How to Dehydrate Cooked Pasta for Emergency Meals
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Dehydrating already cooked pasta may sound extremely stupid, but hear me out.
Ever heard of minute white rice? It’s basically instant rice, just add water type deal.
When you cook pasta and then dehydrate it, you’re making the same thing… just with pasta. It’s super handy for quick meals or even for emergency situations like natural disasters causing power outages where you don’t have access to electric appliances, fire, or boiling water. Having dehydrated ready-to-use pasta allows you to make a hearty meal, with pasta, even using room temperature water. Dehydrated pasta really comes in clutch, not only in emergency situations, but also for those hiking or camping in primitive situations and even just convenience with homemade meals. Add some water and continue on for a while and you’ll have a meal ready before you know it. Or toss some in your slow cooker full of goodness you cooked all day and it will be ready almost instantaneously.
You can add ingredients to make a sauce or even freeze-dried foods to the pasta to make quick mylar pouch meals or meals in jars. Dehydrated pasta really opens a window of opportunity for you and you didn’t even know it. AND… if you like to can meals in jars and don’t really care for canned pasta, heat that chicken noodle soup starter and then dump in some dehydrated pasta and let it sit for like 5 minutes. BOOM… dinner done. So, considering adding some cooked dehydrated pasta to your long-term food storage layers today because I sure think it’s a dang great idea!
Cooking pasta isn’t hard, I get it, but if you have a power outage and limited fuel supplies, it can be hard. I’m not saying you need to dehydrate 90 pounds of elbow macaroni tomorrow, but maybe a mylar bag or jar or two of ready to use pasta isn’t a bad deal. I normally keep a stock of 12 months worth of dehydrated pasta on hand… which amounts to about 1 pound pasta. It’s not much, but I have it available in case I need it. OR it’s ready to split into fun meals to give away as gifts or for folks dealing with illness, stress, postpartum, or the likes. Freezer meals are great, but not everyone (including me) has unlimited freezer space to work with to store those meals. I find it rather thoughtful to give shelf stable meals (if the person is okay with it… I always check in advance, but this is my personal preference). Dehydrated pasta also allows you to make a DIY emergency food supply of your own meals that have ingredients you will eat. It’s also can be quite a bit cheaper to make them yourself than to purchase the buckets of meals, like those from Auguson Farms or Mountain House Meals. I think the best emergency food kits are the homemade ones.
I unfortunately know nothing about freeze drying cooked pasta, so I can’t give advice, but I’m quite sure it would work exactly the same in this application. I don’t own a freeze dryer and have no plans in my budget to attempt to add one. They’re nifty, so if you can swing it, do it because freeze-dried meals are awesome too. Maybe someday!
But I Can’t Afford To Do This
Ok. Watch the sales in the grocery store. Around me, pasta frequently goes on sale for $1 a box. Yeah, the ingredients in store bought pasta products normally have enriched flour and all that crap… but guess what?! I’m not willing to use all my time right now to make homemade, so we do what we can with the best option we can afford. Preparedness and food storage is a slow building process. Grab an extra box when you’re getting groceries and put it into long term storage… either in mylar or vacuum sealed or by cooking and preparing and storing the way I show you in this blog. So many people get stuck being victims of their circumstances that they don’t just think through and make it happen. Even and extra $0.50 can get you SOMETHING. Skip your coffee 1x next week and instead purchase a little bit of food to put into long term storage. Before you know it, you’ll have food tucked away for when you need it. If you’d like to read more on long term storage methods and layers and how I do it, check out my blog post here! It just takes some grit and common sense and you’ll get somewhere! The peace of mind you get from a little bit of preparedness is worth it. It’s not doomsday prepping… it’s just being smart. Going to the grocery store multiple times a week just to eat isn’t smart. Being prepared with a good selection of shelf stable food in case you lose a job, get sick, lose power, or something else keeps the stress and panic of finding food off your shoulders. Just some food for thought.
You can also mitigate food waste out of your kitchen by dehydrating excess pasta you cooked for a meal. EVERYONE has accidentally made too much spaghetti for spaghetti night. If you haven’t… I dearly wish I could be as perfect as you. Maybe someday. But until then, I will dehydrate my leftovers and use them as I see fit. No more trying to make weird egg frittatas with spaghetti in it and whatever else. PRESERVE THE LEFTOVERS. I swear I preach this on way too many occasions :D
Let’s make some dehydrated food!
Equipment You Might Want:
- Stock Pot
- Fine Mesh Strainer
- Food Dehydrator
- Mesh Silicone Tray Liners
- Mylar Bags
- Canning Jars & Lids
- Oxygen Absorbers
- Mason Jar Vacuum Sealer
Ingredients:
- Uncooked Pasta
Step 1: Prep
Start by bringing water to a boil and cooking your type of pasta according to manufacturer’s instructions. If you’re using homemade, cook it to al dente.
Once pasta is finished cooking, drain, and immediately rinse with cold water to stop the cooking process. You want to rinse all the starch off, too, so they don’t stick together and get glue-y in the dehydrator.
Shake and drain well.
Step 2: Dehydrate
Spread cooked pasta onto dehydrator trays lined with silicone mesh mats (or parchment paper) into an even layer and don’t overcrowd. I add about 1 1/2 cups of pasta to each tray.
Place trays in your dehydrator and dry at 135F for about 4 hours, checking at the 2 hour mark and then paying special attention to their doneness every 30 minutes after that. It IS possible to over-dry. When the pasta is dry, crisp, and has no evidence of moisture content, it’s done.
Turn off the dehydrator and allow the pasta to cool to room temperature for about 10 minutes.
Step 3: Store
Pour pasta into a glass canning jar or portioned into mylar bags.
For shorter term storage, 0-6 months, simply vacuum seal the jar with a used canning lid and label. Store in a cool dark place away from direct sunlight.
For extended shelf life, up to 12 months (long shelf life… it’ll probably keep well past 1 year), add an oxygen absorber to the jar prior to vacuum sealing or to the mylar bag and seal. Make sure you’re using a properly sized oxygen absorber for the container size and for pasta. If you’re unsure, my blog post about long term storage has tables that tell you have many cc’s to add to each size and depending on what food type your storing.
Step 4: To Rehydrate
Add the amount of dehydrated pasta you want and completely submerge with room temperature water. Allow to sit for about 30 minutes or till fully rehydrated. Adding warm or boiling water does make this process go faster if you have it!
Pasta can also be added to already cooked soups or meals, like those in a slow cooker, and will rehydrate quickly, in about 5 minutes.
Notes:
1 cup of dehydrated pasta = ~2/3 cup dry uncooked
If you don’t own a food dehydrator, you can use an oven. Just set it to the lowest heat setting and leave the door open and watch the pasta closely to make sure it doesn’t burn. Depending on how hot your oven’s lowest setting is, the pasta will dry much faster.
If you don’t have a glass container or mylar bags, a freezer bag or plastic bags or any airtight containers will do the trick for shorter term storage. Just make sure to store them inside of a rodent proof container because the house mouse really likes pasta.
I hope this helps you add another layer to your long-term storage to be able to make full meals quickly and have a little cushion of emergency preparedness. Food preservation should never be just one method. Using multiple different methods to store and preserve food is the way to go.
Don’t put all your preserving eggs into on basket!
Equipment
- stock pot
- mylar bags
- Canning Jars & Lids
Ingredients
- Uncooked Pasta
Instructions
- Start by bringing water to a boil and cooking your type of pasta according to manufacturer’s instructions. If you’re using homemade, cook it to al dente.
- Once pasta is finished cooking, drain, and immediately rinse with cold water to stop the cooking process. You want to rinse all the starch off, too, so they don’t stick together and get glue-y in the dehydrator.
- Shake and drain well.
- Spread cooked pasta onto dehydrator trays lined with silicone mesh mats (or parchment paper) into an even layer and don’t overcrowd. I add about 1 1/2 cups of pasta to each tray.
- Place trays in your dehydrator and dry at 135F for about 4 hours, checking at the 2 hour mark and then paying special attention to their doneness every 30 minutes after that. It IS possible to over-dry. When the pasta is dry, crisp, and has no evidence of moisture content, it’s done.
- Turn off the dehydrator and allow the pasta to cool to room temperature for about 10 minutes.
- Pour pasta into a glass canning jar or portioned into mylar bags.
- For shorter term storage, 0-6 months, simply vacuum seal the jar with a used canning lid and label. Store in a cool dark place away from direct sunlight.
- For extended shelf life, up to 12 months (long shelf life… it’ll probably keep well past 1 year), add an oxygen absorber to the jar prior to vacuum sealing or to the mylar bag and seal. Make sure you’re using a properly sized oxygen absorber for the container size and for pasta. If you’re unsure, my blog post about long term storage has tables that tell you have many cc’s to add to each size and depending on what food type your storing.
To Prepare:
- Add the amount of dehydrated pasta you want and completely submerge with room temperature water. Allow to sit for about 30 minutes or till fully rehydrated. Adding warm or boiling water does make this process go faster if you have it!
- Pasta can also be added to already cooked soups or meals, like those in a slow cooker, and will rehydrate quickly, in about 5 minutes.
