Question about dehydrating your own meal

[TwistedSage]

This may be a dumb question but here goes... I have a bunch of pulled pork from last weekend. The family is all about bbqed out and I've been thinking about dehydrating the rest for backpacking meals. Porks in the fridge, does it make any sense to heat up the pork before putting it in dehydrator? If I put it in cold may ot take too long to get above 140?

 

[Gellar]

I have been experimenting with this as well. I just did some fajita mix to eat in September. Mine was cooked, but cold when I started the dehydrater and I left it in the dehydrator for about 6 hours. My machine only has 1 setting, ON! After it was finished I put it in a vaccumm saver bag with extra room and placed in the freezer just in case it was not as dehydrated as I thought it was. When I started the mixture weighed about 15oz. After finishing it was 3.3 oz. I am curious as to how much water I should plan on adding to rehydrate it and not make it like soup.

 

[TwistedSage]

Thanks for the input would you do it the same way maybe increase time?

If I recall correctly when something is dehydrated is generally loses about 90%weight for meat at least. 90% of 15oz would be 1.5 oz. Not sure if meat and veggie content will change weight due to more fiber?

I use my high setting for jerky at 154 degrees I generally let it go over night usually 10 hrs or so.

 

[TwistedSage]

Thinking of making jerky kind of answered my question though... I already dehydrate cold meat so what's the difference if its already been cooked or not. Gonna give it a whirl tonight

Also if it was 15 oz and now 3.5 oz id start with adding 11.5 oz of water

 

[Gellar]

That makes sense that it needs its original amount of water. I just did this on a whim so it is strictly trial and error. Kind of the reason I put it the freezer to store until season! Next time we have left overs of something I will try it again. Thanks for your help!