Trail Llapingachos

One of the staple meals for thru-hikers is anything made with Idahoan instant potatoes.  You can do a lot of things with instant mashed potatoes, but this is one you probably haven’t seen before, and it’s really pretty simple.

You do need to pack a couple of small fresh ingredients though.  One is a SMALL white or yellow onion.  There’s no substitute for fresh onion IMHO, and my experience with freeze-dried onions is that they are a stupendous flatulent.  You’ll also need some achiote paste in a mini ziploc.  It’s available on Amazon and at many supermarkets.

You also need some ghee, which is fortunately available at Amazon in nice little single serving packets.

INGREDIENTS:

1-2 TB all purpose flour (in mini ziploc)

I packet Idahoan instant potatoes

2 packets of Ghee

1 TB achiote paste (in mini ziploc)

1 1/2 oz. freeze-dried Monterey Jack cheese (in snack-sized ziploc)

add a folded up piece of wax paper

DIRECTIONS:

1.   Prepare potatoes, set aside
2.   Dice onion, saute in ghee, then add achiote paste and stir until blended
3.   Add onion/achiote mix to potatoes
4.   Rehydrate cheese in its own bag
5.   Once potatoes are decently cooled, mix in the cheese (you want the potatoes cool enough that they don’t melt the cheese yet)
6.   Form potato patties, dusting outside with flour
7.   Fry patties in ghee.
8.   Nomnomnom

This will make enough patties for serve as a meal for one person, or enough for 3-4 people to enjoy as a side dish.