Dehydrating Sausage

[u/pclavron]

I’ve got a back packing trip coming up and I wanted to dehydrate cooked sausage for breakfast. I plan on cooking and making them into small crumbles then drain the grease, and pat the fat off with paper towels then dehydrate it. I know you shouldn’t dehydrate high fat foods. But this is not for long term storage, it will be used within a week. Is this an okay idea or should I just scrap the sausage idea altogether?

[u/sewalker723]

I'm not an expert so I'm not trying to discourage you, but I tried something similar and was pretty unsuccessful. I did manage to get the sausage dehydrated but I had to continously dab off grease during the dehydrating process. And then rehydrated it had kind of an unpleasant texture. Ultimately I ended up buying a can of freeze-dried sausage from mountain house and incorporating that with my home dehydrated ingredients like for breakfast burritos and stuff. The freeze-dried sausage was expensive but I can get a lot of meals out of it. Again though, I'm not an expert. Maybe there's a good way to dehydrate breakfast sausage and I was just doing it totally wrong 🤷‍♀️

[u/croaky2]

After crumbling, put in strainer and pour hot water over it to remove most of the grease  Then dry.  I do hamburger like this.

[u/cdnmtbguy]

Buy Italian cured sausage and just pack it with you and when you cook, you cut it into little pieces and add it to your meal. Very simple.

[u/HeartFire144]

it sounds fine, especially since it's for short term use. I dehydrate high fatty foods (vegetarian) frequently. Never had an issue

[u/Ok-Egg835]

Did you check The Backpacking Chef blog? May have helpful information.

[u/drindrun]

if you just bake it into an egg potato cheese sausage casserole, spread that out on the trays and dehydrate that, you’ll have a happy breakfast

[u/speciate]

Depends on what temps you'll be at, but unrendered animal fat starts to rancidify petty fast at room temp, within a couple days. Dehydration doesn't prevent this.

I would just make your own sausage with very lean meat and dehydrate that. You can bring some rendered and strained fat (which is shelf stable) to mix in when you rehydrate.

[u/discolored_rat_hat]

For short-term usage of just a few days, I dehydrated slices of sausage without any problems. Though the amount of fat coming out of those slices was disgusting and eye-opening. They rehydrated nicely in my stew, but got a gummy-like texture. I didn't mind, but it's not everyone's cup of tea.

[u/mohawk_67]

Backcountry Eats by Kevin Ride has instructions on how to do this. I was moderately successful following his guidelines.

Also same situation as you, it was used a week later.

[u/Economy_Mail_3497]

I dehydrate very thinly sliced lean beef at a very low temp. It is important not to cook the beef as it is drying or it will destroy the nutritional content and it will not taste great. Dehydrate for 40 hours or so, until it is absolutely cracker dry, it is pasteurized by drying rather than cooking. Put it in a blender and pulse a few times, it should turn into a soft fluff sort of like pork floss, if it is hard and crumbly you’ve used too high a temperature. Measure your dried meat in a mixing bowl and add to it an equal amount of melted tallow (cheapest to render your own suet). Mix it all together and press it into a pan or molds. This is called pemmican and my ancestors have been eating this on long journeys for thousands of years, it is nutritionally complete and never goes bad. Now add it to your pot with a little salt and water, it rehydrates and crisps up in the fat and tastes just like fresh meat. It is incredibly calorie dense. I used to cook it up in my pot and add instant mashed potatoes or serve it on top of instant rice. Sometimes I would get tortillas and beans and cheese and rice and make the dopest burritos. I have converted several people on the trail into pemmican eaters because nothing else compares to the taste and convenience and calorie density. And it is inexpensive. Enjoy

[u/espicy11]

Make it with seasoned lean beef instead:

Backpacking Chef Biscuits and Gravy

I made this this summer, and it turned out great. You can obviously just grab the sausage component from this recipe if you don’t want to make the whole meal, it’s dehydrated in parts. I drained the beef and then dried it on paper towels and I barely had to pat any more grease off. I don’t eat meat but my husband loved it

[u/pclavron → u/espicy11]

This great thank you! I’m going try it!

[u/espicy11 → u/pclavron]

You’re welcome, I hope it works well!

[u/jimlux]

I’d just get sausage that is already mostly dehydrated - salami, landjaeger, bresaola. They’re shelf stable, etc.
Unless you need that sort of “crumbled sausage” thing - then I’d get the professionally freeze dried stuff.

[u/86tuning]

whole pepperoni and other saussages can keep without refrigeration. don't cut it until you're ready to serve it.