diff --git a/meta-digi-dey/conf/distro/dey.conf b/meta-digi-dey/conf/distro/dey.conf
index 76e970d23..db39b4a30 100644
--- a/meta-digi-dey/conf/distro/dey.conf
+++ b/meta-digi-dey/conf/distro/dey.conf
@@ -91,3 +91,8 @@ PACKAGECONFIG:append:class-target:pn-qtwebengine   = " examples"
 # works (libarchive needs to be able to handle .tar.gz files, every other
 # format can be omitted).
 PACKAGECONFIG:remove:class-target:pn-libarchive   = "bz2 xz lzo zstd acl xattr"
+
+# cryptsetup still works as expected in our eMMC partition encryption use case
+# when udev support is disabled, so remove it to avoid dragging a bunch of
+# dependencies into the recovery and trustfence initramfs.
+PACKAGECONFIG:remove:class-target:pn-cryptsetup = "udev"