So I've never dehydrated cooked pasta and meat tomato sauce. What's the best way to do this? Dehydrate everything mixed together? Or the pasta and sauce separately? Do they rehydrate in the same amount of time? It's spaghetti.

Dehydrate the sauce and buy yourself parboiled pasta (essentially partially cooked pasta). If you're running a one stove set-up it's possible to cook the pasta, then use some of the starchy pasta water to re-hydrate the sauce afterward.

Definitely don't do them together.

My go-to pasta setup is usually a powdered alfredo (a la KD style) and I'll take along some chopped sundried tomatoes, dry salami and cheese to toss in (babybels keep pretty well, crossed the stein with them).

Thanks guys. I did a test last night with great results. Dropped the dehydrated pasta into boiling water, let sit for 30 mins. Added more water and the dried sauce, reheated a couple times for the next 30 mins. Perfectly cooked pasta!

Unless you are making fresh pasta from flour, eggs etc. yourself, pasta (dried noodles) is already dehydrated, and will cook to al dente in 8 minutes, which is a lot faster than you having to keep it in boiling water for 30 minutes. Better to just dry the sauce than try to cook and then re-dry the pasta, surely?

I'd cook pasta right from the box if it wasn't for the weight and fuel it takes to cook. Reconstituting the dehydrated pasta takes longer overall time, but less cooking time. I usually set up camp while waiting for it to soften.

I discovered that the dehydrated version is still about twice as heavy as other prepackaged starches like Mr Noodles and couscous, similar calories. Thus it's going to add weight on those long backpacking trips.