Dehydration: The Time Tested way of Preserving the Harvest

Dehydrating: The Time Tested Way of Preserving the Harvest

When it comes to putting food away for the season, there isn't a more reliable or nutritional way to preserving your produce than to dehydrate it. Drying foods is a time tested method thats been used as early as 12,000 B.C. Ancient people used the sun and wind to assist in the evaporation of moisture from fruits, vegetables and meat. This allowed them to store food supplies for use during the long cold winters or between growing seasons in more moderate climates. Dried foods also were lighter in weight, and made it convenient for hunters, soldiers, and travelers to carry with them for the journey. 

Drying is still an excellent way to preserve foods that can add variety to meals and provide delicious, nutritious snacks. One of the biggest advantages of dried foods is that they take much less storage space than canned or frozen foods, and retain most of the nutrition of fresh foods. 

Drying or dehydrating foods can be accomplished using several methods. The sun is the oldest way used for this method of food preservation. If the air is dry enough, and the ambient temperature hot enough (98 degrees is ideal), the outdoor method is still a viable option.

Raisins drying in the sun

Using your oven, or an electric dehydrator is also an excellent method of drying your foods. Especially with the dehydrator appliance, one can moderate the temperature to get superior results. In the case of making beef jerky, controlling the temperature makes an easy way to get a tasty, safe product.

With the renewed interest in gardening and natural foods and because of the high cost of commercially dried products, drying foods at home is becoming popular again. Drying is not difficult, but it does take time and some attention. Although there are different drying methods, the guidelines remain the same. Since the information for safely and effectively drying foods requires several pages--a few basics will be outlined here, with references to additional information you can research online.

Foods that can be easily dried with minimal processing:

• Fruits
• Fruit leather
• Most Vegetables
• Herbs
• Baby food
• Kale chips
• Flax seed crackers
• Try Zucchini raisins!

Meat can also be dried into jerky, but does require pre-treatment with brine or marination, and proper equipment for drying. It is suggested you dehydrate jerky at 160 degrees to prevent spoilage. (However, it is true that the Indians and Settlers dried meat for years without electricity.)

Other pre-treatments which are suggested include:

• Blanching (this is one method I will use when drying vegetables such as beans, corn, celery, etc. Blanching will stop enzymatic action in the cells of the vegetables, which stops the food from aging. You will get a better end product, and makes the effort worth it. Since fruit has a naturally high sugar content, it does not seem to require this step. Some still prefer it anyway.)
• Ascorbic Acid pre-soak 
• Fruit Juice Dips
• Saline Dip
• Honey Dip
• Hot Syrup
• Do Nothing (my personal favorite for fruits)

Below are publications you can access which have excellent information for the home dehydrating enthusiast. These links have in depth information covering dehydrating different types of foods, and different ways to do it.

This is a booklet that has the “official” recommendations for dehydrating food. These instructions include pre-treatment methods such as blanching, and sulfuring foods prior to drying. However, keep in mind many foods, especially fruits, will dry just fine without pre-treatment. Even so, this booklet gives you excellent information:

http://extension.usu.edu/files/publications/publication/FN-330.pdf

If you are interested in knowing more about drying foods without electricity, this article gives guidelines on solar drying, and plans for building your own solar drying trays.

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/shaffer58.html

Here is an article titled:
“How to Store Home-dried Foods: 13 Tips for Safe Storage of Dehydrated Foods”

http://frugalliving.about.com/od/foodsavings/qt/Storing_Dried.htm

Here is a question and answer page on the basics of drying:

http://www.drystore.com/page/page/1346972.htm

Now, for the sake of simplicity, and to show you how easy dehydrating can be done, Lets do a step by step on dehydrating apricots. I've included both drying the fruit and making leather, as both are easy to do. I prefer my dried foods to be without preservatives, so I have chosen the "do nothing" method for pre-treatment.

For Dried Apricot Halves

1. Wash your produce. If needed peel and core (as in apples). For these apricots, I simply cut in half and removed the pits.

2. Place halved apricots face down on dehydrator sheets.

3. Turn on dehydrator. I usually dry at 120 degrees. Different books have different ideas of which temperature is best. Experiment to see what you like. 

4. Product is finished when fruit is dry with no moist spots. Ideally it will be slightly flexible. If it is potato chip crisp, you probably dried it too long (unless you like it that way.) 

5. Store in air-tight containers. The cooler the storage space the longer it will last. If it is properly dried, your apricots (or whatever you've dried) should remain good for 6 months to a year. Just in time to do it again!

Fruit Leather

Wash and pit your apricots. Then place in blender, and blend until smooth. You can add a little sweetener, or cinnamon, or other fruit if you'd like. I like a little agave or stevia with some cinnamon. Just remember your finished product will be sweeter after it is dried. Once again, experiment to see what you and your family will like.

 Pour your pureed fruit onto dryer sheets. I usually do a like greasing with coconut oil first. This makes it much easier to pull the finished product off the sheets. If your equipment does not come with the flat dryer sheets, you can use food grade plastic wrap spread tight over your dryer racks, and spread the pureed fruit on it. Make sure it is evenly spread. It will dry more uniformly and you'll have a better final product. Avoid areas that are too thin or too thick (if you look in the picture below, you can see where I have a thin area. This will dry faster and be crispy instead of nice chewy fruit leather.)

Once your leather is dry, it will not have any moist spots, and should pull off your dryer sheets rather easily. Once removed, I cut mine into fourths, and wrap in plastic wrap for individual snacks. These can be stored in plastic storage bins, or in large zip-lock bags. They last from 6 months to a year.

Other Dried Foods

Here are some dried tomato slices. These are some of my families favorite snacks. They also double for sun dried tomatoes and are so much less expensive. Simple slice your tomatoes (you can blanch and peel first if you'd rather). Place on dryer sheets. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, dried basil, oregano, and garlic powder if desired. Dry until done. Tomatoes will feel dry, but be flexible. I store mine in plastic zip lock bags in my freezer. 

When using dried tomatoes in a recipe that calls for "Sun Dried Tomatoes", soak in olive oil with garlic for an hour before using in recipe. Yum!

Beef Jerky was so easy to make, and so much less expensive than what you buy in the store.  I figure I spent about $8.00 a pound to make the finished product. That included the meat and all the spices for marinating. The jerky at the store is around $20.00 a pound. That is a big savings. I've included the recipe at the end of this blog. This is one recipe I would encourage you to use an electric dehydrator as it makes it much easier to control the temperature and time, thereby having a superior (and safer) final product.

This was a fun experiment. I blended fresh tomatoes, onion, fresh basil, garlic bulbs, salt, and oregano. Then I dipped sliced zucchini in the mixture. These dried up quite nicely, and reminded me of BBQ potato chips. They didn't last long. 

Drying food has been done for thousands of years, and still remains an excellent option for us today. It:

• Allows you to control the quality of food that is preserved through this method
• Gives you more variety with food storage
• Helps you preserve food which might have gone to waste otherwise
• Preserves most of the vitamins and nutrients
• Once completed, uses less space than other preserving methods
• Is often less time consuming to do than other preservation methods
• Is really fun to do, and delicious to eat!

Heres a Few Recipes

Kisi’s Kale Leather (instead of chips) Thanks to my friend Kisi for this yummy fun recipe

Make the sauce (Double this to do 7 1/2 trays of leather at 1 1/2 cups of liquid leather per circular sheet):

Sauce:

1 cup of cashews soaked for an hour

1 cup of nutritional yeast


2 lemons


1 red pepper


1 teaspoon Turmeric


1 teaspoon Sea Salt


1 pint of fresh salsa or if you want to make it:
(5 chopped tomatoes, 1⁄2 cup onion, 1⁄4 cup of cilantro and jalapeño if you like spicy) 

Double this recipe and blend it all in the VitaMix.

Then pour out all of the sauce except 2 cups.

So with 2 cups of sauce in the VitaMix, add in kale and turn it on an blend, adding more kale until it says 3.25 cups with the VM on.  When you turn it off, it will go down to 3 cups.  Pour out the 3 cups and pour them onto 2 round dehydrator sheets.  Then add 2 more cups of sauce and add in enough kale ...

So 2:1 sauce to liquid kale.

Dehydrate it all on about 100º F, and it only takes about 15 hours or so.

Zucchini Raisins

6 medium sized zucchinis

2 cups sugar (turbinado sugar or other natural sugar works well)

3/4 cups water

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Candied Zucchini Steps

Wash and peel the zucchini. 

Cut the zucchini into 1/2 inch cubes 

In a large saucepan, mix the sugar and the water. Bring it to a boil then let it cook over medium heat for five minutes. You now have sugar syrup.

Drop the zucchini cubes into the syrup and cook until the cubes are just becoming tender.

Remove the pan from the heat and stir the lemon juice into the zucchini/syrup mix.

Cool

Place “candied” zucchini on dryer sheets and process at 130 degrees for 10 hours, or until dry, but soft and pliable to touch. They will stiffen up when cooling.

Best if stored in airtight container in refrigerator or freezer. Can be used as raisin or fruit substitute.

Flax Seed Crackers (Another Kisi recipe!)

4 c. flax seeds (dry): rinse and then cover in a large bowl with plenty of water and soak overnight, 4-8 hours. (Flax absorbs tons, so check the bowl occasionally and stir, making sure they don't dry out. Add more water if necessary.) Then drain them well with a strainer, but don't rinse them. You need the gel they have formed, but drain off as much extra water as you can.

In a food processor process:

1 1⁄2 lbs. tomatoes (about 6 med. ones) 

1 big onion


1 lb. carrots (about 2 c.)


1 yellow or red bell pepper

1⁄2 lb. celery (about 3 big stalks)


4 cloves garlic, minced or crushed (2 tsp.)

After draining the soaked flax, pour into a bowl and stir in all the above and add to taste (remember that after dehydrating, the tastes will be much more concentrated). Now add:

2 T. chili powder  

2 1/2 tsp. salt 

Spread mixture 1/4" thick on dehydrator sheets (about 2 c. per sheet)

Dry @ 105° F for about 15 hours, turn crackers over and dry about 2 more hours.

Break up into cracker-sized pieces and store in ziplock bags or containers.

Yum Yummy Jerky

1 1/2 to 2 pounds lean steak*         1-2 Tablespoons honey or Brown Sugar

1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce             (depending on how sweet you want it)

1 cup soy sauce  

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

2 teaspoons onion powder 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (more or less to taste)

2 teaspoon liquid smoke

*Best cut of meat is flank steak or London broil.  Trim off any fat or gristle. Place in freezer for 2-3 hours until partly frozen, as this makes it easier to cut. Cut against grain in 1/8-1/4 inch thick strips. Mix remainder of ingredients together and place everything in a zip lock bag. Place in fridge, but take out and “massage” it every hour or so for 6-12 hours. Then place onto dehydrator sheets. Process at 160 degrees for 6-10 hours. Done when dry, but still pliable (not crispy).