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What are you dehydrating today?


Rezgirl

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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.

 

Funny you should mention your neighbor. My neighbor was over the morning I finished doing my onions - remember I told you how smelly the house was? Well she told me that when her DH got home he says "Mmm, what smells so good?" She laughed and told him "Kim's house!". She wasn't cooking a thing! She still smelled like my house!!

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LOL! Thats funny! When I was doing onions the other day. hubby came home and said:" MMM, subs? did you get subs for supper?" LMAO! I said no, my drying onions. he looked so sad LOL

 

I just started 3 cans of mandarin oranges and 2 cans of pineapple ( rings and chunks) and I'm drinking the juice. I'm trying fend off a cold or something, so I'm not wasting any liquids, I'm drinking all I can.

 

I had to turn the machine down to the lowest setting and go to bed, but this morning the strawberries were perfect. I vacuum sealed them. amazing how little 3 qts of strawberries look when they're dried! LOL

 

I think my next experiment will be either tomato sauce or puree( it has more potassium I've been told)

I make my own spaghetti sauce from those, it's cheaper I find.

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LOL Oink!! Smells are an amazing thing!

 

Let me know how the tomato puree turns out. I always use that to make my own sauce.

I guess you would just gradually add water to reconstitute?

Interesting....

 

 

 

Kimba

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Camping people dehydrate spaghetti sauce all the time. A 24 oz jar of sauce will dehydrate down into a leather which is broken in to pieces amounting to 3-4 ounces or 2 cups. Rehydrate with an equal amount of boiling water and then add more later to thin out to the density you want. Most of the time it is done as a complete recipe and not just as a separate item.

 

Camping websites are good sources for dehydrated food recipes.

 

My favorite dehydrated item is rice.

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My favorite dehydrated item is rice.

 

I've seen dehydrated rice in recipes, but I'm not sure I get it. It doesn't seem like the are referring to regular dry rice. What's it supposed to mean?

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Camping people dehydrate spaghetti sauce all the time. A 24 oz jar of sauce will dehydrate down into a leather which is broken in to pieces amounting to 3-4 ounces or 2 cups. Rehydrate with an equal amount of boiling water and then add more later to thin out to the density you want. Most of the time it is done as a complete recipe and not just as a separate item.

 

Camping websites are good sources for dehydrated food recipes.

 

My favorite dehydrated item is rice.

 

 

OK, I am interested. I know I am new to this and waiting for my dehydrator but since it will have trays how do you dehydrate spaghetti sauce? Because I will definitely want to do that as well as tomato sauce and paste. I am so glad you indicated how to rehydrate the sauce. I definitely have written that down.

 

Thanks

 

 

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Regular dry rice is 'uncooked'. Dehydrated rice is 'cooked' rice that has been dried. Not the same thing and when you understand the difference you may have a jaw-dropping moment.

 

Preparing regular rice takes a lot of water, especially if you properly rinse it first, along with time and fuel to make it. In emergency situations and for campers, those are not positive moments.

 

Dehydrated rice is true "instant" rice. Just add hot water and it rehydrates to fully cooked and ready to eat rice. Even "Minute Rice" cannot make that claim. Plus the nutrients of dehydrated rice are much higher than in Minute Rice. Imagine Instant brown rice!

 

Cooked rice dehydrates really fast and you have to stir it once or twice to make sure the kernels do not stick to each other. Its not something you toss in to the dehydrator and forget about until the next day.

 

You also cannot use dehydrated rice in place of Minute Rice in recipes. Minute Rice still needs to be cooked and the recipe anticipates that. Dehydrated rice is already cooked and only needs to rehydrate.

 

 

 

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OK, I am interested. I know I am new to this and waiting for my dehydrator but since it will have trays how do you dehydrate spaghetti sauce?

Your dehydrator hopefully will come with solid tray inserts for doing leathers and other 'liquids'. You just pour out the sauce onto this solid insert and off you go. Excalibur has what they can ParaFlex Sheets. My American Harvester uses round flexible plastic trays.

 

If you don't have the inserts, you can improvise with something else like saran wrap, parchment paper, aluminum foil, or something you can lay down and hook together so it will hold a semi-liquid on your drying tray(s), then use an oil spray so it is non-stick.

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Regular dry rice is 'uncooked'. Dehydrated rice is 'cooked' rice that has been dried. Not the same thing and when you understand the difference you may have a jaw-dropping moment.

 

oooo cool...thanks for explaining that! I'll have to start making bigger batches of rice when I need it so I can dehydrate some :)

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I will most definitely try the rice!! How interesting!

And I will try the spaghetti sauce! :thumbs:

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Just finished 8 lemons, 4 limes, and 6 cans of mandarin oranges. The oranges turned out like tiny see through fruit leathers...so cute.

 

I've started 5 bags of frozen peas. And now I'm off to bed. Night all!

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I'm going to cut some parchment paper ( use the one leather tray that came with the machine as a template) and try the sauce and puree. I also have some cherry tomatoes that are starting to dry by themselves so I think I'll seed them and throw them on a tray too. I can't wait until all the veggies and fruits start to come into season. MMM dried peaches and apples!!

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Now that I know how wonderful turnips and sweet potatoes are in soups, I picked up bags to dehydrate. I still have cabbage, green onions, and tofu to marinate in the fridge. So much dehydrating, so little time.

 

I also finally got around to taking pics of my last two batches:

3435775953_e6f5dc98f6_m.jpg3435776259_f7c112b439_m.jpg

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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

 

How did you do this??? I want to learn!!!

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How did you do this??? I want to learn!!!

 

It was really easy. I just poured a jar of spaghetti sauce onto each of the fruit roll up trays that came with my dehydrator. You need something with a lip on it to hold all of the sauce. I let the dehydrator run until the sauce was crisp when cool. This happened shortly after a little oil showed on the top. Then I just let it cool, broke it into chunks, and threw it in the blender.

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Oh that looks yummy Oink. I'm surprised slices fit...I usually have trouble with chunks of things and have to do a lot of slicing.

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Might be the kind of dehydrator you have. I know on those fancy Excaliburs they have to take every other tray out sometimes. They must be close together or something. I just have a cheap Nesco. Nothing fancy. Seems that my stuff takes longer to dry in mine compared to theirs. But, whatever. It gets it done LOL

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The canned fruits are going to be good !

I am concerned about the safety of the dried spaghetti sauce if it has meat in it. I can't tell. I know you can puree tomatoes and dry them. I would check the labels on the jars to see what ingredients are in there and if those ingredients are safe to dry. Just my 2 cents worth.

 

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The canned fruits are going to be good !

I am concerned about the safety of the dried spaghetti sauce if it has meat in it. I can't tell. I know you can puree tomatoes and dry them. I would check the labels on the jars to see what ingredients are in there and if those ingredients are safe to dry. Just my 2 cents worth.

 

Good point. I used meat free spaghetti sauce. I'm a vegetarian, so it's not something I'd thought to mention. :)

 

Tomato products seem like useful things to have on hand in a dehydrated form. Once I get the rest of my fresh produce out of the way, I'm going to be doing tablespoon sized dabs of tomato paste, which should be really handy.

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Tomato products seem like useful things to have on hand in a dehydrated form. Once I get the rest of my fresh produce out of the way, I'm going to be doing tablespoon sized dabs of tomato paste, which should be really handy.

 

 

Question please! Newbie here and just received my dehydrator. Ready to get started! What would you suggest I start with to get the hang of it. My garden is not producing yet but wanted to get some things and try my hand at this. :)

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I just started dehydrating a couple of weeks ago myself. I started with some canned fruit. Drain it ( drink it if you like) and then follow your machine's directions. ;) Then I did fresh strawberries that I sliced and dried. My next foray will be carrots which you have to blanch first then place in the dehydrator. I am also eye balling the bags of frozen peas and limas in the freezer LOL

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Question please! Newbie here and just received my dehydrator. Ready to get started! What would you suggest I start with to get the hang of it. My garden is not producing yet but wanted to get some things and try my hand at this. :)

I'm sure you have things in your refrigerator -- celery (including leaves), onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, fruit pieces, carrots, applesauce (into a leather), and so on.

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