that in mind as we test. Have a great trip!
Dal is much better when made with ghee instead of olive oil.
GMan, I was thinking the same thing, but how well would the ghee dehydrate? Can you share any experience with that? This recipe looks amazing, and seeing as I’m making it tomorrow, will be curious to see if it will matter in the flavour.
and coconut milk instead of water 🙂
Dude (this salutation includes all genders per me)! I am sooooo happy you put this recipe up. Dal + dehydration +backpacking- I know this will be a tasty, easy, healthy, lightweight winner meal after a day of evaluating risk vs outcomes…Will rehydrate at altitude! Don’t drink soap! All one or none!
What kind of dehydrator do you use?
Have you ever considered plugging your ingredients into a website like MyFitnessPal to calculate calories in your backpacking meals? I do it to make sure I get enough on my trips. I’m really interested in this one, but it only adds up to 350 calories per serving 🙁 I’d end up eating the entire bag haha
I doubled this for a recent snow camping trip, and it was a generous 5-6 servings! SO delicious and easy. Really flavorful and yummy after a cold hike! One thing that might be obvious for seasoned dehydrator users but wasn’t for me (and ended up extending drying time): make sure to cut the parchment paper around the edges to perfectly fit inside the dehydrator. I just cut holes in the center, but the hot air wasn’t able to flow between trays along the edges, and so didn’t dry out the top rack. Good thing I caught it early in the morning before we left 🙂 Thank you for such a great recipe!
Currently making this for a backpacking trip for next weekend. I wound up tripling the recipe so we can have some for dinner at home as well so now I am unsure of how much water to add when rehydrating since I’m only dehydrating a portion of it. Is it equal parts Dal and water to rehydrate?
I will be using an oven to dehydrate this. Can you tell me how long that would take & the temp of the oven? Thanks!
This is my favourite camping recipe! I’ve made it with squash instead of sweet potato, too. It’s currently in my dehydrator!
Hey! I’ve just dehydrated my own leftover dahl ahead of a hike I’m doing in 6 weeks time. Do you think I should freeze the dehydrated dahl between now and then or do you think it will last happily until then in a zip lock bag in the pantry? Thanks in advance! Alex
My daughter recommended this for our next backpacking trip but I don’t see the recipe. Is the recipe posted somewhere?
did you take the actual recipe off? have made this in the past and it’s great! wanted to make it for a trip next weekend and I don’t see the actual recipe on here anymore 🙁
Try grating the sweet potato, add minced cilantro stems, shallots to dal while cooking. Stir in coconut cream to garnish and fresh cilantro if possible.
Made this on my last canoe trip and it was excellent! Served with minute rice and some naan. Recipe scales up well (we quadrupaled for 7 of us). Perfect for accomodating vegan/GF diets.
This meal is the bomb! The first time I made it, I made the mistake of only making enough to dehydrate for our camping trip. Never again – now I always make a double or even triple recipe, to have some that evening and some to just keep in the pantry for a quick and delicious meal. We most recently took this on our Round the Mountain hike at Tongariro National Park in New Zealand. All the other trampers in our hut remarked on how awesome this meal smelled. Yum!
qabgrq
Just made this, haven’t used it in the backcountry yet but tried reconstituting a little bit with hot water this morning and it’s delicious! I wonder if it could be made with some coconut milk. I didn’t want to take the risk this time but might try it in the future.