Food Dehydrator Recipes for Making Bark

How to Make Bark like Sweet Potato Bark (shown), potato bark, bean bark, corn bark, and pumpkin pie bark.

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 and 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.

Introduction to Food Dehydrator Recipes: Dehydrated Sweet Potato 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 for bark. Bean bark shown above.

How to Make Bark Topics

Potato Bark: Mashed Potatoes with Meat and Vegetables, BBQ Beef Stew, Cheddar Mashed Potatoes

Sweet Potato Bark: Mashed Sweet Potatoes, Sweet Potato Bark Porridge

Bean Bark: Bean Bark Stew, Soup, and Spread

Edamame Hummus: Dehydrate into powder that rehydrates instantly in cold water.

Corn Bark: Corn Bark Stew (Vegetarian or with Ham)

Pasta Marinara Bark: Pasta Marinara with Beef and Peppers

Pumpkin Pie Bark: Pumpkin Pie and Granny Smith's Pumpkin Apple Pie

Dog Food Dehydrator Recipes: Dog Bark. Dogs love it!

More Food Dehydrator Recipes in
Recipes for Adventure: Healthy, Hearty & Homemade Backpacking Recipes

Find Food Dehydrator Recipes in Chef Glenn's Book, Recipes for Adventure.

In Recipes for Adventure: Healthy, Hearty & Homemade Backpacking Recipes, there are over 20 pages devoted to making bark. It includes all the instructions on the website, plus you'll find new ways to combine vegetables with potatoes to make bark.

Bark is the "secret sauce" in several of the book's recipes like Double A Root Bark Stew, Potato Vegetable Bark Stew, Fish & Chips Chowder, Enchilada Bean Bark Stew, and World Peas Bark Stew.

Check out the Recipes for Adventure Table of Contents.

Photo above shows how to make and dehydrate potato bark.

Photo above shows how to make and dehydrate sweet potato bark.

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Dehydrating Food for A to Z Table of Contents

Backpacking Recipes Table of Contents

Food Drying & Trail Cooking Gear Guide

Products to help you with your food drying projects and trail cooking adventures. I use the featured products regularly, or they are recommended by Backpacking Chef readers.

Food Drying & Trail Cooking Gear Guide.