Food Dehydrators: The Topic

[lemniscate]

1 hour ago, TdeV said:

Has anyone have ideas or tried this?

 

I do cooked carrots in dehydrator.   I like the taste/texture better that the uncooked for final product.

[TdeV]

17 minutes ago, lemniscate said:

I do cooked carrots in dehydrator.   I like the taste/texture better that the uncooked for final product.

 

Thanks. How are you using the carrots?

[lemniscate]

I toss them in soups/stock or grind them into powder as a seasoning in coleslaw/mac/potato salad type things.   They are kind of like a carrot jerky bite if you want to eat the as a snack.

[Darienne]

I'm in the midst of my yearly...or sometimes twice yearly...onion dehydration.  10 pounds of onions for $2.99...last year it was $1.99...and then I throw them into everything without having to stop and peel and cut and so on.  Of course, working on them right now is a pain...but that's the way it is.  The garage smells like an onion.   I'm half way through...

[Shelby]

1 hour ago, Darienne said:

I'm in the midst of my yearly...or sometimes twice yearly...onion dehydration.  10 pounds of onions for $2.99...last year it was $1.99...and then I throw them into everything without having to stop and peel and cut and so on.  Of course, working on them right now is a pain...but that's the way it is.  The garage smells like an onion.   I'm half way through...

That's smart.  I've never thought about doing that before.  I could do that with some of my onions next summer.....  Can you tell me approx. time and temperature?

[TdeV]

@Darienne, does the dehydrator get adversely flavoured/scented during this process?

[Darienne]

57 minutes ago, Shelby said:

That's smart.  I've never thought about doing that before.  I could do that with some of my onions next summer.....  Can you tell me approx. time and temperature?

My manual says 130 but I've turned it up to 150.  And it says 5-12 hours.  But these onions seem quite wet and are taking somewhat longer.  

 

30 minutes ago, TdeV said:

@Darienne, does the dehydrator get adversely flavoured/scented during this process?

Not that I've ever noticed.  

[lemniscate]

I am doing a lime fruit leather today.  I've never done a fruit leather before.

[Darienne]

1 hour ago, lemniscate said:

I am doing a lime fruit leather today.  I've never done a fruit leather before.

I love limes.  You must have put a fair amount of sugar with this.  Do you have a recipe which you might share?  Please?

 

I have done a lot of apple leather, but I've always done it in the oven on top of Canadian Tire red silicone mats on cookie sheets.  It's worked really well.  For one thing, my dehydrator is one of those inexpensive Salton round thingies for leather.   One thingy.  Meantime in my oven, using two cooking racks with legs, one on top of a second cookie sheet, I can do four cookie sheet amounts at once.  I've quit making it because after a few years, no one really wanted to bother eating it, including me. 

[lemniscate]

13 hours ago, Darienne said:

I love limes.  You must have put a fair amount of sugar with this.  Do you have a recipe which you might share?  Please?

 

I have done a lot of apple leather, but I've always done it in the oven on top of Canadian Tire red silicone mats on cookie sheets.  It's worked really well.  For one thing, my dehydrator is one of those inexpensive Salton round thingies for leather.   One thingy.  Meantime in my oven, using two cooking racks with legs, one on top of a second cookie sheet, I can do four cookie sheet amounts at once.  I've quit making it because after a few years, no one really wanted to bother eating it, including me. 

 

No recipe.  It was a "wing it."   I had whole last season frozen limes in the freezer.  I am under orders to clear out odd bits from pantry and freezer.  I made a large batch salsa from the juice squeezed from the limes (5 whole).   I then made a "superjuice" with the pulp and rinds (where you soak them in a bit of citric and malic acid to extract olea saccharum for a powerful citrus juice for drinks/cocktail mixing).   Hello, margaritas.

 

I blitzed the soaked lime remainders in Blendtec and then dumped pulp into a jelly bag to drain out the juice.   After hours of draining I had a wet pulp leftover.  It was very limey and not bitter, about 2 cups.   I added probably the same amount of sugar and a tsp of salt, until it tasted right to me.   It was consistency of apple sauce.   Spread it out on a couple silicone mats and put in dehydrator.   So far, 8 hours at 115F.   Needs maybe a couple more hours.   The preliminary tastes I have done are pretty good.   Like a more natural flavored lime Starburst??  maybe??   Kind of wonder if the fruit leather strips could be added into a cocktail as a garnish/flavoring.  Full circle.

[SLB]

I'm going to try that.  

 

Altho -- like @Darienne, I often make way more fruit leather than I actually want to eat.  I have several interesting ones in the freezer, and do recall that my current faves are apple/walnut/coconut and mango/orange.  

 

But I don't really pull them out as often as I imagine I'm going to.  They're a good hiking snack (which is basically what I make them for); but they get hard in winter hiking, and I've cut way back on the summer hiking because I'm paranoid about ticks.

 

  Anyway.  I'm gonna make that lime situation, that sounds like a fabulous addition.  

 

 

[Darienne]

Ten pounds of dehydrated onions.  My work here is done.

 

 

Edited September 27, 2022 by Darienne (log)

[TdeV]

How did you prepare these potatoes, @Darienne?

[rotuts]

and what do you use the for ?

[Darienne]

11 minutes ago, TdeV said:

How did you prepare these potatoes, @Darienne?

Ed peeled and made them into fries.  They sat in cold water for 1/2 hour.  Then dried with tea towels and paper towels.  Into 1/2 tablespoon of oil and into a preheated machine.  That's exactly what the little manual said to do...except that they were all purpose and not Russets and that the directions for amount of oil covered 300 - 800 grams which makes no sense.  More oil would have been useful.  

 

8 minutes ago, rotuts said:

and what do you use the for ?

The what?

[TdeV]

I think @rotuts wants to know how these potatoes are used.

 

The potatoes don't look like fries, @Darienne; to me they look more like potato peelings.  Would it be possible to open  the jar and take a few out and photograph them for us?

[lemniscate]

On 9/26/2022 at 10:06 AM, SLB said:

They're a good hiking snack

I only had about 2 cups of product to spread out, which was 2 6"x8" pieces.

 

So, the lime leather has salt, sugar and citric acid, which is essentially a simple Oral Rehydration Solution.  One of the household is heading for a hunt, much hiking involved, miles.  And it's still warmish here, even in the high country.  Fruit leather was never a thing for us, even as kids, but the lime leather was a huge hit for all the adults and the hunter is going to use it as a supplement with canteen water to keep hydrated in the woods.  Like a solid Gatorade.    Easy to put in a pocket.

 

That is, if it all doesn't get eaten before the hunt, which is a clear and present danger.

[Darienne]

 

3 hours ago, TdeV said:

I think @rotuts wants to know how these potatoes are used.

 

The potatoes don't look like fries, @Darienne; to me they look more like potato peelings.  Would it be possible to open  the jar and take a few out and photograph them for us?

Oh oh, I seem to have gotten my wires crossed.  I wondered why you wanted you wanted to know about how we used our new air fryer but didn't notice the topic.  I've now edited the first post.  Of course those are not potatoes...those are onions which I dehydrated.  Sorry about that. 

[lemniscate]

I bought a bag of Cara Cara oranges from Costco in a weak moment (it's not quite citrus season here).   They looked nice outwardly, but were stringy and dry on the inside, just barely had juice.  Bad crop.   And it seems there were a couple in the bag that were not Cara Cara, but some indeterminate orange.

 

I could have taken them back but I decided to use the same Superjuice extraction then make orange fruit leather from the solids.   The Superjuice turned out great, some of the best orange juice I can remember tasting, very rich.

 

The solids were mixed with sugar to a pleasing flavor and I got a nice amount of fruit leather.  Everybody likes it, just like the lime leather.   So, proof of concept is confirmed.  I can do something twice.