Overlanding Recipes

In most countries it’s easy to find some kind of veggies and/or meat in markets or local stores to chuck into a pot with some herbs or spices. There are plenty of obvious overlanding recipes on the internet for that kind of thing. But for us, it’s about the little tastes of home that we miss.

I’ll continue to expand this list as we travel, but below are our current favourite simple overlanding recipes to make things not easily found everywhere in shops (click on the links for recipes):

Yoghurt

We eat a lot of natural yoghurt, and the lack of refrigeration in shops made it hard to find in rural Africa. This fresh yoghurt is easy-peasy to make on the road. It takes less prep-time than a cup of tea, then just leave it overnight. In Africa I made it almost everyday! All the equipment you need is a thermos-flask and (ideally) a thermometer. I don’t need to make it so much in The Americas, but I still carry the equipment to make some when I need to. The slight snagette with this is the ‘chicken and egg‘ thing… you need a small amount of good natural (unsweetened and unflavoured) yogurt as a starter culture to get you started making your yoghurt. I usually look for this in a major town. Once I’ve got that, I can make the first batch and save the last 2 tablespoons as a starter culture for the next batch. Then it becomes a rolling process!

1 – Mix 500ml of milk with 3 Tbsps of powdered milk and heat to approx. 46-48°C.
2 – Take off the heat and mix in 2 Tbsps of natural yoghurt (as a ‘starter culture’).
3 – Pour into a 500ml thermos-flask, wrap in a towel and leave still for around 7-10 hrs.

That’s it!  ‘Eeasy-peasy, lemon-squeezy’!  Remember to save the last 2 Tbsps of this yoghurt to use as ‘starter culture’ to make the next batch.

A few tips I have found through trial and error:

  • It stays good in the fridge for around 3 days.
  • You can judge the milk temperature when it feels warm to your little finger, but a food thermometer is obviously more accurate. Milk under 45°C is unlikely to start cultivation and over 50°C is likely to curdle the mixture. Anywhere between these seems to work fine.
  • It only works if the flask is left still. It won’t work if you have it in the truck driving around all day. Its best to make it in the evening, then wrap to keep the flask warm and leave it to stand overnight. In the morning – Hey Presto! Fresh yoghurt for brekkie.
  • Whilst warming the milk, put some hot water into the thermos-flask to pre-heat it. The milk temperature then remains more constant after it has been poured into the warm flask.
  • The more powdered milk you add, the creamier the yoghurt should be. 3 generously heaped tablespoons should be good, but if you are short of milk powder, it will still make nice yoghurt with 2 large heaped or 3 small level tablespoons.
  • You can use fresh or long-life milk. I am told it will even work with all powdered milk (obviously made up with water) but I haven’t tried this.

Flat-breads (made with yoghurt)

These are made with a bit of the yogurt that you have lovingly created from the recipe above. This was our favourite until we discovered the whole sourdough thing. Once you get into the sourdough thing, you probably won’t look back to this one!

1 – Add 1 tsp of baking power to 150g of sieved plain flour.
2 – Mix flour with 2 Tbsps of natural yoghurt and 1 Tbspn of olive oil.
3 – Knead for a few minutes until soft and smooth.
4 – Roll/press the dough into thin flat rounds.
5 – Cook in a dry frying pan for a few minutes on each side until cooked & brown.

  • If mixture is too dry/crumbly, add dribbles of olive oil. If it is too wet/sticky, add more flour.
  • 150g flour should make 4 reasonable flatbreads (lunch for 2 people).
  • Best eaten warm from the pan, but will keep to eat later within a few hours.
  • Add some bran to the mixture for brown bread, or herbs, cheese… whatever.

Banana Ice-cream

This is brilliant (provided of course you’re lucky enough to have a fridge with a small freezer section in your rig, and the power to run a blender). We don’t have a freezer big enough to fit a tub of shop-bought ice-cream, but it usually has space for a few chunks of squashed banana in a ziplock bag. And this tastes better than shop-bought ice-cream anyway!

1 – Freeze some chunks of peeled banana (1-2 bananas per person).
2 – Blend the chunks of frozen banana until creamy.

Done!  No need to add anything to this, but you can obviously mix in some other stuff after blending if you like (e.g. raisins or choc-bits maybe)