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.
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!
Step-by-Step Food Dehydrator Recipes