Food Dehydrating

Discussion in 'Crops & Gardens' started by John Brunner, Aug 31, 2020.

  1. Mary Stetler

    Mary Stetler Veteran Member
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    Shoot. I have even exploded concord grape wine. If a little yeast is good then more would be better? Purple polka dots everywhere.
     
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  2. Mary Stetler

    Mary Stetler Veteran Member
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    I think your food dehydrating will all work out. It is like making bread. I helped one girl who was crying because she followed the instructions and came out with a brick. We made it together and all she needed was a bit more flour and rising time. Experience is the answer. Differences in appliances and humidities and explosive tendencies....
     
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  3. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    I gotta think that will never clean up. These stories always remind me of native peoples of all nations learning how to dye fabric naturally. Which came first...the sloppy party or the colorful sari?
     
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  4. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    About the only thing that could go wrong is not fully dehydrating the stuff and finding a fuzzy blue mess some time down the road. I have noticed that the stuff seems bone-dry, but a day later I feel the need to throw it back in the machine because it seems to have become a little more pliable (just happened with the brussel sprouts.) A woman on one website I've read says she puts her dehydrated stuff in a container for a week before sealing it in bags because that gives any moisture left in some pieces a chance to spread evenly throughout the entire batch.
     
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  5. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    I did a taste-test.

    I let the veggies soak in tap water for 2 hours. The other recommended rehydration methods were to soak overnight (at refrigerator temps) and steaming it.

    Taste Test.jpg

    You can see how everything plumped up and retained its color (the sodium bisulphite blanching is supposed to help keep the color.) I cooked each in the microwave and added a little butter & salt.

    Broccoli: Tasted the most as it should. It had texture issues (a little woody) even though it felt fully rehydrated to the touch. I think it needed to soak longer, but of the 3 veggies this one tasted the most "authentic."

    Brussels Sprouts: These were OK. The texture was fine but the flavor was very mild. Could have been the original product. But I'll eat them.

    Asparagus: This was the most interesting. It rehydrated fine, but I'm not certain it came back as close to its original state as the other two did. You know how asparagus is...some are the diameter of knitting needles and some are like a child's thick pencil, so it's hard to recall exactly how large it originally was. The texture was fine...this makes me happy, as asparagus is one of those things where texture matters most to me, and anything other than fresh has not been acceptable. Different prep methods (not the nuker) will only make it better, since steaming is the best way to cook it. Steaming was also the recommended method of veggie rehydration, so maybe I can go from dried to cooked in the steamer. The taste was also fine, but not really a strong asparagus flavor. Either the dehydrating or the microwave imparted a pleasing smoky flavor to it. I bought this batch in 1# cellophane packs at ALDI (which I never do) rather than the bundle of spears you get in the produce section, so perhaps this made a taste difference. And maybe larger spears will rehydrate fuller...but I'm sure they'll take longer to dehydrate.


    Summary: All in all I'm happy with how this went. When I don't have fresh veggies, I like frozen broccoli and sprouts, but have never found anything other than fresh asparagus to be edible. Having dehydrated veggies around will be a nice backup. I cannot imagine going without green veggies, and dehydrating is supposed to retain the nutrients.

    I have to add that the asparagus was the most labor-intensive thing I've done so far because you cut it up into 1" pieces to dehydrate it. Laying it all out to dehydrate so that the small pieces did not touch each other took a while...I should have taken pics of what those hundreds of slivers looked like on the sheets as they dried. And when I dehydrate stuff, I pick out the pieces as they dry (things never seem to dry at a uniform rate, no matter what I'm dehydrating.) This was somewhat time consuming for all the little bits of asparagus...every stalk was cut into 4 pieces and I had to touch each piece to see if it was brittle yet, and pluck it out if it was. It wasn't that much time (maybe 10 minutes each session), but it was not as easy as the stuff that remained reasonably intact in larger pieces. Since I like asparagus and since this is the only acceptable alternative to fresh I've found, I'll suffer through it. I'll have to remember to not buy the thin stuff, so there are fewer pieces to mess with. Perhaps I'll research to see if there are easier methods. That being said, everything else has been way easier to process...but the result with the asparagus have been the most pleasing.
     
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    Last edited: Jun 30, 2022
  6. Don Alaska

    Don Alaska Supreme Member
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    That is in part why we have 4 dehydrators, @John Brunner. We still can or freeze most things, but we dry many berries, apples and other fruit, as well as tomatoes and peppers. The dried tomatoes are then kept in olive oil until ready to use at a future date. Some of the drying is to save space, either in the freezer or on the shelves. Our freezers and canning shelves are almost always full by the end of the harvest season, even with just two of us here. We do have family dinners, however, and my wife's salads and smoothies use a lot of stuff. In warmer, drier areas, you can make a simple solar drier, but when we are harvesting, it is either raining and cool, or very cold. We are going to do our cucumber taste test tomorrow to compare the different types of cucs we grow. When the kids were home, we used to do carrot and tomato taste tests every year to compare varieties.
     
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  7. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    I just ordered a new food dehydrator (all your fault for reviving this thread, @John Brunner !) and it should be here tomorrow. Years ago, I had the Nesco Gardenmaster that I bought when they were demonstrating them at the local county fair in Western Washington, and I just loved that dehydrator.
    Eventually, I lost it due to a move, and have missed it ever since. I have a similar dehydrator that I found at either a yard sale or the thrift store (I don’t remember anymore), and it does the basic stuff, but I didn’t have the special little sheets for making the yogurt fruit roll ups , and I really liked making those.

    Amazon had the Gardenmaster on sale, and offered me payments; so I ordered it, and should have it by tomorrow. The last box of peaches that we ordered from the co-op were not the greatest, and I am going to use some of those for peach roll ups, and maybe some with pineapple in it, too.
    The old one works fine for things like dehydrating greens or veggies, so I will be able to do both now if I want to do more than one thing.
     
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  8. Mary Stetler

    Mary Stetler Veteran Member
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    Proud of you, my boy!
    I wonder if you might try cutting your asparagus in slices lengthwise. Our asparagus never makes it to the dehydrator. my kids used to just eat it in the garden. Me too.
    When shtf, for vitamins and minerals, the dandelion comes up green first. I know you can recognize the little rosettes even before they flower. The roots can be roasted for health or coffee substitute even when the ground is hard. I don't like dandelion leaves but if one must...The nettle and tiny lambs quarters are next--only so you can have fresh veggies/vitamins as soon as you need them.
     
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  9. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    Kitchen tools are always an investment...and they're like getting a new toy to an adult who likes to cook. I've seen articles about dehydrating in ovens and they all recommend lining baking sheets with parchment paper. I wonder if that would work for roll ups & such. When I got my dehydrator I bought some non-stick teflon sheets and smaller mesh tray liners. The teflon sheets have stained a little but they haven't lost their coating (meaning I'm getting my money's worth and I'm not ingesting teflon), and I've used the same few sheets over & over. I forget exactly what small stuff I was gonna dehydrate that caused me to think I needed the smaller mesh (maybe small nuts & seeds), but I've yet to use it. These are the teflon sheets I bought. $14 for a pak of 9, and the price has not changed since I bought mine 2 years ago.

    I use the teflon sheets for roll ups and for the sticky stuff (pineapple and bananas) to set without clogging the mesh tray liners...once set, I take them off of the sheets to finish. In fact, I just bought a bunch of bananas and some apples to dehydrate. I may pick up a pineapple and weigh it throughout the process as I did the veggies to see if there is much of a DIY savings with dehydrated fruits.

    Do you have a recipe/process for your roll ups? Do they keep well? How do you store them? I made a few when I first got my machine but not in any great quantity.
     
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  10. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    I think that I posted a link to fruit/yogurt roll-ups in one of the early pages of this thread, @John Brunner , and it is basically just blending up fruit and yogurt and then drying it. I think my dehydrator comes with a book, but I will also be looking on Kindle for the free books on dehydrating now that I plan on doing more of that again.

    I have not tried using the oven for drying food. In the summer, when i would be doing most of the dehydrating, we seldom use our oven at all, and when we do need to use one, I use the little toaster oven, which will roast a chicken or bake a little fiber cake for us.
    I had thought about using parchment paper in the dehydrator that I have now, but was not sure how that would work, and I would have to cut all of the sheets of parchment into the right sized little rounds so they would fit in the dehydrator.

    Even though Bobby is a chef, neither of us love to cook, so we usually eat very simple meals, often just soup in the winter, and sandwiches or salads in the summer.
    I dried some of the peaches we just bought, but I was wishing that I could make the fruit roll up with them instead, so I am looking forward to getting the new dehydrator.

    I made some dried tomatoes, and stored them in olive oil, so I need to taste one and see how they came out. If they are good, then I will get more tomatoes from the farmers market and dry more of those, too.
     
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  11. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    Thanks, Mary. I wish I had followed my inclination to learn more about identifying wild edibles. I've never tried asparagus raw, but as I've said, I'll only eat it fresh (not canned or frozen) and I can steam it just enough to cook it, yet leave it firm.
     
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  12. Mary Stetler

    Mary Stetler Veteran Member
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    It often grows wild along the roadsides here.;)
     
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  13. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    So does stuff that will kill me.

    And therein lies the problem.
     
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  14. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    Yeh, you did. I just found it. Maybe I'll grab some ingredients and make a few.
     
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  15. Mary Stetler

    Mary Stetler Veteran Member
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    OK,John, I hate to do this but I looked up 'wild food clubs in Virginia' Up came sites on foraging and classes. I don't know where you are so you need to see what might be near you so you won't die. I think all foodies will enjoy this type of class.
    PS: Wild asparagus looks like tame asparagus. But I don't generally see it from the car until it is too old. Would have to get out and walk where I noticed it before.
     
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