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Do you bring a cooler? I don’t understand what you mean by chili keeping well? You cannot put chili in a ziplock bag, put it in your backpack, and eat it four days later, it will go bad. You also cannot bring a cooler on a through hike. Anything besides car glamping you’re going to have to dehydrate chili if you want to bring it, or pay exorbitant prices for a brand pre-made like mountain house or peak refuel.
How am I camping? Last trip was a 5 day through the BWCA, before that was a 7 day backpacking through the tetons, prior to that it was a 5 day canyoneering in southeast Utah (don’t even get me started on trying to keep a cooler cold in utah even when we did have a night near the car). Dehydrated foods are shelf stable! That’s the draw. Super lightweight and shelf stable. Just add hot water!
Ah sure I see what you’re saying. And you can definitely bring all the ingredients separate (you bring cans of tomatoes and tomato paste and wet foods? Bringing whole tomaotes in your backpack is something I’ve never heard of, thats heavy, wet messy, and also more inportantly not shelf stable. And canned shelf stable tomatoes are soo heavy and lots of trash to carry out) and cook everything and add dehydrated meat into it, but that’s a ton more work out in nature and burns way more fuel than just prepping at home and then heating up water for almost instant chili on trail. When I’m in nature I want to spend my time enjoying nature not lugging around cans and a can opener, spending an hour plus prepping and cooking a meal. Dehydrated meals take about 15min to rehydrate and you get the quality food that you had a whole real kitchen to prepare.