Bushmans Wild Hiking: How to Make Bark for Backpacking Meals & Snacks

How to Make Bark for Backpacking Meals & Snacks

What is Bark?

While working on food dehydrator recipes for mashed potatoes, I blended boiled potatoes and broth to a smoothie-like consistency and spread the mixture thinly on dehydrator trays. The potatoes dried into brittle sheets that easily broke into what I call, "Bark."

Potato Bark tasted pretty good as a ready-to-eat snack, especially Sweet Potato Bark, but with the addition of hot water, the Bark reconstituted back into mashed potatoes. I varied the flavor by blending the potatoes with vegetable, chicken, or beef broth.

One thing led to another, and soon I was blending and dehydrating other starchy foods like beans, creamed corn, pasta marinara, and
pumpkin into Bark.

Why Bark?

When you cook and rehydrate Bark with other vegetables and meat, your backpacking meal turns into a thick stew with flavorful sauciness.

Because you make Bark from starchy foods high in complex carbohydrates, your hearty meal will power you up the next mountain with calories to spare.

Bark makes a great backpacking food because it weighs in at a couple of ounces per serving dry. Ten pounds of potatoes barks down to just eleven ounces.

If you run out of fuel or water, you can munch on Bark dry. Bark will reconstitute right in your mouth. Pumpkin Pie Bark goes in like a chip and down like pie!