I never came around to eating backpacking meals out of plastic freezer bags, although the method is common, and it’s easy to rehydrate dehydrated meals in them. Even though freezer bag cooking eliminates the need to clean the pot, my preference has always been to cook and eat right out of the pot. I just enjoy the meals more that way.

To clean a pot, I add a little water to the pot after finishing every morsel of food, then I swirl the water around while working the inside of the pot with my spoon. I drink the couple-swallows of water and repeat a second time. For most meals, that’s all it takes, with a final wipe with a piece of paper towel. I enclose two paper towels inside my vacuum-sealed food rations for each day. Some backpacking meals leave a little more residue inside the pot that might require three rounds of cleaning—meals with cheese powders, oatmeal, mashed potatoes, etc.

Is Easy-Clean Bowl Cooking for You?

For this edition of Trail Bytes, I explored what could be for many the best of both worlds: Easy-clean bowl cooking.

Photo: Mashed potatoes prepared “instantly” in a 20-oz. capacity insulated GSI Bowl.

Everything I rehydrated in the bowls—eggplant parmesan, oatmeal, chili mac, tuna mac & cheese, and fried rice—cleaned up with ease, and it was a pleasure eating the meals out of the bowls.

These GSI bowls can be purchased separately if you’re happy with your current backpacking pot, or you can get them included with one of the GSI Outdoors cooksets.

This month concludes my series of reviews of GSI Outdoors Backpacking Pots with a thorough testing of the Microdualist and Dualist cooksets. It’s a long page, but my aim was to demonstrate the bowl cooking technique using common backpacking meals as well as a new recipe for eggplant parmesan.

Explore: GSI Dualist Cooksets Review & Bowl Cooking

The new eggplant parmesan recipe features Italian-seasoned, oven-roasted eggplant. To make it a meal, I combined it with stewed cherry tomatoes, pearl couscous, and choice of chicken or chickpeas. You’ll find the recipe on the new page.

Explore: Dehydrating Eggplant for Backpacking Meals

One of the ingredients for the eggplant parmesan was stewed cherry tomatoes which I dehydrated with fresh Italian herbs. You could also use tomato sauce leather, but by not running the stewed tomatoes through a blender, the dried result had more texture. You’ll find the method on the newly updated tomato page.

Explore: Dehydrating Tomatoes: 7 Ways to Slice, Dice & Season

That’s a wrap for October. Dominique and I wish you good hiking with hearty meals along the way. See you next month with another project.

Freundliche Grüsse,

Chef Glenn & Dominique

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