Sarah Swallow recently took to the Passed Plate YouTube channel to share a recipe she’s been developing while bikepacking across the globe. Using a universal ingredient she’s found almost everywhere, she presents a nutritious, high-quality meal and shares how to cook it in the video below…

The Passed Plate, a YouTube channel that focuses on the origins of specific meals from around the world, recently aired an episode featuring Sarah Swallow’s universal bikepacking meal. In it, she shares a recipe she’s been developing in her two-wheeled travels. Based on an ingredient she says she’s found in almost every country she’s visited, the video covers her origins as an off-road adventure cyclist and how to prepare and cook the meal.

Through a story about one of her trips through Peru, Sarah shows how her ability to find lentils in some of the globe’s most remote corners is why this meal centers on the tiny, protein-rich legume. Combined with the spices and complex carbs listed below, this dish comes together to make a comforting, warm, relatively easy-to-make riff on a camp meal that feels like home cooking in the middle of nowhere.

To get a better idea of how it came together, I reached out to Sarah for some background and alterations she’s made to the recipe. “I started making a variation of this dish when I was bikepacking internationally heavily in 2018 and 2019. I was dealing with some health issues that were a result of not properly fueling my boy enough for all the physical effort I was demanding of it. That’s when my focus shifted toward healthy fats, adequate protein, and complex carbs for proper sustenance while riding.”

She went on to say, “Rarely do we find the quick cooking orange lentils, so we go with the more common green lentils and soak them in a silicone bag during the day so they cook faster at night. I use whatever spices I can find out of the list and leave out whichever ones we don’t find. Also, we’ll use any kind of potato if sweet potatoes aren’t available. If there is no tomato paste or canned tomatoes, we just leave that out. It’s a bit more watery and less creamy, but it does the trick nontheless. At home I make this the same way as the video and the only substitute I make is using canned diced tomatoes instead of tomato paste and I’ll stir in a bunch of fresh spinach before serving with a spoon of yogurt and a little chopped cilantro on top. ”

Universal Bikepacking Meal Ingredients

• Sweet potato (peeled)
• Onion
• Olive oil
• Orange lentils
• Salt
• Pepper
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Cumin
• Turmeric
• Coriander
• Curry powder
• Cinnamon

For more from Sarah, check out her Instagram.

Further Reading

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