Trail Meal | Hutspot

Hutspot is a Dutch stamppot that’s quite easy to adapt into backpacking. Here is my way of doing it to make sure I don’t have to go without on backpacking trips.

Dutch food is looked down on by many different cultures, and often also by Dutch people themselves (myself excluded). Simple, filling, and easy to prepare is a theme throughout many Dutch recipes. And that is the same for a lot of food you have out on hikes.

The classic ingredients of Hutspot are Carrots, Onions, and Potatoes (before the Colombian exchange Parsnips). To adapt it into a Trail Meal that takes minutes to prepare, is lightweight, and keeps for a long time, the potatoes have been swapped out for instant mashed potatoes. And the vegetables have been dehydrated. As the Dutch advertisement goes, a little bit of yourself, and a little bit of Maggi.

Ingredients of Hutspot

• Instant mashed potato, 1 pouch or 91 grams
• Dehydrated Carrots 10 grams
• Dehydrated Onions 10 grams
• Smoked shelf stable sausage, ideally a Unox Rookworst
• 1 tsp White Pepper
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg

Calories: 608 
Total Calories with sausage: 831

Weight: 188 grams (per portion)
Complete with 2 sausages, and Zip Locs: 279 grams

If you are new to Dehydrating your own backpacking food, I invite you to read into my earlier article on the subject.

Onions and carrots are probably some of the easiest vegetables you can try to dehydrate, so its a nice recipe to try out as a beginner. Just grate the carrots on a box grater, and cut up the onions. Throw in your dehydrator of choice, and dehydrate for about 6 to 8 hours. Depending on how fine you cut the onions. That’s all there is to it.

The sausage is best to have a Rookworst, or smoked sausage. Sadly, since I now live in Germany, I cant get it at the supermarket anymore. So therefore I got what’s available to me, a Polish Cabanossi style smoked and cured sausage. Which is alright as a replacement. Take a look around and see what is available to you, main part is that it is shelf stable and smoked.

Preparing for the Trail

You can opt to take out the potato mash of the, oftentimes, foil pouch it comes in and combine it in a Zip Loc baggie, or opt to keep it in its own pouch. During cooking, keeping the potato separate, will let you easily throw in the vegetables for some more time to rehydrate. Combine all the other ingredients in a Zip Loc, and keep the shelf stable sausage of choice in its own package.

Cooking Hutspot on Trail

As always in my recipes for on trail cooking, any preparation comes before you set off hiking. And this one is no different.

Simply put 400 ml of water in your pot. Throw in your dehydrated vegetables and spices already for a little added rehydrate time, and bring to the boil. Boil for a minute or two.
Afterwards remove from heat, and stir in your potato. Add the sausage you cut up in bite size pieces, and cover with the lid. Let stand for a few minutes. And afterwards dig in!

See the process and steps in this YouTube Short I made, please be sure to subscribe for more Trail Meal recipes!

If you are in colder weather, adding it to a pot cozy may be needed during the waiting time, since I find that mashed potato can cool down rather quick.

Additionally, you can make an instant gravy packet next to it, and add it over your Hutspot at the end. I think that’s always a bit of a hassle however, and makes for more cleaning up. Directly mixing the gravy into the cooking water makes for the wrong flavor in my opinion, adapt to your liking however.

Hope you give this Dutch Trail Meal a try on your next hike! And be sure to comment if you did.

Happy Hiking and Hike for Purpose!