Comprehensive Food Dehydrating (Page 1 of 3)
Posted: 3/2/2009 2:13:23 AM EDT
[Last Edit: MrHunterAZ][Edited]
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I have recieved alot of questions about my potatoes I have dehydrated so I wanted to expand upon this and give general directions and information on a whole range of food items.
Here are the pros and cons of dehydrating your food vs canning. Pro #1 Nutrition, the nutritional value is maintained nearly intact unlike canning which can significantly destroy nutrients and vitamins. #2 Weight, dehydrated goods can be up to 10 times lighter than its hydrated form. #3 Space, the food can shrink up to 10-20 times its former self. A food item that may have fit into a gallon bucket can be brought down to 1 pint. #4 Stability, dehydrated food kept in a light proof, bug proof, and O2 deprived enviroment has a shelf life of hundreds of years. #5 Safety, you do not have to worry about bacterial contaminents such as Clostridium Botulinum. #6 Affordability, cheap produce purchased or home grown can be cheaply preserved without much trouble. Cons #1 Requires a dehydrator and/or dehydrating set up. #2 Requires water to rehydrate that can take from stored drinking water reserves. #3 Non processed meats do not tend to rehydrate well. #4 Takes time to process foods. Water Content of Some Veggies/Fruits Asparagus 94% Apple 85% Bana 74% Beet 87% Cucumber 96% Carrot 86% Grape 77% Onion 88% Potato 79% Spinach 92% Strawberry 86% Tomato 95% Weight From 100lb to Dehydrated Weight Apples 12-15lb Beans 11-13lb Carrots 10-12lb Corn 26-33lb Onions 9-11lb Peas 22-25lb Potatoes 23-25lb Spinach 8-10lb Tomatoes 6-9lb Ok first lets discuss the term dehydrating. Not all drying is dehydrating, dehydration is the slow and purposeful removal of water from the cells of the food items leaving the cell structure, nutrients, and vitamins intact and requires little to no heat. 
The first process in dehydrating is blanching, most vegetables and fruits require blanching before dehydration. So what is blanching and what does it do? Blanching is the process of either lightly steaming or lightly boiling a food item. The reason why this is a necessary step is that it effectively stops the chemical processes within the food item placing it into an animated suspension. This will stop furthur browning of apples and potatoes etc which will degrade nutrients overtime during and after the dehydrating process. So how do you blanch? Well the simplest instruction I can give is describe what the food looks like. You know when you cook fresh vegetables, lets say green beans, and quickly after warming up the green beans will turn a bright green color but they will still be crispy and uncooked? That is blanching. For small cut potatoes it takes about 3-4 minutes, you can tell they are blanched when you can squish them between your fingers yet they are uncooked. This is a very quick process. You can either throw your food item into a pot of water at a rolling boil or steam over a pot in a basket or strainer. After it blanches you need to immediatly remove it from the water via strainer and submerse into cool/cold running water. The faster you can stop the process the better. 
Now you do not have to blanch all fruit although experimentation may be required to find out which you like better. I have seen recipes that do and do not call for blanching of fruits but most of the time I hear that blanching of fruits makes them taste better and gives them a better color. Nearly all veggies should be blanched though except for maybe onions, tomatoes, and peppers. Now if you do not wish to blanch but you still want to prevent the browning of the food item then check into an antioxident such as ascorbic acid=Vitamin C=Lemon Juice. You can either do a quick spritz of a water bottle filled with lemon juice or dust with ascorbic acid which can be found in the canning aisle of the grocery store. The nice thing is most of those bottles also have sugar added so it makes your fruit sweeter. 
Ok so now all that is done lets turn to dehydrating. Now which dehydrator to choose? This Nesco is a pretty popular choice for around $40-$50 
The cadillac of dehydrators is the Excalibur 
Now what is the difference between these two? The Nesco is a vertical center column dehydrator and the Excalibur is a horizontal rear fan dehydrator. The Excalibur provides a much more even dehydrating process which gives you a great control over the food. To be honest it is not entirely necessary to spend the extra money unless you are going to be doing alot of bulk dehydrating. So how do you use these? Well you just throw your food in and set your temp for 135 degrees at the most for hearty veggies like potatoes but for the leafy greens or the more delicate foods low and slow is the way to go. You know when the food is done when it becomes hard and makes a "tink" sound when dropped on the counter. Should sound like plastic. You just throw your food in your mylar or masor jar and throw in an O2 packet, seal and forget about it. Now meats, most fresh meat does not rehydrate well so I exclusively dehydrate processed meats for my meals such as spam. All you have to do is cube it, smaller the better and throw it into the dehydrator. Rehydrates very well and you would be hard pressed to taste any difference. I am not sure on the shelf life of dehydrated process meats however because of the oil content which most it leached out during the process btw. If dehydrated and stored properly then it should last at least many many years if not decades. Place you dehydrator on its meat setting, usually 145 or above and let it run overnight. So how to incorporate this into your SHTF stocks. I use dehydration as my portable food source/supplimental food stocks to enjoy meat, veggies and fruits. Now you may be wondering at all the water this is going to use up rehydrating but what I plan for is 1 gallon per person per day. I figure you can either drink all that water or take a liter of it for your meals. The food can still be eaten dry and still provide you all the food calories and nutrients it would otherwise provide. BTW about 1 packed cup of dried goods provides 1 hearty meal. Be very conservative when rehydrating because it can be very surprising how much food a tiny handful can make. You can either soak the food in cool/cold water for about 2 hours or warm water for 1 hour. I prefer to drop it into my pot during cooking and just add extra water. Your rehydrating times will vary based upon the type of food you are rehydrating and the cut size of the food which is one of the reasons why cutting them into small pieces works better. Some examples From left to right; 3-4lbs of green beens, 1lb of spinach (full leaves and not smashed), 3 boxes of mushrooms, 15 large tomatoes, 10 large bell peppers. In front are my O2 absorbers that I keep handy and sealed in a jar. 
Might also want to get one of these. 
I hope this helps of you. 
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| just starting to dehydrate stuff myself. is there a way to blanch the potatoes longer so you could have mashed potatoes when you rehydrate them? also instead of using o2 absorbers on the mason jars you would use more often, how about the food saver jar attachment to get o2 out? |
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Originally Posted By mfgreene:
just starting to dehydrate stuff myself. is there a way to blanch the potatoes longer so you could have mashed potatoes when you rehydrate them? also instead of using o2 absorbers on the mason jars you would use more often, how about the food saver jar attachment to get o2 out? Yes you can. By blanching the hell out of the potatoes (cooking them) they will get to the explosion stage where they start busting out of their squares. Exactly when they start doing this carefully remove them and dehydrate them. This is very tricky because they can tend to turn into mashed potatoes on your dehydrator. I would suggest fine cuts of potatoes that are blanching normally and you just smash them after rehydration. You can use a foodsaver jar attachment but do not expect a super long shelf life as you normally would. The foodsaver just removes air leaving a large percentage of O2 behind. Thr O2 absorbers will only remove O2 which makes up about 20% of the air. |
| the last few days i have dehydrated peas, corn, green beans, onions, garlic, green onions, carrots, celery, mushrooms and spinach. in the proceess of making vegetable soup for 1st time with dehydrated stuff in the crock pot with chicken and rice. hope it turns out ok, looks great so far. |
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2 things...
So in a pinch you could eat the dehydrated food as is? it's not too hard? You said the shelf life is at least a hundred years stored in mason jars with 02 absorbers? P.S. Thanks for a great tutorial!! |
Thanks go out to fsk1290's fantasy football team. Had his team not had a complete and total collapse I would have had to renew my ARFCOM membership out of my own pocket :-)
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Originally Posted By Sandman67:
2 things... So in a pinch you could eat the dehydrated food as is? it's not too hard? You said the shelf life is at least a hundred years stored in mason jars with 02 absorbers? P.S. Thanks for a great tutorial!! Some of the food is too hard like corn and pees and such but you can just keep it in your mouth for a bit and usually you have mull it down or just swallow it down whole. Do not eat too much though...this stuff REALLY puffs up and you will have the WORST stomache ache if you eat too much too fast. I think about 1 cup of dehydrated corn = 1lb of hydrated corn. Mason jar + O2 absorber minus light and heat = hundred(s) of years. |
| I see a lot of conflicting info on teh interwebs about storage life for dehyrated foods. Some say only 6 months or less.... I can say I am throughly confused about storage life, but am very interested in getting into this. I have apple trees and if apples store for any length of time, I am set.... |
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Originally Posted By mattfoley:
I see a lot of conflicting info on teh interwebs about storage life for dehyrated foods. Some say only 6 months or less.... I can say I am throughly confused about storage life, but am very interested in getting into this. I have apple trees and if apples store for any length of time, I am set.... Most of that comes from how you store the dehydrated product and the nature of that product. Products that rely upon a high oil level for flavor such as some herbs and spices may have a limited shelf life if not stored well due to the oxidation of those flavor oils. Dehydrated products left out exposed to air or light or the environment may only have a shelf life of 6 months. If properly stored, ie in the absence of light, heat, moisture, and oxygen then your food product will remain stable for decades. |
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Originally Posted By Popobawa:
How does buying frozen bags of veggies and dehydrating then mylar+02 abs packing compare in price to just buying #10 cans of dehydrated veggies from walton feed? I can pack 3 quarts (volume of #10 can) of dried veggies for less than 10 bucks buying fresh on sale depending on the veggie. Frozen tends to be more expensive than fresh on sale, unless you can find frozen on sale lol. |
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Originally Posted By Sandman67:
Im assuming you can use canned veggies/fruit too right? Something like corn from a can? You can but they don't turn out as well as using raw/fresh veggies because the fruit/veggies that are canned are cooked to death which is also why their nutritional value is far less than dehydrated food. |
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One thing you can do with dehydrated corn is make Parched Corn.
I grew up eating this as a snack (Handed down from my grandparents on both sides who used it both as a snack and a food supplement), it is very tasty and was used as survival food by the Indians for a long time and then picked up by the Spanish adventures and later the mountain men. |
"War is less costly than servitude. The choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." -Jean Dutourd
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Originally Posted By mattfoley:
I see a lot of conflicting info on teh interwebs about storage life for dehyrated foods. Some say only 6 months or less.... I can say I am throughly confused about storage life, but am very interested in getting into this. I have apple trees and if apples store for any length of time, I am set.... Probally because storing food with oxygen asorbers is a pretty new thing. The LDS church is now claiming 30 yr storage life for beans and mil, for which they used to specify a few years or 10 yeas. |
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You know, after reading this, it occurred to me that I might actually have something beneficial to contribute to a post!!! When I was stationed in India, I went up to the Himalayas (Darjeeling) for a small vacation once. The Tibetans have a freeze-dried cheese that they call "churpi". They use yak milk start the cheese making process, and pour it in a basin on the floor and just let nature do it's work. When it hardens, they break it into small pieces, and I think that it pretty much stores indefinately. I know that it lasted over 10 years in a shed in Oklahoma...
Churpi is sort of tan, and hard as a rock. Tibetans use it sort of like chewing gum. The taste is sort of smoky/milky, but it's not at all unpleasant. As it slowly (very slowly) disintegrates as you gnaw on it, the texture for the small pieces that disintegrate range from slightly grainy to slightly chalky. One little piece will usually last an hour or more. Maybe a good way to store some cheese if you are at altitude, and can freeze dry... |
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Originally Posted By Colby:
You know, after reading this, it occurred to me that I might actually have something beneficial to contribute to a post!!! When I was stationed in India, I went up to the Himalayas (Darjeeling) for a small vacation once. The Tibetans have a freeze-dried cheese that they call "churpi". They use yak milk start the cheese making process, and pour it in a basin on the floor and just let nature do it's work. When it hardens, they break it into small pieces, and I think that it pretty much stores indefinately. I know that it lasted over 10 years in a shed in Oklahoma... Churpi is sort of tan, and hard as a rock. Tibetans use it sort of like chewing gum. The taste is sort of smoky/milky, but it's not at all unpleasant. As it slowly (very slowly) disintegrates as you gnaw on it, the texture for the small pieces that disintegrate range from slightly grainy to slightly chalky. One little piece will usually last an hour or more. Maybe a good way to store some cheese if you are at altitude, and can freeze dry... That is very interesting and very disgusting at the same time lol. I know in Peru they used to trek their potatoes up to the Andes mountains and sit them on the hill side. They would then go and retrieve them next year and all the potatoes would be freeze dried. I wonder what the minimal altitude for somehting like this is or if you can set food out during winter somewhere in MN or ND or something and freezedry. |
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Originally Posted By wreckinturn4:
Very good post. Thank you for taking the time to share. If storing in mylar with O2 absorbers, would it be at all beneficial to vacuum seal the bags? No, O2 absorber will take care it. I store mine in mason jars with an O2 absorber so that I can access the food and cook with it to rotate my stock. When you throw the lid back on the jar a few hours later it will reseal and "pop" to let you know its reaborbed the O2. The absorbers last a surprisingly long time. |
| Well yes since there is no risk of Botulism with the dehydrated food. I open my jars regularly to pull the contents out and then just put the lid back on and the O2 absorber will seal the jar again, I can do that many many many times before the O2 absorber loses its ability to draw air. |
| Excellent. Thanks for sharing. I've been thinking alot about drying instead of canning. Other than the water needed to cook I think this is the best way to store food. Reduced weight and no danger of canned jars freezing/bursting and losing the food, in a worst case scenario. |
| when you are dehydrating and getting close to being done, something comes up and you are not able to get to it for atleast another day. my dehydrator does have temp controls. i usually do most vegetables at 115 degrees. should i turn it to lower temps? or can you 'over' dehydrate things? |