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Vegan TVP tacos are the perfect backpacking dinner. They are easy to make, packed with flavor, lightweight, and budget-friendly.

Why Make Your Own Backpacking Meal?

Relying on premade freeze-dried backpacking meals can be expensive and limit the kind of food you can bring. While there are many amazing vegan options available they may be hard to find or contain ingredients you want to avoid. Furthermore, m anufacturers can change their recipes at any time or discontinue products making shopping with dietary restrictions challenging.

Making your own backpacking food is incredibly easy and gives you total control over the ingedents .

How To Make Your Own Backpacking Meals

There are a few things to consider when you’re planning your meal:

Food Weight And Volume

Since you’ll be carrying all of your food on your trip weight and size are things you want to keep in mind. The length of your trip and your own personal preferences will impact this. For short trips, you could bring heavier and bulkier items like canned food or fresh produce, but for longer t rips you’ll need to look for lighter more compact meals.

Calories

Calories are your body’s fuel. While you’re backpacking you will be burning a lot of calories and therefore you’ll need to consume a lot. When on the trail I shoot for a minimum of 3,000 calories a day! To keep the weight down look for calorie-dense food or increase the calories by adding extra oil or sugar to your meals.

Equipment

Keep in mind all of the equipment that you’ll need to prepare your food. If you plan on cooking not only will you need a stove and fuel, you’ll also need things like pots, skillets, and utensils and items to clean them after each use.

Fuel

Foods that take little to no fuel to prepare are ideal since longer cooking times will require to pack more fuel. Dried beans would be a very light-weight and compact food. However, due to their long cooking time they would require too much fuel to make an ideal backpacking food.

Packablity

In addition to weight and nutritional considerations backpacking food needs to physically withstand being transported without being broken or squished. Sturdy food like tortillas is a better option than a delicate food like bread.

What Is TVP?

TVP stands for textured vegetable protein. It’s derived from soy and is sometimes also called isolated soy protein and is sold as dry flavorless granules. Once rehydrated, it has a texture similar to that of ground beef and works well for recipes like tacos and chili.

TVP makes a pretty good backpacking meal since it’s light-weight, versatile, and easy to prepare. It can be cooked by simply adding boiling water to a freezer bag with the mixture and allowing it to rehydrate for about ten minutes. This is known as the freezer bag method, preparing food with this system cuts down on both fuel and equipment since the only thing you’ll need is a kettle. The downside is that it’s a pretty low-calorie food.

TVP is available at health food stores, some grocery stores, and online

Make these TVP tacos into a full meal by serving on tortillas or over Minute Rice.

For more vegan backpacking resources check out Vegan Backpacking Guide, Vegan Backpacking Curry Rice, and Vegan Backpacking Gear.

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