Gourmet Backcountry- Vegetable Risotto

Are you looking to step up your backcountry cooking? The vegetable Risotto will have your hiking buddies begging you to share!

This recipe does require a bit of prep work at home, but once you are are on the trail you will be thanking your prepping self for taking the time to create this masterpiece.

Before you Hit the Trails

At home, you will make the risotto on the stove before placing it in the dehydrator. Once your masterpiece us cooked and cool you will place it on the dehydrating trays with your cut vegetables. Depending on your dehydrator this may take some time and we recommend flipping it about half way to make sure you get it fully dehydrated.

The best thing about this recipe you can customize which veggies you want to include- for ours we included mushrooms, peas and zucchini.

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Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1 small onion (diced)
• 1 cup Arborio rice
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 2 cups broth
• Salt to taste
• 1 small zucchini
• 6-8 mushrooms
• 1/4 cup frozen peas
• 2 tablespoon parmesan cheese
• 2 tablespoons olive oil (packed separately)

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Instructions

1. Prepare the Risotto: Heat oil in a heavy bottom pot- we used cast iron. Once the oil is hot add in the diced onion and salt and sauté for about 6 minutes. Add in the rice and continuing sautéing until the tips of the rice turn translucent about 1-2 minutes. Add in the wine and cook, stirring continuously until all the wine has evaporated. Adding about 1/2 cup of broth at a time, continue to cook and stir the rice. Add more broth as needed as the bottom of the pan dried, this step will take about 20 minutes. Remove from heat.
2. Cut about vegetables of choice in 1/4 in slices
3. Dehydrate – lay vegetables on trays avoid them overlapping, the remaining trays place a mesh or solid liner and thinly spread out the risotto in even layers. Dehydrate on 135F until fully dry.
4. Packing- place the risotto and vegetables in a sealed bag with the parmesan cheese and the package of olive oil.

At Camp

After a long day at camp- you are exhausted! But luckily for you, all the prep work for the meal is done and the camp work is relatively easy. Place the dehydrated risotto and vegetables with parmesan cheese in a pot. Add enough water to just cover it about 2 cups). It reduce cook time, allow your meal to sit for awhile to reabsorb some of the water. Bring to a boil and then simmer, remember to stir frequently, until risotto and vegetables are tender. You may need to add more water was go.

We love our Sea to Summit 2.8L X-pot to cook for multiple people, then pairing with the sea to summit X-bowls – our dishes take up such little space in our bags, its perfect!

This recipe serves 2 – we doubled the recipe to feed 4 adults and 1 toddler and found it to be a sufficient amount of food after a day of hiking. To add in some extra protein we packed a slice of Salomon to have with our vegetable risotto. If you are from Saskatoon, we highly recommend checking out Bulk Cheese Warehouse for their Vacuumed sealed salmon.