I think that dehydrating is one of those "afterthought" preservation techniques. I don't know if home-dehydrated foods keep as long as home-canned do, but they sure take up less space. You may have noticed that the dehydrated Sri Lanka pineapple has a shelf life of 1 1/2 years, and there's no preservative on it. I don't believe they use any special packaging (like o2 absorbers or desiccants.) The downside to dehydrating(as I was discussing with Mary and her tomatoes) is processing time and throughput, so if a large crop of tomatoes ripens all at once, dehydrating may be a bottleneck. I bought an Excalibur dehydrator with (9) 14"x14" trays. That's 196 in² per tray, and 2,352 in² (16.33 ft²) for all 9 trays. Using that with the below info can give you a rough idea on the capacity of similar sized items and any other machine you might be looking at. -Pineapple: One whole pineapple cut 1/4" thick takes about 2 1/2 trays. 9 trays = 4 pineapples. -Apples: One 1/3" thick sliced apple takes 1/3 to 1/2 tray. 9 trays = 18 to 27 apples. -Bananas: Fit 3 to a tray cut about 1/8"-1/4" thick. 9 trays = 27 bananas. I didn't think to take these notes for the veggies I just did. I know I'll be doing more of them, so I'll grab the data then. I have a batch of kiwi to process, so I'll capture this data for them.
Regarding your "free fruit"comment, @Tony Page...now that I've dehydrated veggies and like the results, I'm on the lookout for other stuff I can get cheap. The church I used to go to is having a fundraiser in a couple of weeks where members are bringing in their surplus crops. I've already got some cukes and beets lined up.
When I had my larger in the ground Garden I had loads of Eggplant, and various types of squash. My wife had a method of par boiling, patting dry, freezing single file, then stacking after frozen, and storing in the freezer. The veggies tasted fresh pick when used. We no longer have the large freezer we had back then, wish I did.
Yeh, opinions on using oxygen absorbers and desiccants are all over the place, Teresa. I have mylar bags that I'll be using. I also have vacuum seal bags. And I've got a supply of oxygen absorbers and desiccant. I just gotta make a decision on which to use (if either) for what application. I have several days to mull it over, since my stuff is still "conditioning" in jars...although I've got dry goods I could package now. I'm thinking that this issue is not as important for storing stuff for just a couple of years...it's really for VERY long-term storage.
quite a project....i can't use expensive mylar bags... there's a few of those oxygen packs in the dog treat bags...i could use... since i am only drying up the wild herbs...I'll just make do... if they last ..i can add some to the canned soups even...or the powdered egg stuff...it's all new to me.... prepping....for the food shortage is why we got on this... gets us thinking about the pioneers...
and...i forgot to say...i tore some brown paper "pokes" up..put in middle of bag... .got air out of bags...sealed. ...oh well... we used to put "whole taters"...in a deep pit....on sloping terrain....lined with burlap feed sacks....wintered over. . taters are at least...filling..ha!
Those are probably desiccants (moisture absorbers.) Those are reusable...you put them in a low oven or the microwave to dry them out. There are directions on the web for this. Oxygen absorbers cannot be refreshed...it's a chemical reaction that cannot be undone. I've read of people using unscented Fresh Step cat litter as a desiccant...you just gotta put it in an old sock or muslin bags. I have also read admonishments against using both desiccants and O2 absorbers in the same container. Apparently it is the moisture in the air that activates the O2 absorber, and if you remove the moisture, the O2 absorber does not kick in to absorb the oxygen. This is another one of those things that is debated, with some folks having work-arounds. Lots of stuff makes me think of pioneers, especially very cold or very humid days. One bad weather event for those people (too much rain/too little rain) would wipe them out. We are so soft. We really should be infinitely grateful. You know, the Mormon Church is big on End Times prepping, and sometimes sponsor free food preservation events for the public. I've not seen any around me...I imagine they're more prevalent out west.
I know quite a few folks around here who have done the same thing. When it's dinnertime, they go out to the pile, stick in their hands, and grab that evening's spuds.
My dehydrator book recommends blanching veggies (and some fruits?) as a way to preserve color & texture...it kills the enzymes and retains most of the nutrients (I believe that Vitamin C gets sacrificed, but heat & water are its enemy, so you gonna eat it raw.)
There was an interesting reality show a while back that followed a small wagon train out to Kansas (?) The people had a little knowlege and some hand tools. They stopped at a swale and started digging into the hill next to the depression. I yell at the tv a lot. I said don't put your house there!!! They were making a duggout sod house. They dug the sod out in front too, thinking it would be a good place for a garden, close in. Noooooooo.... They parked their covered wagon in front of that. A couple days later after a lot of work, it began to rain and it continued for a couple days. When they came out, the wagon was belly deep in a lake, the animals ???? and a good bit of water was in the sod house which had, I guess, a sunken living room. So many things one must learn from the school of hard knocks. I learned a lot of consequenses from camping. The Mormons near me are mostly soft. They are supposed to have a years supply of everything stored. Most don't.
I can't imagine being in a community with all that knowledge, support and resources, and not leverage it. That being said, I know I'm light years behind a lot of folks. Kinda sorta on topic(s)...the regional United Methodist Churches sponsored a couple of "Stop Hunger Now" events. SHN delivers bulk rice, dehydrated veggies, and vitamin powder, then sets up assembly lines with scoops, scales, mylar bags and sealers. There are a bunch of parallel assembly lines, where the volunteers weigh out each individual ingredient as the bag goes along, then it goes to a final QC point for the total bag weight to be adjusted (up or down) before it's sealed and put in the boxes that the raw ingredients were packed in. There's a big gong that gets rung when every 5,000th bag is finished. It goes so fast. I think we did 50,000 bags (4 meals per bag) in just a few hours. SHN carts the stuff away and sends it off to feed hungry families around the world. I wish I had been more into this stuff when doing those events...I would have paid more attention to the ingredients.
I dehydrated (4) carrots today. I fully expected to get perfect discs (I had plans for them), not these curled bits. These are somewhat labor-intensive if you steam-blanch them. That process requires laying them out in the steamer baskets in a single layer. Not only does that take time--since their shape and size requires that you lay manually them out in the basket--you can't steam them in large batches. The upside is that these fully dehydrate faster than anything I've done yet. They may have taken longer to process per-carrot because I may have sliced them too thin. This may also be why they curled so much and why they dehydrated so quickly. I relied on my mandoline's depth adjuster and set it to the recipe-specified 1/8", but I've never verified it...this is the first thing I've sliced to a discrete thickness. edit to add: I found a couple of errant slices in the sink and verified them to be 1/8". These will be fine to use in soups & stews. If I do them again, I may just blanch them in boiling water (which I can do en masse) and skip the pre-treatment...it's not a necessity. Each carrot occupied nearly 1/2 of a tray. I did not weigh them at any point in the process.
I was gonna put an OJ/ginger glaze on them just for that purpose, but not in the state they turned out. I may play around with them...a fatter carrot, cut thicker, dehydrated less time, etc. Maybe I should try one of those dried chickpea recipes. It's just that fat is so satisfying. I wonder if dehydrated lard might work...