We only dehydrate our own produce, although we sometimes purchase stuff we cannot grow for canning purposes such as the nectarine jam I mentioned. We have a middle-of-the-road dehydrator, as my wife wanted temperature control for her herbs but she didn't want to pend a fortune on a dryer. I think we have 4 dehydrators altogether and use the " @Yvonne Smith type" for the less sensitive stuff.
You CAN @Tony Page but when they get too soft, you are better off making them into a leather of some sort or just freezing them.
Not yet. The broccoli and sprouts finished late last night, and the asparagus just finished this morning. I'm thinking I gotta at least try the asparagus because I love it so much but cannot tolerate frozen or canned...it's gotta be fresh. I'll rehydrate some of each later. Even if I don't like it, I'll be in a "take it or leave it" situation when I need it, huh? And I can always make soups or throw it in with beans. Excalibur recommends using the rehydrating soak water to cook with...I assume there are nutrients in it, likely water-soluble vitamins.
I'm falling behind worse than you are, Mary. I looked to see if there was an existing thread on this, did not find one, so I started a new one and asked Yvonne to merge in some stuff from various unrelated threads. Then she found a dehydrating thread I started 2 years ago! When COVID hit and restaurants were closed, I satisfied a backlog of kitchen "wants." I got the dehydrator, a sous vide machine, a pasta machine, and a nice convection oven. Like everything else in my life, I went at dehydrating with a vengeance, then set it aside. Current world circumstances have me dusting the thing off again. There's nothing wrong with those basic models...something like that hones the skill set. "Beware the man who only owns one gun."
I gotta think that dehydrating your produce is one of the slowest ways to process it. Not only does it take hours (sometimes overnight), but you can only do small batches. Why would you choose this method over canning, Don?
Here is a book I found on thrift books, I'm toying with getting it. It supposedly has instructions to build a solar dryer. I have seen solar dryer on Amazon for about $13, so it may not be worth building one.
I think that it depends on where you live and what the humidity is like, whether a solar dryer can work or not, @Tony Page . When I lived in north Idaho, I dried all of my oregano outside on an old window screen. I just put the cut stalks on the screen and set it in the shade so that it would stay green and not turn brown like it does in the sunshine, and then left it for a day or so until it was dry. Out here in Alabama, the air is way too humid to be able to dry anything unless you had a fan running on it full time to help it dry. I just use the dehydrator for anything that I dry, even the sassafras leaves (for file’). Also, Amazon Kindle store always has ebooks on sale free or cheap every day, and the list changes all the time. If you do a search for solar dehydrating, and search by price, low to high , then you will see all of the free and cheap ones first, and can download the books you want to have. I do this for all kinds of books, and even knitting and crocheting patterns, and get them when they are free. Just keep checking every few days for new books that are temporarily free or on sale.
Horning in: Dehydrating is good for bugging out, camping, showing off to the neighbors and you don't have to hover while doing it. I was so happy I dehydrated tomatoes as much as I did last year. Canning is so hot and heavy work. I freeze a lot too.
You ain't horning in, you're augmenting the conversation/rescuing me. It's funny, when I was posting that weight loss, I thought of pack-packers (although you still gotta have water to rehydrate.) And the other upside (as I noticed when taking those pics) is massive space-savings. But how much longer did it take you to dehydrate those tomatoes versus canning them? I know it's not all hands-on time, but you can only dehydrate so many at a time, and they must take at least 24 hours to dry...likely even longer based upon my limited experience with other less-liquidy stuff. There's no way to process a season's worth without have 12 dehydrators working in parallel...is there? (This assumes you're not in an arid region with a bunch of screen doors set up out back to do this.)
interesting thread and i don't have any equipment for dehydrating...i use the air fryer and have only done plaintain buds....and dandelion .... thanks y'all...i 'm learning
I cover one counter with washed/dried tomatoes I have two good knives and a plate and fill one or two dehydrators. I eat the scraps, wash the cutting surface and go away. Start over when all are dried. If I am using the food in that year, I often pack in plain, new zip lock bags or jars. To can, I need to wash and inspect all jars and lids, sterilize everything, seed/skin the tomatoes, get them cooking. Add lemon juice and Carefully fill the jars, load each batch in the canner, take the jars out, reload everything, wait for pops, transfer to box, unload canner, reload canner. I have to do it all at the same time or waste all the heat... Drying, I can pick how much I want to do that day. Canning I must have the chore dictate the day. Beans I do at each picking, with is a major amount, as I can them as dilly beans. Potatoes, Winter squash and spaghetti squash keeps as it is picked in a store room. But squash chips from the dryer are fun. We freeze wax beans, kale, broccoli and cauliflower... We keep talking about canning meat but haven't done it yet, even though we have a pressure canner. Daughter wants to can burdock stems, nettle and lambs quarters. It is kind of late except for the burdock. She wants to try burdock root beer. I We have the equipment. But I am not sure she will have the time. I told hubby we are basically set for a couple of years with a little to share. If we got serious with a shtf situation and maintained, we could be ok. Although canning on the little wood stove might be a chore. I might be sorry I got rid of my non working chest freezer. It would have been a good place to store winter coats.
My Excalibur instructions say it takes 5-9 hours to dehydrate tomatoes, but everything I've ever made has taken twice the advertised time to dry to my satisfaction. I guess "it depends." They say higher humidity takes longer (obviously), but with most of us having air conditioning, I've always found that to be an odd statement to make...if you used this outside in my region, the stuff would never dry. I have mine set up in a small laundry room. I wonder if a small window a/c would speed things up. Your description reminds me of when my brother and mother would can tomatoes. I recall them being chained to the process...but you could do a bushel in a day. Regarding people who can: I'm one of those people who--when standing next to someone at a shelf in the grocery store--will just start talking to them. I've always been that way, and have had some interesting conversations. I'm shocked no one [so far] has been put-off by me. Maybe I don't look creepy. Anyway, I've chatted with a few folks in this area who can about as much as you do, Mary (in fact, I had just such a conversation at ALDI a couple of days ago.) A few of them can beef. Apparently you don't pre-cook the beef...the canning process cooks it. I did not ask how many quart jars a side of beef fills. I'd love to have some just once to make real homemade S.O.S. Your burdock root beer story reminded me that when I lived in Indiana, my dad made root beer. (Others here have had similar experiences.) He had a bottle capper and a 5+ gallon crock. I believe it was made from sassafras root, although birch beer was also a popular thing. I can still hear the sound of bottles exploding in the freezer in the middle of the night because my older brother was too impatient to let the fridge chill the stuff off, and he'd forget. Root beer was big in those parts of the country. Lots of the local food stands sold it.