Food drying - Dehydrators (merged)

Sunnyday

Hi Peeps :wave:

tonight i shall be mostly dehydrating tomatoes .............again lol

Tomorrow night it will probably be peppers but as i now have a small gap in the freezer i may freeze some of the peppers.

Dogstar - To clean the pan i second D&DD`s suggestion of bio soap powder, dissolve it in hot water and leave it overnight, if its really really bad like my pressure cooker was when i got distracted by a phone call give it a quick scrub (nothing too energetic) and do it again the following night. I usually put a couple of inches of water in from the kettle so that its really hot and stir it up.

Re the apples, i`m a lazy mare and core them with a hand corer and chop them in half and throw them down the chute on the food processor
I don`t bother with lemon juice either but i keep the whole cored apples in water then slice all at once, when they`re on the trays i sprinkle cinnamon over and then try not to eat them all once they`re done

SD

D&DD

My tomatoes are finished Sunny my nails are going to back to their normal colour at last lol.
Last few are going in a chilli jam tomorrow as they're too small to bother drying.
Sometimes I just roast them with garlic and basil and blitz them.You can dry this as a leather and use as pasta sauce when reconstituted.

Did some cinnamon apples and strawberry slices last night and got a load of cheap mushrooms from sainsburys to do next but been 'jam and jellying' today.

adelight

Has anyone ever used a dehydrator to make sundried whole bananas? That are still quite soft and chewy like they sell in Holland & Barratt for mega bucks. I would LOVE to do this with some reduced bananas as you can get a dozen for about 10p.
I did a search but found nothing.

I'm trying to work out if it's worth me buying a cheap dehydrator. Are the £30 ones actually any good?

JB_York

dogstarheaven wrote: »

ukjuicers.com/excalibur-9-tray-dehydrator-with-timer-black just bought it and comes with next day free delivery too... am v. pleased. done my research and realised you can dehydrate wet produce too, so i got some sheets as well for that... gulp - at £243 i really hope it'll be worth it!

Dogstar - I ordered by 9 tray Excalibur/timer/black/para sheets last month from UK Juicers and have been experimenting ever since. I can honestly say that you won't be disappointed! (having said that, I haven't seen may latest electricity bill so my opinion may change, but based on results, it's great )

My initial views are:
* This model from UK Juicers comes with a very comprehensive (190 page) guide on food dehydration, including some recipes. You probably won't need another book for a little while
* Drying times seem to be quite a lot longer than indicated. Having a model with a timer has been more of a bonus than I imagined as I can leave this running through the night and switch off when I'm out/asleep without worrying about over-drying
* Getting a consistent and appropriate thickness is really important for some things, and I found that my food processor was less effective than a cheap mandoline
* Although I started with the principle of filling up the 9 trays with stuff which should dry over a similar time in an attempt to minimize the time it was switched on, I'm now leaving the machine on and replacing the trays with the next batch of stuff as and when they become free. This is as much due to the fact that I just got loads of end of season stuff to dry
* Thinly sliced stuff makes really nice fruit/veg chips quite quickly. Dried Beetroot, Apples & Courgettes are now being consumed like there's no tomorrow
* If storage space and getting volume through the dehydrator is a priority, I found that dicing is much better than slicing
* Consider turning dried veg into powder. Carrots, onions, tomatoes, leeks, celery etc all blitz down in a coffee/spice grinder very nicely and take up an insignificant amount of shelf space. Given the level of concentrated flavour these give, I'm currently experimenting with combinations to make my own organic bullion powder
* I still can't believe how I managed to get 1 months worth of courgettes from 16 plants (that's a lot of fruit!) into 2 *1 litre jars
* There's a lot of comment about apples turning brown and how this can be prevented. I found that slicing my apples into a bowl of water which contained a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice was perfectly satisfactory, but didn't dry off the slices before they went on to the trays. Drying time was a little longer but discolouration was 'within tolerance' and the impact of the lemon juice on the flavour was actually quite positive

Sunnyday

D&#8517 wrote: »

My tomatoes are finished Sunny my nails are going to back to their normal colour at last lol.
Last few are going in a chilli jam tomorrow as they're too small to bother drying.
Sometimes I just roast them with garlic and basil and blitz them.You can dry this as a leather and use as pasta sauce when reconstituted.

Crikey - i never would have thought of making a leather for pasta sauce

It never cease to amaze me the good ideas that peeps have, thanks very much :A How do you reconstitute it? Do you do it cold with water or in hot water as it cooks? How long does it take? Sorry for all the q`s:o

Yesterday i bought some bananas for DH and some more of the raspberries are ready in the garden so i may try my very first leather soon, today i`ve done something that i said i would never do and have bought some kilner jars. I`ve always reused donated ones for the chutneys, jams, dried bits and bobs but have now run out and have much more stuff to preserve this year than i first anticipated.

Its awful warm here and i can`t bear to put the oven on so i`ve got the remoska on roasting onions, garlic & peppers and then i`ll add the toms to roast seperately before mixing with basil for pasta sauce *YUM*

JB York - I noticed you posted over on the food sealer thread too. Looks like you`re addicted like the rest of us Welcome to the forums!

SD

JB_York

Sunnyday wrote: »

Crikey - i never would have thought of making a leather for pasta sauce

It never cease to amaze me the good ideas that peeps have, thanks very much :A How do you reconstitute it? Do you do it cold with water or in hot water as it cooks? How long does it take? Sorry for all the q`s:o

Yesterday i bought some bananas for DH and some more of the raspberries are ready in the garden so i may try my very first leather soon, today i`ve done something that i said i would never do and have bought some kilner jars. I`ve always reused donated ones for the chutneys, jams, dried bits and bobs but have now run out and have much more stuff to preserve this year than i first anticipated.

Its awful warm here and i can`t bear to put the oven on so i`ve got the remoska on roasting onions, garlic & peppers and then i`ll add the toms to roast seperately before mixing with basil for pasta sauce *YUM*

JB York - I noticed you posted over on the food sealer thread too. Looks like you`re addicted like the rest of us Welcome to the forums!

SD

Thanks SunnyDay - I've been following the food sealer thread for about 3 months, so can honestly say that you've had a personal influence in developing my addiction

I must admit that it has backfired slightly - I took up vacuum packing & dehydration to reduce the amount of my freshly grown veg that ended up in the taking valuable space in the freeze. Now I can't move in the kitchen for plastic bags and kilner jars, and spend endless hours trying to work out why my vacuum packed dehydrated courgette slices just don't ever seem to seal properly :sad: Your expert advice on this one would be very much appreciated!

JB

Sunnyday

JB_York wrote: »

Thanks SunnyDay - I've been following the food sealer thread for about 3 months, so can honestly say that you've had a personal influence in developing my addiction

I must admit that it has backfired slightly - I took up vacuum packing & dehydration to reduce the amount of my freshly grown veg that ended up in the taking valuable space in the freeze. Now I can't move in the kitchen for plastic bags and kilner jars, and spend endless hours trying to work out why my vacuum packed dehydrated courgette slices just don't ever seem to seal properly :sad: Your expert advice on this one would be very much appreciated!

JB

My kitchen is in a terrible cluttered state at the moment lol, it will all be worth it though. At this time of year when everything is ready in the garden it seems to take over and everything else gets neglected

Are you packing the courgettes in jars or bags? I`ve had some jars fail and also some bags too but the proper expensive bags are better and i`ve only had one of those fail. I think that the dehydrated potato slices in that one were a little too sharp and may have punctured the bag somewhere. After lots of reading i`ve come to the conclusion that some foods are giving off a little gas when they are sealed giving the impression that the seal has failed in a bag and in jars causing the seal to break.

What i`ve started doing is vacuum sealing the jars and then putting each one in a small cheap freezer bag, squeezing the air out but not vacuming and then sealing it with the heated strip on the machine. I don`t do this with all of them - only the ones containing things that i`ve had trouble with in the past, i seal the bag at the very edge so that i can reuse the bag several times.


I`ve done this successfully with onions especially as they always seem to fail, if i`ve done this and the jar seal fails then i don`t bother to redo it as its in the plastic bag. I`ve also been dehydrating some things and vacuum packing and then throwing into the freezer as the space that it takes up afterwards is tiny. Interestingly i had a lot of trouble getting a jar of courgettes to seal and stay sealed too, in the end that jar is in a bag too

I`ve also noticed that some peeps are using le parfait jars to keep dried produce in and not bothering with the vacuum sealing. Think i shall try this when i eventually get an empty jar, probably will be ok for things that will get eaten in months rather than years lol.

HTH

SD

D&DD

LOL have you lot been looking in my kitchen :rotfl:I swear I used to have a table out there somewhere!!

Hiya JB great post I'm going to have to give in I think and get an excaliber,my mum usually gives me money for xmas so will use this in advance so she can wrap something :rotfl:

Sunny I break the pasta leather up and soak in just enough boiling water to cover the pieces and just add a little more at a time til you get to the preferred consistency.

I've been back to the pear tree in the field and I'm planning on a blueberry and pear leather marathon,I never have enough of this one.

Yoghurt is also really nice dehydrated.

I store most things in jars but always tend to throw the tomatoes into bags in the freezer as I blitz them for use and its easier when frozen.

Sweet potato and red pepper is another lovely leather
I mash cooked potato with a blitzed pepper.
Blackberry and mint is also yummy

Adelight at the moment I have the little cheap tchibo one which is almost identical to the one lakeland are now selling and its been great.
I haven't tried whole bananas I normally do bananas as a leather mixed with other fruits as they do come out a bit different to shop bought ones.
I read somewhere its to do with sulphating them first in food manufacturing..which I'd have no clue how to do that I think best to start with a cheapo one and see if its used enough to warrant one of the 'big boys'
HTH
D

JB_York

Sunnyday wrote: »

My kitchen is in a terrible cluttered state at the moment lol, it will all be worth it though. At this time of year when everything is ready in the garden it seems to take over and everything else gets neglected

Are you packing the courgettes in jars or bags? I`ve had some jars fail and also some bags too but the proper expensive bags are better and i`ve only had one of those fail. I think that the dehydrated potato slices in that one were a little too sharp and may have punctured the bag somewhere. After lots of reading i`ve come to the conclusion that some foods are giving off a little gas when they are sealed giving the impression that the seal has failed in a bag and in jars causing the seal to break.


SD

The initial problems were with bags. Supposedly the good quality ones that came with the AJ sealer. I packed vacuum & sealed, it blew back up within a day. I cut the bag open, wiped the edge & resealed. The chips were sharp, and I did think that there may be a small puncture, so I put this bag into a second quality bag and vacuum sealed that too. Double vacuum, double seal. Again, a day or so later, both bags had lost the vacuum!
This got me worried that there was a problem with the sealing strip (which I've since disproven by packing some plastic beads, and then some cooked beetroot - a great way to identify leaking vacuums ), which leads me to think that there's an intermittent quality problem with the bags or that dried courgettes loose a lot of gas!

JB

D&DD

Fry off a few onions and a punnet of mushrooms with a clove or two of garlic.Add any herbs knocking around (thyme and resemary go well in this one)
Blitz up in liquidiser and spread on leather sheets.

I use bits of this in soups and stews and its especially nice added to stuff in the slowcooker