Zesty Apple Bulgur Cold-Soak Salad

This zesty apple bulgur cold-soak salad combines apples, crisp vegetables, cranberries, and a sweet-tangy dressing to create a refreshing no-cook backpacking meal. It's especially satisfying for lunch on warm hiking days.

Medium-coarse bulgur gives this cold-soak salad a pleasantly chewy texture that holds up beautifully after rehydration.

The salad gets its sweetness from apples, cranberries, and orange marmalade in the dressing. Lemon juice and apple cider vinegar add tangy notes, while bulgur contributes a mild, nutty flavor. Warming spices like cinnamon, ginger, and allspice balance the sweet-tangy dressing, while carrots and walnuts add a satisfying crunch.

Ingredients

Servings: 5

Makes 8 cups before dehydrating; 3½ cups after dehydrating.

Fruit & Vegetable Ingredients:

• 6 apples, peeled and diced (1¾ lbs. / 675 g)
• 4 carrots, grated (6 oz. / 171 g)
• 1 red or yellow bell pepper, diced (8 oz. / 227 g)
• 3 green onions (scallions), sliced (1¾ oz. / 50 g)
• 1 small bunch parsley, chopped (½ oz. / 15 g)

Dressing Ingredients:

• 1 lemon, juice plus zest
• 3 Tbsp. orange marmalade
• 2 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
• ½ tsp. ground cinnamon
• ¼ tsp. ground allspice
• ¼ tsp. ground ginger
• ⅛ tsp. black pepper

Added on the Trail:

Cranberries, walnuts, water, and oil.

Bulgur:

Cook and dehydrate the bulgur separately from the salad ingredients. This helps preserve its mild, nutty flavor and firm texture after rehydration. Use 1½ cups of dry medium-coarse bulgur to make enough for the recipe. Medium-coarse bulgur works especially well in cold-soak meals because it retains more bite than finely milled bulgur.

See: How to Cook & Dehydrate Bulgur.

How to Make the Salad

Cut Vegetables & Apples

Cut the vegetables before the apples so the apples spend less time exposed to air. This will help keep the apples from browning.

Photos: Grated carrots, red & yellow bell peppers, green onions, and parsley.

Carrots:

Peel and grate the carrots coarsely. This ensures even dehydration while helping the carrots rehydrate with a fresh, crunchy texture on the trail.

Bell peppers:

Red or yellow bell peppers add color to the meal. Use one or a combination of both. Dice the peppers into small pieces as uniformly as possible.

Green onions:

Also called scallions, not to be confused with spring onions. Cut off the small roots at the bulb end. Make 2–3 cuts down the length of the green onions, then slice thinly crosswise.

Parsley:

Snip parsley leaves from stems with scissors and cut into smaller pieces.

Apples:

Peel apples and cut them into quarters. Cut out cores.

Cut apple quarters lengthwise 3–4 times, then slice crosswise into pieces approximately ⅛–¼ inch thick.

Lemon:

Grate the lemon zest into the apples and save the juice for the dressing.

Combine the vegetables and apples, then stir in dressing.

Photo: Apples and vegetables combined in bowl before dressing was added.

Mix the Dressing Ingredients

In a small bowl, add lemon juice and apple cider vinegar to orange marmalade. Stir until smooth.

Combine ground cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and black pepper, then stir the spice mix into the liquid until well combined.

Stir dressing into salad.

Dehydrating Zesty Apple Salad

Photo: Two cups of salad on Excalibur dehydrator tray.

Place salad loosely in a single layer on nonstick dehydrator sheets or trays.

This recipe was dehydrated using four Excalibur dehydrator trays; approximately two cups of salad on each tray.

Dehydrate at 135°F (57°C) for approximately 16 hours.

During dehydration, stir the salad around two or three times and pull apart any apples and vegetables that are stuck together.

Photo: Zesty Apple Salad after dehydration.

The dried ingredients will be slightly pliable. Cut or tear a few of the large pieces in half to make sure there is no moisture remaining.

Yield: 8 cups prepared salad (1200 g) dehydrates to approximately 3½ cups (200 g).

Photo: Zesty Apple Bulgur Cold-Soak Salad stored in canning jar.

Storage & Conditioning

Store dehydrated salad in an airtight container such as a canning jar with a tight-fitting lid.

If any moisture appears on the inside of the jar after a few days, put it back in the dehydrator to continue drying.

Photo: Dehydrated ingredients for one serving.

Packing for the Trail

Pack dehydrated salad, bulgur, and walnuts in a Ziploc bag. Pack cranberries in a separate bag so that moisture from the cranberries doesn’t migrate into the other ingredients. Pack oil in a small bottle, although the salad is still delicious if you omit the oil.

Servings: 1

• ½ cup dehydrated apple salad (35 g)
• ⅓ cup dehydrated bulgur (30 g)
• 2 Tbsp. chopped walnuts (15 g)
• 2 Tbsp. cranberries (15 g)
• 2 tsp. oil (sunflower or olive)
• 1 cup cold water to rehydrate (237 ml)

Preparation

Combine dried apple salad, bulgur, and walnuts with cold water in a leak-proof container. A Thermos food jar works great for keeping the meal cold.

We prepare this meal in the morning to enjoy it later for lunch.

Minimum Soak Time: 2 hours, up to several hours.

Photo: Salad rehydrated in two hours.

After two hours, the ingredients will have absorbed nearly all the water, leaving the salad lightly dressed rather than dry. The apples will have plumped up, the grated carrots will be crunchy, the bulgur will be pleasantly chewy, and the sweet-tangy dressing will pull it all together.

Stir in cranberries and oil right before serving.

Photo: Zesty Apple Bulgur Cold-Soak Salad rehydrated in Thermos food jar.

A double-serving size fits perfectly in a 24-oz. Thermos food jar.

Servings: 2

• 1 cup dehydrated apple salad (70 g)
• ⅔ cup dehydrated bulgur (60 g)
• ¼ cup chopped walnuts (30 g)
• ¼ cup cranberries (30 g)
• 4 tsp. oil (sunflower or olive)
• 2 cups cold water to rehydrate (237 ml)

Dominique and I shared a double serving of this refreshing salad for lunch on the Cataloochee Divide Trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I added the water to the ingredients in the thermos at 8:00 am and it was delicious at 1:30 pm.

Tip: We packed a small flip-top bottle of sunflower oil and stirred the oil into the meal a little at a time as we worked our way to the bottom of the thermos.

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