While I’ve shown how to make dehydrated juices in earlier cuisine recipes, here’s the easiest of all…and you only need dried fruit and a pinch of salt (to add those essential electrolytes). I chose blueberries, cherries and ginger because they are especially high in micronutrients critical for the vitality of backcountry exercise.

Cool Ginger Blueberry Cherry Tea

First the technique: just add a ¼ cup dried fruit and a pinch of salt to your water bottle. Using a wide mouth bottle is best. Add cool filtered or purified water and let it sit overnight or for a few hours as you hike the morning away. By lunchtime it is dark red, sweet and filled with soft, near-fresh tasting fruit. You get a bite of fruit with each sip. You can refill over the remaining fruit and it will seem like an endless fountain of deliciousness.

Why blueberries and cherries? All fruits and vegetables in shades of blue, purple, and red are full of the antioxidants called anthocyanins, a micronutrient wonder. That’s enough to convince me. And ¼ cup dried berries equals about one cup of fresh ones. So you get plenty of antioxidant power in that one little bottle of berry tea.

I add ginger for its spicy taste but also because of its potent compounds called gingerols. Candied ginger adds a little extra sweetness to the berry tea but I generally just use my home dried ginger slices. They get spicier as the day goes on.

Ingredients

• 2 cups each fresh blueberries and pitted fresh cherries
• One 4” x 2” piece of fresh ginger root, peeled and thinly sliced

Instructions

• Layer berries and ginger in dehydrator (see How to Dehydrate Your Own Backpacking Meals)
• Dry until the consistency of raisins (about 6 hours) Package in a baggie together

When you add the fruit mix to your water, add a pinch of sea salt or Himalayan rock salt to your bottle for electrolytes.

Find more drink recipes in Backpackers’ Ultra Food by Cinny Green along with more tips, techniques, and recipes to elevate eating on the trail. You can find the book here at Amazon.com.

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in Issue 17 of TrailGroove Magazine. You can read the original article here.