Dehydrating

[steveh_131]

Over this last week I have started some experimenting with dehydrating foods. Since I started out a total n00b I thought I would share my experiences with anyone else who is interested in it but is also a n00b.

I picked up an old Excalibur 4-tray dehydrator on ebay for $65. (It seems to be nothing more than a heating element and fan, so I wasn't too concerned about getting one that is old and used).

I purchased it because we have fruit trees that produce way more fruit in the fall than we can possibly eat, and I thought this might be a convenient and easy way to store it.

So far I have only experimented with cheap produce bought on sale at Aldi.

My results are as follows:

Strawberries - Sliced into 1/4" slices, didn't do any pretreatment. Dehydrated for around 16 hours. Rotated trays every 4 hours. They are very hard and chewy. I think 16 hours may have been too long, I may try the second batch at 12 hours. Overall, I'm not a big fan of these.

Apples - Peeled, cored, sliced into 1/4" slices. I put 1 teaspoon of citric acid into 1 qt of water and let them soak in it for 10 minutes. Dehydrated at 150 degrees for 3 hours then 135 degrees for 10 hours, rotating trays periodically.

Next I plan to try pears, bananas, beef jerky, and various types of fruit leathers.

Does anybody else here do much with this? I'd love to hear ideas. I'm mostly interested in anything that saves money and allows for some extra food stores to add to my supplies.

And if you have any other recipes, feel free to share. My biggest problem so far has been figuring out when they're finished drying. The apples still seem to have a little moisture in them, especially the thicker slices.

 

[Pamcake]

I have done the same thing as you, with an Excalibur.

Before the gardening season got going, I tried my had at drying things just for fun, and then from the garden last yr I did peppers mostly, & some zucchini after I was tired of making yummy zucchini bread. Experimented with eggplant.

I benefitted most from the peppers (soak/rehydrate 10 min then add to the chili pot & just cook it for a while the way you are going to do already), and learned that you can cut them into small pieces 1/2" square or so, or you can slice the peppers in to 'rings' like an onion ring. The more practical configuration, however, for cooking during the off-season, is the squares/pieces NOT the rings.

The zucchini are hard & dry, like a very thick potato chip. Haven't used them yet.
I dried some of those Mandarin oranges that you get in the can at the grocery. No topical treatments applied. They get tiny & leathery and the flavor concentrates but the most impressive thing about them is how exceedingly sweet they become when dried. Almost too much! I think if you have kids that like orange-flavored candies/treats, they might like them to snack on like trail mix.

I also bought tons of bananas at the store, sliced them (get the banana slicer doogiewhichit it really helps a LOT) & dried them. NO topical treatments applied. They did fine. (BTW, the banana 'slicer' is a great TOOL to mark/imprint other items so you know where to cut them so they are even, like peeled zucchini, or peeled apples, just push the banana slicer into the surface & it leaves a mark that begs you to "cut here")

This yr I want to try tomatoes in the dehydrator, and maybe onions.
And yes, you are right, it is nothing but a fan and heating element in a box.

Congrats on getting the Excalibur, I had a large (round-type) dehydrator in the past life and the design of the Excalibur (front door & easy rotation of trays, much like opening your oven & rotating cookie sheets) is definitely superior. I can't tell you how much nicer it is!

I would encourage you to just play with it (I mean do some scientific experiments). Put stuff in there & see what it turns out!!

Also, a very good guidance (how dry is 'done' ?) is from the book by Mary Bell, called Complete Dehydrator Cookbook. (Contents: Part One, Food Dehydration. Part Two, The Recipes
She tells you what the consistency of the finished product is (what to watch for--some are leathery/tough and some are crispy when finished), and also goes into what % water an item starts out as, for most items you could possibly even think about drying. Including meats/fish, canned/frozen goods, herbs, fruits & veggies of course, fruit leathers.

A few pics below:

The mandarin oranges before & after drying (do it on the sheet, they'll stick to the trays!)

Bananas, dried without any dip or powders applied:

 

[XMil]

Pineapple dehydrates well.

You can also use it to make your own meat jerky.

 

[84VETTE]

I've got a dehydrator that I've used quite a bit. I usually just do jerky but I have had good runs using with bananas and apples, I just put lemon juice on them to keep them from turning brown and maybe add a little sugar to the bananas to make them a little sweeter. They taste pretty great and will save for quite a long time. I have also heard of people doing fish fillets but I haven't tried that yet.

 

[Tandem160]

Lets see some jerky!

 

[oldnovice]

The best resource I have found online is Dehydrate2Store:

Dehydrate2Store.com | Welcome - Educating and Helping Those Who Want To Learn About Dehydration

There is also a YouTube channel related to this website:

YouTube - Dehydrate2store's Channel

I have found the videos to be very helpful and they give me lots of ideas.

 

[Scarnucci]

I also use an Excalibur. Mines a 9 tray so I can get a lot of stuff in there at one time, which is nice. I would say that 80% of what I dry and store are bags of mixed veggies, like peas, carrots and corn. You can normally find them on sale for less than a buck a pound. They go straight right into the unit while they are frozen. I normally turn it on before I go to bed at night and then when I get home from work the following day they are done.

You mentioned having strawberries in there too long, that they were too done... I dunno if that is possible. For the longest possible storage you want as much moisture out as possible. Once it is dry, keeping it in there any longer doesnt really have much of an affect...its not "over dry"

Granted, I've never tried to make a fruit leather with any type of chewy consistency...I want as dry as possible for best long term storage.

Drying tomatoes in season is wonderful. I still have jars of them from last year and I use them often. Peppers work great too. I dry them, throw them through the food processor and then into a pepper grinder.

 

[steveh_131]

Thanks for the links and book suggestions. I think i will try the Mandarin oranges at some point, those look really good.

And I never thought of the frozen fruit/vegetable idea. That seems pretty cheap. Has anyone done a price comparison between canned vegetables and frozen then dehydrated vegetables? I'd be interested to see how they compare once the water weight is taken out of the equation.

And good call on the over-dehydrating problem. I've now read multiple places that this isn't really possible. It just means they're properly done and will keep the longest.

I'm considering vacuum sealing them with a food-saver (since we already have the equipment necessary). Have any of you done this? What storage techniques do you use?

 

[Scarnucci]

Ive not done a price comparison, but I've never paid more than $1 per pound of frozen veggies. How many cans can you buy for a buck? I would imagine two,maybe three? Perhaps more at Aldi.

A big thing for me is storage space. With canned veggies, you are storing tons of water. That could be a good thing. If you read FerFal's blogs he mentioned that foods canned in water were important to have since their water supply was iffy.

That is less of an issue for me. I can store several lbs of dried veggies in a quart Ball jar and add water at cooking time.

I've not vacuum sealed the dehydrated stuff in bags. They come out so very hard, almost like pebbles, and that seems to puncture the bags when in the sealer. I've been throwing it all in jars with O2 absorbers. I think Foodsaver got away from their jar sealing products and mostly just sells the bags now.

 

[rhart]

I have a couple of dehydrators but we mostly used them to remove water form the food merely for serious portaging (packing) into canada. Most fruits will be a bit "leathery". All in all, I dont know of many things that tastes as good as fresh. Its amazing though what you can do. I have dehyrated cooked hamburger, spagetti sauce, gravy and all sorts of crazy stuff.
Jerky is great and I still use mine a lot to dry peppers for spices each summer
good luck

 

[DHolder]

I too have the Excaliber, 9 drawer, the best dryer I've seen. Watch the videos on you tube, she is die hard.

One thing I don't hear enough about is "case hardening". This is were the outside of the food gets dry before the center, this prevents through drying.

 

[Pamcake]

I too have the Excaliber, 9 drawer, the best dryer I've seen. Watch the videos on you tube, she is die hard.

One thing I don't hear enough about is "case hardening". This is were the outside of the food gets dry before the center, this prevents through drying.

Case Hardening

"Case hardening is a result of partially dehydrated food that. Case hardened food has the outermost portion of the food dried while the interior remains moist. This situation typically results when too high of a drying temperature is used. Case hardened foods will spoil due to microbial growth. Moisture from the interior of the food will migrate to the exterior." (from website Food Dehydrator Reviews And Comparisons - Food-Dehydrator.com).

I too usually attempt to over-dry items, leaving them in there for a lot longer than called for, in just in case. I figure it can't hurt.

I too store them in glass jars but I don't have them hermetically sealed or O2 absorbers... I like to challenge (stored food) with worst-case scenarios and see what happens.

 

[Balinor]

I also just started dehydrating. I have a ron-co machine that has been in my closet for 10 + years.
I cleaned it read the directions and made beef jerky (3 times now and has turned out great) bananas (was told to dip them in orange juice 1st will keep the lighter color) and I did 2 different kinds of apples.
All came out great, I am told its hard to mess it up.
I read that strawberries should have the seeds removed (unsure why).
Temperature control would be nice mine doesn’t have that but you are correct it’s are hard to “over dry” stuff. It just might be better if it was dried less, but the less moisture the better storage.

 

[Hemingway]

I have never been happy with how my strawberries have turned out for eating but I did stumble onto something I like alot. While I was hiking the AT, I had some dried strawberries with me but they weren't good eating. So, after I filtered my water in my nalgene, I threw a few strawberry pieces in before putting the nalgene back in my pack. An hour later, it was a pretty nice change to have some lightly flavored strawberry water. I plan on doing that again.

I don't know about you guys but days on end of just plain water can get a little old.

 

[Sailor]

Sprinkle cinnamon on your apple slices before you dry them.

Kids will eat them like potato chips, and they are much better for you.

 

[steveh_131]

Thanks for all the tips!

I may try the cinnamon with my next batch of apples, that sounds really good. I'm trying some frozen pineapple right now, I'll let you know how that turns out.

That lady on youtube is pretty hardcore. Maybe next week she'll dehydrate a whole cow or something.

 

[rambone]

I tried dehydrating some raisins and they turned out HORRIBLE

 

[Beau]

Can things from the garden be dehydrated? Things like green beans, peas, corn etc.?

 

[DHolder]

Yes, corn, potatoes, beans, tomatoes, just about anything ccan be dried. Some things need a little prep work, ie blanching, peeling and slicing. I get the one pound bags of frozen veggies, pour them on the tray and dry them.

 

[Clay]

This is probably one of the reasons Ive hear a lot of people recommend dehyrating with out much heat, just air. Heated dehydrators (most commercial units) force the process by using hot air.

Case Hardening

"Case hardening is a result of partially dehydrated food that. Case hardened food has the outermost portion of the food dried while the interior remains moist. This situation typically results when too high of a drying temperature is used. Case hardened foods will spoil due to microbial growth. Moisture from the interior of the food will migrate to the exterior." (from website Food Dehydrator Reviews And Comparisons - Food-Dehydrator.com).

I too usually attempt to over-dry items, leaving them in there for a lot longer than called for, in just in case. I figure it can't hurt.

I too store them in glass jars but I don't have them hermetically sealed or O2 absorbers... I like to challenge (stored food) with worst-case scenarios and see what happens.