Food drying - Dehydrators (merged)

Toxic_Lemon

I thought I'd share a recent purchase with you and the money-saving reasons for buying it.

I purchased it for £26 (identical to an £80 model seen elsewhere). I bought it to make vegetables and fruits for healthier, cheaper snacks instead of the expensive shop bought snacks and crisps. Also, oddments of left-over (raw) fruit & veg can be dehydrated and preserved ratehr than thrown away or left to rot.

You can dehydrate meat and chicken (beef jerky). You can also make semi-dried or sun-dried tomatoes and leave in oil ata fraction of the delicatessen prices. I plan to dry onions, mushrooms, garlic, celery etc. and then blitz into a powder in the food processor to add to soups, stew and casseroles as flavourings instead of the packet mixes of E numbers you can buy. Someone even suggested drying left over egg white (if you've been baking with egg yolks) which can then be powdered and used in other recipes.

Also, I want to dry herb leaves from the pots I occasionally buy that normally die and I then throw them out. I can dry them to preserve instead!

You can dry flower leaves, orange/lemon rind to make pot pourri.