How to Dehydrate Pumpkin Soup

One of the things I think about with cooking while camping is trying to find meals that are balanced and have high nutritional content. If you're used to having lots of fresh veggies day to day and you are without fridge or esky, it can be an easy thing to miss. (Yes, there are lots of canned veggies for sale, but if weight or space is an issue, this provides another option.)

In all of my reading about dehydration, one of the things I thought I would try is soup. It seems easy and full of good veggie content for the diet! We'll likely use ours for lunches. So here's what I did:

Roasted Pumpkin Soup
1 whole butternut pumpkin (squash), cut into large chunks
2 onions, cut into crescents (as you would for roasting)
1 head of garlic, separated and unpeeled
olive oil
4 tsp chicken stock powder
Water

Place pumpkin through garlic into 1-2 baking dishes depending on the size of your pumpkin. I needed 2. Drizzle with olive oil. Roast at 200C/400F for 30 minutes, turn pumpkin pieces, bake 30 minutes more or until tender. Remove from oven and let cool until able to handle the pumpkin. Scrape the pumpkin flesh off the skin into a pot, large bowl that is suitable to blend in or food processor. Add onion and garlic to taste and the stock powder. Add enough water to enable you to blend to a smooth puree. This does not need to be normal soup consistency as you are dehydrating it, you'll just add time if you add too much water.

Once your soup/puree is prepared, get your food dehydrator trays ready. Line with plastic wrap or solid tray liners. Put splodges of the purree onto the tray 2-3 inches in diameter and not too thick or thin - maybe 1/4 inch. (NOTE: Follow your dehydrators instructions for loading up liquid-y things. Mine specifies to load the trays away from the base and then carefully put them onto the base so you don't accidentally spill liquids into the fan part of the unit.) Turn it on and sit back for the lovely smell of soup through your house!

Here are some things I learned along the way:
1. I spread my purree out too thick, so it took a LONG time to dry - about 24 hours. I thought it would be much faster. I loaded my trays with about 2 c each. In hindsight, doing the spodges or using only 1 1/2 c for a whole tray would have been better.

2. I read somewhere about 'powdering' the soup after it was finished drying. I tried to do this without great success. I thought it would dry like my hommous (crumbly), but it is actually more like a 'leather'. I have more small pieces than strictly powder. Afterwards I read in another book about doing it in splodges. I think that this will work better. Then you have disks that you can just stick in your cup and add water to.

3. I had about 7 cups of pumpkin purree. This is now stored in a 500g/16oz jam jar - so the amount has become really concentrated. I figure if I had made the soup normal consistency, I would have 3L of soup at least. In the first book, it said you can add about 1 Tbsp powdered soup to a cup of water. Haven't tried it yet, but if you go the powdering route, that's a guideline.