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What are you dehydrating today?


Rezgirl

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ANewMe,

 

Apples & bananas should really be dipped in some lemon juice concentrate to prevent browning.

 

I use about 1/4 C depending on the amount of bananas, DH just squirts some into a bag. I drop my fruit in the zippie bag, make sure every side is covered with the juice and for bananas, you want to dry them until they are slightly bendy and chewy. They will not be crispy like the store-bought ones because the store-bought chips are treated with a sugar syrup.

 

For apple slices, same thing, bendy but not too crisp. They are supposed to be a little chewy.

 

For more ideas and PICTURES (yeah, pictures! :bounce:) try your local library.Some helpful books are "Dry It, You'll Like It", "Drying Foods" among others. Also, your dehydrator should have come with a manual for small batch trials.

 

Let us know how you do!

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Personally I don't like my apples or bananas dipped in lemon juice. They are too tart. I don't mind a little browning. It all depends upon personal preference.

Not only are the banana chips in the store coated in sugar, they are deep fat fried in coconut oil.

Most of the apples are sulfured, too.

All things I don't need or want in my foods.

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Got son a dehydrator for Christmas. The only thing he has done is jerky and they eat it as fast as they make it. Other than that I have no clue how the thing works and of course he lost the book that I had planned to read.

 

What is make/model? Sometimes can find free copy on line.

 

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Did my very first batch of anything in my new dehydrator last night.

 

I did sliced apples. I learned that Washington Apples don't like my apple peeler corer slicer thing. They are way to moist.

 

But all in all they turned out good and I believe that DH will have them gone before I can even think of vacuum sealing them!

 

Tonight I'm doing some left over bread that will be stale soon.

 

Kimba

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Kimba,

 

I've found that with the softer varieties of apples, I core them, then slice them by hand. DH likes the peel on, so I wash them first. They're a bit thicker than the machine-sliced, but still very tasty. :)

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Kimba,

 

I've found that with the softer varieties of apples, I core them, then slice them by hand. DH likes the peel on, so I wash them first. They're a bit thicker than the machine-sliced, but still very tasty. :)

 

Thanks for that tip! I will try that next time.

 

I put left over hamburger and hot dog rolls in the dehydrator last night. They came out good. I'm going to crush them some more in the food processor and then put them in a glass jar.

 

I'm really loving my dehydrator!

 

Kimba

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On the soft apples, I don't peel them, just use the peeler/corer/slicer thing to only core and slice.

 

I was going to dehydrate three cabbages I got, but read I have to blanch them first. My kitchen is too much of disaster zone for blanching right now. Plus it takes 10-12 house and The Husband doesn't like to leave the dehydrator going overnight. So I'll do it tomorrow. Or maybe Friday, I have that day off.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Isn't anyone dehydrating? I have 7 jars of spaghetti sauce in there now. It'll probably be in there for a while longer because I'm liking the idea of drying it hard and turning it into a powder to use like a bullion.

 

The grocery store had big signs up saying banana crops were suffering and prices are going up. So I went and picked up 9 pounds cheap at Aldis last week. I think I'll stop again on the way home for more. These are such good snacks...and I want to attempt converting some recipes to use them...I'm thinking banana cream pie ;)

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Thanks for the tip about the bananas - I'll grab some when I go to the store this week.

 

Spaghetti sauce?? Do you do that like a fruit leather? (I'm new to dehydrating-can you tell?!?)

 

 

I did some onions last week. Boy were the kids mad!! Stunk up the whole house - for a couple of days!!

I did some carrots and potatoes on Friday. The carrots came out ok. Not sure if I did the potatoes correctly. I wanted dices not slices, so I peeled them, diced them and steamed them for about 10 mins. Then I put them into the dehydrator.

I cooked some up the next day. They were good, but weird shaped.

I'll be doing some peas tonight.

 

 

Kimba

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Thanks for the tip about the bananas - I'll grab some when I go to the store this week.

 

Spaghetti sauce?? Do you do that like a fruit leather? (I'm new to dehydrating-can you tell?!?)

 

 

I did some onions last week. Boy were the kids mad!! Stunk up the whole house - for a couple of days!!

I did some carrots and potatoes on Friday. The carrots came out ok. Not sure if I did the potatoes correctly. I wanted dices not slices, so I peeled them, diced them and steamed them for about 10 mins. Then I put them into the dehydrator.

I cooked some up the next day. They were good, but weird shaped.

I'll be doing some peas tonight.

 

 

Kimba

 

This is my first attempt at spaghetti sauce. One of my dehydrating friends did it as a leather and stored it rolled up in a mason jar, which worked well. I read you can dry it until brittle and grind into powder in a food processor, so I'm going to try that. Either way, it sure would save a lot of space and weight in the pantry.

 

I did potato slices recently...they browned and look ugly...so you're doing better than I am in that arena!

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Liver for our dog Samson. I was surprised that it didn't shrink. Well it did shrink but only in thickness. I thought it would get smaller but it didn't.

 

 

 

:wormguy2:

John

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today I'm doing 3 qts of strawberries. yesterday was my trial run with my new dehydrator. sort of a get to know each other kinda thing LOL. we're friends now. LMAO! after the strawberries is some mandarin oranges and some canned pineapple that I got on sale. after those is some tomato paste that needs to be used or stored better than in their cans.

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today I'm doing 3 qts of strawberries. yesterday was my trial run with my new dehydrator. sort of a get to know each other kinda thing LOL. we're friends now. LMAO! after the strawberries is some mandarin oranges and some canned pineapple that I got on sale. after those is some tomato paste that needs to be used or stored better than in their cans.

 

That's so funny, my last shopping trip to Aldis I stocked up on 6-8 cans each of mandarin oranges, pineapple, and tomato paste to dehydrate! So I'll be working on those soon too.

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Oink, I just saw in another thread that you were going to vacuum seal because it lasts longer than storing in jars. I put mine in mason jars with oxygen absorbers...is that comparable, do you think?

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Oink, now I know who you are! Those look delish :) I really need to go to SAMs and pick up some of those big containers to do more strawberries. I haven't touched my first batch yet because strawberries in the pantry are just too precious a commodity...lol.

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I'm so excited about how the Aldis spaghetti sauce same out! This is one jars worth of sauce. Half is shown as hard chips, the other half I vitamixed into 1/3 cup of powder :) It took almost 48 hours of dehydrating at 155 to get it dry enough to powder, but I'm really tickled with this "spaghetti sauce bullion" I got as a result.

 

Off to finish powdering the other 5 jars! Then I think I'll fill back up with cans of mandarin oranges.

 

3421811687_f862a8a0cc_m.jpg

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Thank to all of you my dehydrator is back in business. I'd forgotten about it when the kids were born, but now it is full of celery and onions. Looking forward to filling my jars with them for the winter. We used to love making rice with dried celery, carrots and onions and a small can of chicken. Now I'll be making more!

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Today is 5 trays of onions and 3 trays of celery. My apologies to the neighbors since I had to open up the patio door and windows for a few hours. I've also been printing out homemade seed packets* (see pic below) and glue the sides with good ol' Elmer's. They work quite well.

 

seed_packet.png

 

(*) The template is in a public domain publisher program called Scribus. If you have the program and would like the template, PM me. Sorry, it is not available in any other program.

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