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Food Talk - Bean Crackers and Notes

by Jen Schaeffer

Hello all - it was so very nice to see so many folks at the Gathering. Thanks again for everyone who made the event possible. Thank you also for all of your great input into the food discussion on Sunday morning.

I'm gathering web resources on hiking food for a future Gazette article. I received some favorites from folks at the Gathering and am hoping to find some more recommendations from everyone out there. If you have a favorite website that is food related, such as: nutrition, bulk supply, specialty foods, or planning meals, please send me the link. I'll list them all in the next Gazette for everyone's benefit. Email me at: sprout896@hotmail.com

At the Gathering, I realized that a year had passed and I had not yet published a recipe for the bean crackers I brought to last year's Gathering. So, here it is, along with some comments. I welcome any feedback on this recipe and look forward to hearing how folks like the finished product.

Dehydrator Bean Crackers:
-- 2 cups of cooked beans of your choice (e.g., pintos, black beans, adzuki, lima, etc.); either canned or homemade
-- 1 cup of your favorite salsa

Blend the ingredients in your blender until smooth. Adjust salsa amount or add other seasonings as desired (e.g. hot sauce, garlic). You may also want to reserve some of the liquid from the canned beans or your cooking water from homemade beans and add if needed to make a smooth blend. The consistency should be similar to hummus.

Spoon the bean mixture onto your dehydrator trays into roughly half-dollar sized crackers. You will probably want to start the crackers on whatever you would use for leathers - dehydrator sheets or plastic wrap in a pinch. I've dried these at around 110 degrees in my dehydrator, but suspect they will do fine at higher temperatures. As soon as you can, flip the crackers over and get them off the dehydrator sheets to make sure you don't end up with moldy bottoms or interiors and perfectly dried tops and exteriors. This condition is more likely to happen the higher the dehydrator temperature and if your dehydrator has a fan. The crackers are done when they are dried through. Store in a glass jar like any other dehydrated food.

So far I've tried black beans, adzuki beans, and baby lima beans. Each bean lends a different flavor and texture (mouth feel) to the crackers. I've noticed that baby limas produce a more consistent cracker - meaning it's solid and has a sort of pasty mouth feel (not bad, just pasty). Black beans add almost a sweet taste to the crackers, but don't produce as solid of a cracker. Adzuki beans seem to be pretty neutral on the taste front, but produce a pretty crumbly cracker.

While playing with the bean mix, you can also play around with the salsa - try fresh versus jarred or use your own special homemade mix. I suspect that any bean dip would be fun to try as a dried cracker. Hummus comes to mind as a natural for bean crackers. The rule I've heard is this: if it tastes good in the blender, it'll probably taste good after it's dried.

I've found the bean crackers to be a bit fragile for hiking, but even if they do get crushed in your pack, you can always toss the crushed bits into your meal that night for some added flavor and protein. You can also crush the crackers and add hot water (cold would probably work too) to make a nice bean dip for lunch or an appetizer.

These crackers are a nice addition to the array of "sweet" snacks we all seem to end up carrying. At the Gathering, Marmot recommended trying salsa leather as another savory food item - she suggested using it in sandwiches.

Good luck with the bean crackers and let me know the results.