Food Dehydration Ideas

On Saturday, I helped at an Emergency Preparedness Fair with the Red Cross. The event was hosted by a local Mormon church. The information tables were provided by organizations and individuals. This is the second year and I have been both times. It's a great program. One table was an older couple who were sharing information on dehydrating foods and sprouting. He had made this huge dehydrator that looked like a cupboard and was nearly as tall as me. I stopped and talked to the woman when I noticed her collection of dehydrated foods. She had glass jars of all sorts of things from cheeses to vegetables to fruits to other stuff. She told me that she dried everthing. Her husband told us about her jar of vegetables that they used for soup. When items came out of the garden they went into the dehydrator and then were mixed in a gallon jar to be turned into soup and it was the best soup ever. I believe him but I was just stunned by the cheeses and the soup starters. She told me that when she has left overs such as split pea soup - she dehydrates on sheets of plastic (like you would fruit leather). She reconstitutes it later. What an amazing idea because dried foods take up less space and are so versitile. Lately I've been loving my dried oranges in my tea. I drink my first cup and then keep refilling with cool water so I can enjoy those oranges all day. Last night, I started a batch of tomatoes in the dehydrator. The woman told my husband that she dries her tomatoes and then grinds them into a powder with seasonings. When she wants spaghetti sauce she mixes the powder with water and voila - she has sauce. I can see so much potential. Ground tomato with a little water easily becomes tomato paste. More water and some chucks becomes canned tomatoes. I have 25 pounds of romas and this one batch barely touched the surface. I will can some but I can't wait to see what I can do with the dried tomatoes. I picture quick soups and sauces in our future.

Dehydrating the harvest

Most produce can easily be dehydrated with little preparation. I do even less preparation than is often recommended because I'm kind of lazy (okay maybe it's more about being busy but still). Some foods brown when they come in contact with the air and it is recommended that you soak them in lemon juice to prevent the color change. This creates a prettier end product with a slight lemon tinge. I don't like the lemon tinge. If I eat a dried banana, I want to just taste banana. So my fruit doesn't always look pretty. It's not pretty when I mash it up between my teeth either so what do I care.
You don't have to buy a dehydrator to dehydrate foods. I like the convienence of a dehydrator but I've also had mine for nearly 15 years. They do get pricey but mine was a bottom of the line, not fancy sort of machine that has given me nothing but pleasure. The only disadvantage to my dehydrator is that it is round with a hole in the center for air circulation. For most things, the shape doesn't cause a problem but won't work for long strips of vegetable or meat.
My mother found her monster of a dehydrator at a garage sale. It has long metal screens that remind me of window screens for drying the food (compared to my plastic grids). The advatages she has is there is no problem getting her harvest on the screens, the openings are really small so no falling berries (my elderberries did a lot of escaping) but the sheer size of the dehydrator is a pain.
I share these things because it will make a difference when you go to purchase your own. It's not enough to look at the features of a product but how and where you will store and use it makes a difference we don't often think of.
As I said, you don't have to have a dehydrator. You can dry in the oven or in the sun. Alton Brown has an awesome way to make jerky using a box fan and several paper filters (the sort you use in a furnace). It's my plan to try his method someday. I believe paper filters are rather inexpensive at Walmart.
I have seen many books on drying foods. These are great for learning, especially if you are not using a dehydrator. My dehydrator has settings for each type of food and I run it until the food is really dry. If there is any concern, I throw the food in a freezer bag and freeze it. It may seem counter-productive but freezing dried fruit takes up a lot less space than the whole fruit.
WSU has a good beginner site and your local library should have plenty of books. For creative dehydrating recipes, check out raw food books and sites. One site that was recommended to me was Gone Raw.