Here are some of our hiking staples: curry paste, pesto sauce, miso paste, Korean chilli paste. These ingredients don’t weigh much, but they really punch above their weight in the flavour department.
However, at times these pastes and sauces have an amazing ability to escape from the zip-lock bag you have carefully stored them in. There’s nothing worse than opening your backpack at the end of a hard day’s walking, only to discover that the pesto sauce has soaked into tomorrow’s clean undies.
To minimise the chance of leakage, we recommend that you double-bag ingredients like sauces and pastes. Over the years, we’ve found that freezer bags work best for this. Here’s how it goes.
1. Get two freezer bags
These are easy to find in your local supermarket. They are very cheap and extremely lightweight.
2. Put ingredient in first bag
Scoop the paste or sauce into one of the freezer bags.
3. Tie up the first bag
Squeeze as much air out of the bag as possible, then tie the bag in a tight knot. Cut off any excess plastic.
4. Repeat the process with the second bag
Take your bag of paste and put it into the second bag, then tie this in a tight knot. The ingredient might escape out of the first bag, but it’s unlikely to get through the second bag and into your backpack.