Food Dehydrator Recipes

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.

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

Click any of the recipes below for instructions and pictures showing how to make Bark for backpacking meals and snacks:

• Potato Bark- Mashed Potatoes with Meat and Vegetables, BBQ Beef Stew, Cheddar Mashed Potatoes
• Sweet Potato Bark- Mashed Sweet Potatoes, Sweet Potato Apple Crunch
• Bean Bark- Bean Bark Stew, Soup, and Spread
• Corn Bark- Corn Bark Stew (Vegetarian or with Ham)
• Pasta Marinara Bark- Pasta Marinara with Beef and Peppers
• Pumpkin Pie Bark- Pumpkin Pie, Granny Smith's Pumpkin Apple Pie, Cherry Chocolate "Moose" Pie

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