Back to the rice for a minute:

We need to add no-sodium carbohydrates to our meals to accomodate Spartan1's kidney diet.  I take several of the bags of "Success" rice, in either brown or white.  IMO it is better-tasting than Minute Rice.  You can either drop the bag into the boiling water as per instructions, or if you are doing a freeze-dried meal (would no doubt work with dehydrated, too) you can open up the bag and just add the rice to the water for rehydrating the meal, boil it for a few minutes, then add the meal and simmer gently.

We add a packet of rice to any rice-based freeze dried meal, like the Backpacker's Pantry Chicken and Rice.  It is VERY difficult to find freeze dried foods that are low in sodium, and this will give him more food without more salt.  I do the same thing with noodle-based dishes like Beef Stroganoff, adding a cup of cooked egg noodles.  It is tasty--not as intense as the regular meal, but quite good.  Costs less than buying the larger size, too. 

But Success Rice would be good with your fish meals, too.

We used to always take the Uncle Ben's Long Grain and Wild Rice mix for a side dish, but the low-sodium low-potassium diet has made that impossible!  The Uncle Ben's cooked up nicely and the wild rice was good.

Perhaps we are unusual; I don't think many people with diabetic kidney disease are still doing wilderness camping.  The diet is a huge challenge, and I may decide to try some dehydrating this summer!

What I miss most is Betty Crocker Hash Browns and Hungry Jack Potato Pancakes!  (potatoes are high in potassium).

Sorry if this is somewhat off the subject of the thread, but the comments on rice got me going!   

For those intent on dehydrating ground beef or turkey I would caution them on having a dehydrator that can attain the optimum temperature for ground meats (I believe it's 170F.)

I have a dehydrator my mother gave me and it has some unspecified single temperature setting.  I fried up some ground beef, drained, and thoroughly rinsed it in copious amounts of boiling water.  I dehydrated it to the consistency of gravel.

On two instances (out of three uses) people got mildly ill after ingesting this ground beef.

The max temp on my dehydrator is 155 deg.  I have dried cooked ground beef a couple of times.  After cooking I drained it and rinsed it with boiling water.  I looked like coarse instant coffe after drying.  I then vac. packed it and had no problems at all.

Please exuse me silly questions, am not much of a cook to begin with.

Is there a prefered method at getting the meat to this fine consistency? Should I simply take a knife and have at it? Should all of the meat have been this fine before cooking? Some of the pieces are a little bigger, and I planned to break them up to make sure they were completely 'done'.

BT

I use a brolier spatula... One that is heavy duty. I just break the meat fine while cooking it... When I am done cooking it resembles potting soil... Kind of. I do not like large chunks...

M