We have been dehydrating whole meals for a while now and have been pretty happy with them.
The most important things we found are:
1) make sure the meat portions are cut up small or preferably minced (we get the butcher to mince chicken breast for a chicken chilli dish we dry)
2) make sure all fat is trimmed off any meat as it won't dry
3) When we cook mince we than wash it under really hot tap water to get rid of all the fat. It can then be used for spagetti etc
4) We tend to dry slow and long , turning every 2-3 hours
5) We USED to cook bolognaise sauce and then cook pasta seperately in camp. Last time we cooked, dried and rehydrated together and it worked really well
6) To rehydrate we just cover with boiling water when we have our arrival cuppa and leave it sit (covered) until we are ready to eat. We add more boiling water as it rehydrates and then gently heat before eating
We have blogged a couple of times about drying meals
This one is spagetti bolognaise :
http://frankinoz.blogspot.com/2008/06/d ... cheap.htmlThis one is drying a curry:
http://frankinoz.blogspot.com/2007/11/h ... curry.htmlThere is also a great resource called Freezer bag cooking here:
http://www.freezerbagcooking.com/index.htm