any favorite food dehydrator receipes to pass along?

[Mark W.]

I just scored an old school food dehydrator with 8) screens and over 11 sq ft of drying surface. So I am looking for both fruit and vegi receipes to try out.

I know I will be doing:

Bananas
Strawberries
Apples
Pears
Appricots
Peaches
Kiwis
various fruit leathers (rollups)

potatoes
onions
carrots
peas
tomatoes


and anything else that strikes me fancy when I go to the store tomorrow.

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[Crazyeye24]

If you have plastic sheets you can make fruit leather. I like pears with either honey or agave nectar. I also like doing the same thing with plums...except you have to be careful with those!!!

 

[knuckle Head]

Beef
Ham
Turkey

When you vacuum seal on very dried meats it will sometime puncture the bag, I solved this by first put in one or two ziplocs and cutting the tops off, the extra layers protected the vacuum bag from puncture.

Also put away extra ziplocs for when you open the vacuum bags,

 

[lowly monk]

I also got a dehydrator this year. just keep trying and you will become very familuar with your system. Lots of fine tuning with all of the verities of what you dry. My wife likes everything really dry and I like mine kinda chewy.Have fun.

 

[Mark W.]

OK so I found at the store a product called Fruit Fresh its main ingrediant is the Ascorbic Acid the books recomend and a color and vitamin preservative for fruit. Not real cheap at 5-6.00 a 4 oz bottle But for this weekends experimenting it will do.

I cut up 10 apples (could have fit 30 in the dryer) I used way to much of the Fruit Fresh solution> I should have used a much small container to do the soaking in and then used a strainer to rotate the apples out of the solution and saved it for the next couple apples. I think I could do 30 apples with maybe 8 oz of solution which would only be 2-3 table spoons of the Fruit Fresh.


Took approx 11 hours to dry, color stayed very white except for the Red Delicous apples which got a little brown, The flavor is electric so I assume the vitamins also did well. This dryer works at a very low temp never getting over 95 degrees. Which according to the books is a very good thing as long as the fruit does not color the cooler it is dehydrated at the less the vitamins and nutriants are effected.

I need to cut the strawberries MUCH thicker LOL but WOW what a flavor shot. They are like pouring strawberry koolaide powder on your tongue!

I have a rack of Grape tomatoes in the dryer now I just split them in have I used the fruit fresh (after all a tomatoe is a fruit) I expect it to take 13+ hours to dry them.

I also have a rack of ripe Bananas I sliced these to 1/4" and find that I can get at least 7) average sized bananas on one rack. So I could do approx. 56 Bananas in a whole load. THATS A BUNCH OF BANANAS LOL!

After vacuum packing the apples into 3oz packages it appears I can turn 10) apples into the volume of barely two fresh apples. I think a stop by Mark Haurys Apple Orchard is going to be in my future. Nice farm fresh apples from a guy I went to school with sounds like something good to fill up my dryer with.

Can't wait for Appricots to come to market. I est I can do 200+ appricots in a full load. Not sure what on earth I would do with that many dried appricots but maybe a half load along with a half load of apples.

 

[brianjronk]

We have our dehydrator going all the time. These two links are from my wife's blog. The french onion kale chips are fantastic! She also has a nacho cheese kale chips recipe, but I couldn't find it on her blog, also good.

The dehydrated almonds are great for a more long-term storage approach.

Keri and Brian: Dehydrated Almonds
Keri and Brian: French Onion Kale Chips

 

[Charger]

Strawberries are the best the kids eat them like candy.
As fast as I can make them they get eaten.
Pineapples are very good also.
Bananas and apples soak in lemon juice for a minute to keep from turning brown before drying.

 

[brianjronk]

Also another great tip: If you ever have some stale crackers, throw them in the dehydrator for a few hours and they're good as new

 

[Bunny]

I'm interested in dehydrating as well. Great thread Mark.

Can anyone recommend a good dehydrator for a beginner with somewhat limited space?

 

[brianjronk]

Our first dehydrator that we got is a Ronco 5-tray. They are relatively cheap, which is great for beginners. The latest one we got is an Excalibur 9-tray. Definitely more expensive, but works way better. The excalibur has the heating unit at the back, so the heat is distributed evenly and all the food gets dried at the same time and much quicker. The Ronco has the heating unit at the bottom, so the foods at the bottom get dried faster than the food up top.

For a beginner, I'd definitely suggest the Ronco. It worked well for us for years, and still worked fine when we got rid of it, we just needed something bigger/faster for how quickly we were using it.

 

[Charger]

If you are buying a dehydrator you will see that the better ones are made of a plastic that will block the light.
I have been told light is not good for the food while it is drying or being stored.
Not sure what it dose maybe someone else can give us some more info on this.

 

[Charger]

I just dried some tomatoes put some salt, pepper and garlic on them.
Wow do they come out great lotts of flavor.
But be carful not to over season them as they shrink to 1/4 of their size your seasoning will by times 4.

 

[fyrediver]

Yogurt leather! Take a good yogurt and spread it on a drying sheet (wax paper may work as well) and dry it out. Peel it up and you've got yummy yogurt leather. I really like Tillamook vanilla bean this way. I make it right before a backpacking trip so don't know the actual shelf life. It doesn't last long enough to care.

You can do the same with spaghetti sauce. It creates a very nice one pot meal when you mix it with the water from boiling the noodles to rehydrate. It needs to be fairly smooth texture instead of chunky.

If you're drying a lot of apples I strongly suggest a corer/peeler. Makes drying apples fun and VERY easy.

Finally, homemade yogurt out of your dryer is very easy and good. The dryer acts as an incubator for the culture. I've made some absolutely great yogurt in my dehydrator.