I usually find inspiration in dishes that I typically make at home. However, there is one rather top-notch vegan freeze-dried meal that I wanted to recreate: Backpacker’s Pantry Pad Thai with a delicious sriracha lime sauce. Some recipes online use freeze-dried lime packets, but my take on this dish requires a seasoning that is far more easily available: Tajin Clasico. With its mix of salt, chili pepper flakes and dehydrated lime juice, you get the tang without having to carry citrus fruits into the backcountry.

Another ingredient I want to highlight here is tomato soup powder (something like this). Mixed with a touch of the sugar, it provides the mildly sweet tang that tamarind paste does in traditional pad thai recipes.

I recently made a version of this for a friend’s very first backpacking trip. He counted that experience among the top 2 highlights of his entire trip. If you enjoy this recipe too, I’d love to hear about it!

If you’re a fan of saucy, peanutty noodle dishes, you might also enjoy Noodles with Spicy Peanut Sauce. That was the first recipe I wrote up on this blog, and is super beginner-friendly as it only requires 4 ingredients!

Backcountry Pad Thai

Sam

A homemade take on the popular Backpacker's Pantry pad thai, made with ingredients you can easily find in a grocery store.

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Ideal for Long backcountry trip

Cuisine Thai

Servings 2 hikers

Ingredients

Base

150 g rice noodles
40 g textured vegan protein or soy chunks
10 g mushrooms or other dried vegetables optional

Sauce Mix

3 tbsp peanut butter
1 tsp dried minced garlic
½ tsp red chilli powder less, for less spicy
1 tsp ginger powder
½ tbsp sugar
2 tbsp tomato soup powder*

Seasoning

1 tbsp Tajin Clasico seasoning
½ tsp salt to taste

Instructions

At Home

Assemble the base ingredients into one package: noodles, textured vegan protein and dried mushrooms or other vegetables.
Assemble the sauce into one airtight container: this is everything except the Tajin seasoning. If you are unsure of how much salt to use, bring that in a separate container as well.
Package the Tajin seasoning separately.

At Camp

Bring the noodle mix to boil with approximately 1.5 cups of water. Stir occasionally to ensure that the noodles do not stick to the bottom of the pot. Add more water if needed.
Pour a couple of spoons of water into the sauce mix at a time and either shake the container, or stir, until you reach a smooth pourable consistency.
If there is water left over after the noodles are done cooking, you can use that water for the sauce.
Pour the sauce over the noodles and mix to combine thoroughly. Sprinkle some Tajin seasoning over the top. Add salt if needed.

Notes

*Tomato soup powder (something like this) is a little easier to find than tomato powder, and contains additional seasoning. If you have access to tomato powder you can use that instead. I’ve also used minestrone soup powder if I couldn’t find plain tomato soup. That works well too, just take the pasta out, as the sauce is not simmered long enough to cook the pasta.

Keyword backcountry recipes, dinner recipe, gluten-free, mushrooms, noodles, ultralight

Tangy Saucy Backcountry Pad Thai