Our experiences on dehydrating veggies
 

Hi Folks,

We have been dehydrating foods for a couple of years now and I thought you might like to hear how things went for us.

Green beans are dried down south and are called leather breeches. You can do a Google for recipes. Traditionally you use a sewing needle and sew a string through the green bean and then hang them to dry. We blanched the beans prior to drying in our dehydrator. After the beans were dried we wrapped a handful of the beans in a paper towel and shrink wrapped the package. The paper towel protects the plastic bag from the pointy beans.
To cook, simply soak in water overnight and cook as if you were cooking a fresh green bean. We made ours with pork hock, some shelled dried horticultural beans and potatoes. Cooked them 12 hours in a crock pot, excellent. Be sure to freeze the beans for 3 days before putting them in storage because those dadburned moths will hatch in them if they are around your area.

Potatoes. We recently came into some free potatoes, some will store in the root cellar but the biggest part needed worked on right away. Scrubbed them, sliced them and placed them in a salt brine for a few minutes.( this helps keep them from turning brown) then into the dehydrator for 24 hours. Dehydration rate is 5:1, for every 5 lbs of fresh potatoes you get 1 lb of dried. The next batch we�ll run through the food processor and make hash browns, then we�ll dry them like the slices. Vacuum packed, these, like the green beans will keep for years.

Tomatoes, we sundried when there was Sun available and then finished the tomatoes pieces off in the dehydrator. We cut the tomatoes into roughly �� wedges and gave them a light coating of salt before setting them out. Use caution as they make a lot of juice at 1st, we filled a dehydrator without 1st air drying them in the sun 1st and drowned the dehydrator in tomato juice. After the wedges are dry but slightly rubbery tightly pack a jar and cover with olive oil. The olive oil keeps the oxygen off the tomatoes, we ate some from last summer last night 6 months later and they were great.

Eggplant, we sliced, dried and vacuum packed. After soaking in water to rehydrate we found the eggplant was every bit as good as fresh only it was slightly firmer.

We raise our own Shitake mushrooms and when we have a big bloom we will slice and dry these also. If Abigail is making soup the mushrooms will go directly into the pot without soaking first.

We really like drying foods as an addition to our other methods of food preservation; it stores in a smaller area but does require some planning when fixing meals so as to allow enough time to rehydrate.

Re: Our experiences on dehydrating veggies
 

Based on members recommendations I purchased the Excalibur 9 tray this week, I think it shows up this Friday, so thanks for the info.

Re: Our experiences on dehydrating veggies
 

Here's a post I made a while back. I have a dozen Nesco American Harvester dehydrators.


Here are before-and-after photos of spinach that I just finished dehydrating. In the first photo, I set out 4 lbs. of frozen spinach to thaw for about 4-6 hours, then put it in the dehydrator. The second and third photos are the end result. After dehydration, the spinach takes up only about 1/4 of the space of its predehydrated state. It's dry (of course[:P]) and brittle after dehydration, so I just keep compacting the spinach as I'm pouring it in the mason jar (4 lbs. of spinach into a one-quart jar) until everything fits.

http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/d...r/100_1211.jpg

http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/d...r/100_1213.jpg

http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/d...r/100_1219.jpg

Re: Our experiences on dehydrating veggies
 

Never thought about spinach, sounds like a great addititon, how do you use it? Soups I would guess.

Re: Our experiences on dehydrating veggies
 

We likes it raw !


http://www.theonering.com/images/med...20a%20fish.jpg

Re: Our experiences on dehydrating veggies
 

I either add it to homemade soups (which is what I'm making from my hundreds of pounds of rice and beans--just add different spices and veggies and you can make a HUGE variety of soups) or just reconstitute it by itself.

I'm sticking mainly with fruits and vegetables that are the most nutrient-dense--spinach, tomatoes, carrots, turnip greens, parsnips. I don't see a reason to buy what's necessarily "popular" but low in nutrition. Everyone seems to like green beans and potatoes, for example, but they're pretty skimpy on nutrients compared to other vegetables.

Re: Our experiences on dehydrating veggies
 

Good info. I should try the spinach idea, as I like it in soups, too, and I like soups, LOL. It would be nice to not having it taking up space in the frrezer, too, and if we ever get power outages, the freezer stuff is a gonner.

Have you tried reconstituting it into Lasagna? Thats my biggest use for spinach other than as an addition to soups or fresh in salads. I make my own ricotta when milk is cheap, and freeze it, and make the whey into potato and onion soup with some of my home smoked pork and usually home grown potatoes. I also have a hand crank pasta maker, and make my own home made lasagna noodles from scratch (with prep bought flour). It doesn't get much better than that.

I also have a bunch of dehydrators. I think I have about 4 or 5. Some with fans, and a couple without. I paid like $30 of all of them combined, and they are low power consuming, especially the fanless ones, and since they all use the same tray design, a lot of times I'll just stack real high and use a fan driven one with ALL the trays from ALL of them. That's real efficient from a power consumption vs total output standpoint, but takes longer if you have the time.

Re: Our experiences on dehydrating veggies
 

Thrifty Bob, the dehydrators with fans are much, much better. I tried about four or five different brands of dehydrators without fans before I happened to buy a Nesco American Harvester model (I bought all of my dehydrators on eBay). The fan in the Nesco greatly accelerated the drying time and I'm able to dehydrate a lot more in a given period of time.

I think worries about how much electricity a dehydrator consumes are pretty inconsequential. How many lights do we leave on that we don't need, how often do we turn the TV or radio on just for noise, there are any number of instances where most people waste far more electricity than would be used by a dehydrator, and I don't consider the electricity used by my dehydrator to be a waste at all. I see it as an investment in my and my family's long-term food security.

Re: Our experiences on dehydrating veggies
 

But if you ever had to live on generator power, the one that only uses 125 watts would be a Godsend to have. It was the first one I had, and paid $5 for in at a garage sale. Lately I use its trays in the big stack I make over one of the ones with a fan.

Having 10 or 15 trays on it offsets the extra power consumed and gets it done faster than the fanless. Yes, the ones with fans dry stuff much quicker.

Re: Our experiences on dehydrating veggies
 

Well, I'm hoping to have enough dehydrated food on hand from using my speedy Nescos so that I won't have to worry about food for a while if I'm trying to reconnect to a power source. Are you living on generator power right now? I would think that with most people, generator power wouldn't be a permanent or necessarily long-lasting setup in lieu of some other power source.

Re: Our experiences on dehydrating veggies
 

No, I'm in suburbia. I'd like to be self sufficient, but its just unreasonable to attempt here, so I just do what I can.

Re: Our experiences on dehydrating veggies
 

Todays project is 10 lbs. of Fuji apples in the Excalibur 9. These won't be for long term though, so I won't dry them to a crisp.

When working out in the yard I like having jerky and apple slices in my pocket.

Re: Our experiences on dehydrating veggies
 

Friend of ours sprinkles a bit of cinnamon on his apple slices as he dries them. For munching that is not for long term storage.

Re: Our experiences on dehydrating veggies
 

I found out this weekend that 5 pounds of large chopped mixed veggies fit in a single quart mason jar. I'm starting to think I'll just buy canned veggies and save the dryer and mason jars for higher calorie contents. This weekend I got 5 lbs mixed veggies, 5 lbs broccoli, 2 lbs dried peas, vacuum canned (mason jars) pancake mix, maltomeal and trail mix.

Not only is this a smart thing to do its kind of fun. :s1:

Re: Our experiences on dehydrating veggies
 

Go with frozen vegetables instead. That way you're getting more per pound--not paying for the water that the vegetables are packed in, which you'll be dehydrating away anyway. Check out my posts above with the photos of spinach before and after dehydration. ;)

Re: Our experiences on dehydrating veggies
 

Dehydrating frozen veggies makes a lot of sense to me. 1) They've already been blanched for freezing, so you don't have to do that yourself before dehydrating. 2) When dehydrated, they take up a lot less space. Reason #1 is a real biggie for me.

If you buy veggies canned in water, leave them in the cans. In a SHTF situation, the canning water, while heavy and occupying a lot of space, could be invaluable if you find yourself short of water.

I'm doing a little bit of everything: dehydrated, freeze dried, canned. It's all good.

Re: Our experiences on dehydrating veggies
 

I'd rather use water from my storage to rehydrate the vegetables than keep vegetables in the cans. Plus, in a SHTF situation, if food is scarce, the last thing you want scavengers to find in your trash is empty food cans. I'm dehydrating everything now and storing it in mason jars and mylar bags so I'll have almost no trash at all if I have to survive long-term on my food preps if TSHTF.

Re: Our experiences on dehydrating veggies
 

What are some of the post dried shelf lives to the above examples. How long would dried _______ last when vacuum packed?

Re: Our experiences on dehydrating veggies
 

Several years at least. The important thing is not to break the vacuum and to store everything in a cool, dark place.