Seriously, there is nothing better than fresh salsa when you’re camping. It is even better now that you can buy tortillas in a tube – YUMMY.
Note: Never read the ingredients of anything that comes in a tube, it will just ruin it for you.
I love sitting around, chatting with friends while cutting up a fresh tomato, some onion, a bit of jalapeno and then tossing in some fresh cilantro. You don’t even need a recipe, just add things until it looks right; then dig in. It’s perfect for dipping but also great for wraps, burritos, eggs – or anything else really – the possibilities are endless.
Note: In the absence of frozen margaritas, white wine will work.
Fresh salsa is great unless you’re going on a longer trip. The tomato will get damaged, the onion is heavy and the cilantro will turn into a black puddle in a few days.
Dehydrated Salsa
For long trips we have started to use dehydrated salsa. The first time we wanted to dehydrate salsa, we searched the Internet for recommendations. Campers were raving about how well it re-hydrates and they were right!
A jar of chunky Pace salsa was the number one recommended salsa for dehydrating. It worked amazingly well, but really any chunky salsa will work. Just pick your favorite. Our favorite salsa at home is Herdez but there is just too much liquid to work well in a dehydrator.
Tip: Our dehydrator needs to have all the trays active, so we always keep a jar of salsa handy to fill in any empty trays left by smaller batches of other meals.
To start, spread the salsa thinly on the dehydrator trays.
When we camp we are usually feeding four people so we put “salsa for four” on each tray. This makes it much easier when it comes time to package the salsa. It is harder to gauge quantities when it’s dehydrated.
We set our dehydrator to 145 F. and leave it for about 8 hours.
Every dehydrator is different so you will need to keep checking-in to gauge the progress.
When it is done, vacuum seal.
(Tip: you’ll notice in the picture that we put our salsa in a brown lunch bag before putting it in the vacuum bag. That’s because the salsa is thin and sharp and can puncture the vacuum bag during the sealing process. Brown lunch bags work great to prevent punctures.)
In Camp
When you are ready for the salsa at the campsite, open the package and put it in a bowl. Add a very small amount of water and stir, let it sit, then add a bit more water. Continue until it is the consistency you like.
Because you are not adding hot water, it will take a bit of time to re-hydrate. You will want to start this process at least 30 to 60 minutes before you need to eat. We learned this the hard way. The first time we tried to re-hydrate salsa we were in a hurry to have lunch ahead of an incoming storm – FAIL.
The salsa is light, packs into a very small package, is versatile and yummy.