Dehydrating is Addictive

I have had my dehydrator a long time. It is an 8 drawer one with the fan at the back and a temperature control on top. I used to dehydrate a lot, but we had so much food that it has taken a while to go through it all. With regular camping trips on the horizon, I thought that I would get into the swing of it again, as done properly, dehydrated food can last up to 30 years if necessary.

One Hard Working Dehydrator

I first got into it by watching upteen videos bought out by a wonderful lady Tammy Gangloff,  who has a website by the name of   Dehydrate2store ". She recently bought out a book called The Ultimate Book of Dehydrating, which arrived in the mail the other day. This in itself is unusual for me as I get a lot of Ebooks. Having just got rid of  many books in my effort to downsize using the Konmari Method, buying a book to hold is most unusual, but this is so handy to look up constantly, a physical book in this case is wiser.

Jar Envy

After my exercise in making freezer meals, I had some mushrooms left over, and that is what started me off, as I couldn't see us using them in the next few days, so dehydrating them was best.
Then I had lots of tiny cherry tomatoes, so they also went in.

 

Just the Beginning

 Today I pulled up a heap of perennial onions/leeks, so I for the first time I thought I would try them as well. As suggested in the book, they can be turned into powder for soups and sauces, or dried in pieces for meals. Camping wise I thought that would be very handy indeed, not having to cart onions. It is also a way to use up homegrown food, without it hanging around and going  off.

Golden Shallots

 Chopped and ready to put in the trays

They should be all separated but that seemed to hard.

Hoping they don't fall through the grill.

 So all the onions are in and it will take about 36hrs to actually dehydrate these, as very moist. Most things don't take that long.

Dehydrator

 I keep the dehydrator on the dining table as it is out of the way. The house has a definite cooked onion smell at the moment, but it soon disappears when finished.

The most amazing thing is, that the food reduces so much that you could fill a jar with a nearly 2 kg. of peas. Here is 1 kg.

Dehydrated Peas 1 kg.

This is 4 kgs. of carrots sliced across the carrot. They have a lot of water in them.

Dehydrated Carrots

 I highly recommend getting into dehydrating if you grow your own, everything you need to know Tammy Gangloff has covered so watch her videos to get all the information you will ever need. I will write more later on vacuuming, so watch next for that.

Now I will get back to start labeling, till next time.