Prospector16 wrote:
I've been meaning to ask this - if I take a can of Campbell's Chunky Soup or Habitant Pea Soup with ham and dehydrate it, how do I store it until use?
I've done a fair bit of dehydration but never with meat.
You should be fine with that, as long as the chunks are not too large. I expect the pea soup part will rehydrate long before chunks of ham will, unless the ham chunks are really small. the secret to dehydrating any food is to have relatively small pieces of anything of nearly equal size. I store all of my dehydrated food double bagged in freezer weight zip lock bags ( usually with a rubber band to ensure the top is securely closed). I store the labeled bags in the freezer until ready to pack for a trip. Just in case there is any residual moisture within. But I have kept double bagged food at room temperature for weeks before consuming without any apparent issue.
For my Yukon River 1000 mile race trips, I dehydrate 10 days (really is 4 days too much, just in case of emergency) of food (breakfast and dinner meals) for a voyageur team of 7 paddlers for 10 days. It all survived a warm weather week of unchilled travel from the east coast to the Yukon, and a week on the river. Left overs afterward were still good for local trips all summer.