Trail Meal | Red Lentil and Sausage Stew

Similar to my last Couscous stew, a variation can be made using red lentils. Read on for my full recipe for Red lentil and Sausage stew!

As a lifelong resident of Northern Europe, I’ve always enjoyed the warmth and comfort of soups and stews, especially on hikes. They offer a nice hot meal and stay warmer for longer thanks to the hot water that takes a bit longer to cool down then other meals. When hiking in fall, winter, or early spring these types of meals can also warm you up good before you crawl into your sleeping bag.

Red lentils are a hiker’s dream, cooking faster than any other lentil, making them a convenient and nutritious choice for trail meals.

Ingredients for Red Lentil and Sausage stew

What you will need for this Trail Meal recipe is the following, these items should be easy to find on resupply in regular grocery stores. And is therefore a great improvised trail meal, or one that you prepare, zip up in a baggie, and take out with you on your next hike.

70 grams of Red lentils
Teaspoon (or cube) of beef stock powder
Teaspoon of dried Italian herbs
Two tablespoons of dried vegetables, I used a store bought mix of: Leek, carrot, celery, celery root, onions, parsley, lovage
Teaspoon (heaping) of Smoked Paprika
1 BIFI sausage or similar brand / dry salami / smoked sausage. This time I used Debreziner.
300 ml of water

Total calories will put you at ~455 calories with the listed ingredients.

Trail weight without the sausage: 92 grams, with sausage packet of 4: 251 grams. With 1 BIFI sausage of 120 grams: 212 grams

Trail ready

As all my Trail Meals this one is also extremely simple to put together, throw everything in a Ziploc and your done. The Dehydrated vegetables is the most labor intensive part if you dehydrate your own. I still had the store bought freeze dried mix, so I used that. Use what you have or can find.

Store the sausage seperate and inside the packaging, if you take it out it will spoil easily.

Cooking on Trail

Like any Trail Meal recipe, this one is also a matter of putting 300 ml of cold water in your pot, throwing the contents of the ziploc bag in there and waiting for it to come to the boil. Red lentils require a longer cooking time compared to couscous or other instant grains. So keep it boiling for 5 to 8 minutes, or until the lentils are tender. Throw in your cut up sausage in there to heat through.

On a Fancy Feast Alcohol stove it took roundabout 6 minutes to come to the boil, and afterwards another 7 minutes for the lentils to become tender. So total cook time from cold water took 13 minutes.