Carol was advocating something new for the menu in the Boundary Waters, including use of spaghetti versus small pasta, our daughter just finished a year studying in Bologna, and those two factors lead to the successful proof of concept that spaghetti Bolognese could be served as a one-pot dinner on a backpacking or canoe trip.

Everything I will describe below was scaled for two people, but can easily be upscaled for a larger group

First, prepare an appropriate sized batch of Ragu Bolognese

Second, dehydrate the ragu.

Half of the meat sauce above weighed 16 oz. before dehydrating and 5.4 ounces after dehydrating, which means that the sauce itself needs 10-11 oz. of water to rehydrate. Here is the dehydrated sauce in the dehydrator.

Third, pack 4 oz. of spaghetti and parmesan cheese.

In camp, put the dehydrated ragu in a pot

Add at least 10 oz. of water to start the rehydration process. To save fuel, heat the water and ragu and then cover and let it hydrate for a few minutes off heat. When ready to cook the spaghetti, break the strands in half and add them to the pot, with another 8 oz. or so of water, heat and stir. Try to make sure that the pasta is barely covered in water as it cooks. Add additional water from time to time if it looks too dry, but do not add too much since the final product should not be soupy. The sauce and pasta in this batch were rehydrated with 20 oz. of water. Keep stirring and checking until the pasta is fully cooked, which today took a total of 28 minutes. Serve with grated cheese.