Dehydrating

This page will be all about dehydrating foods!  I can't buy anything already dehydrated from the store.  Many foods already dehydrated contain sulfates/sulfites in them of which I'm allergic.  Additionally, I love fruit roll-ups but they often contain high fructose corn syrup or artificial food colorings (another thing I'm allergic to!).  So, I decided to start drying things myself! I love my dehydrator!!  You make your recipe, put the food on the tray, turn it on and a few hours later, you have your dried foods!  Done!  I usually put my dried foods in my canning jars and then vacuum seal them with my vacuum sealer!  They will last a long time this way if properly dried and sealed!  So, what can you dry?  Just about any food can be dried with a few rare exceptions!  You should not dry milk or eggs (those done commercially are freeze dried).  Home machines just aren't capable of doing this.

The machine I have is a 'Nesco American Harvest FD-1018P 1000 Watt Food Dehydrator Kit'.  This is a powerful machine that does a lot!  It comes with 8 trays and is expandable to 30 trays!  It gets the job done very quickly.  They do have less powerful machines but I do a lot so I wanted a powerful machine that would last.  It does fruits, vegetables, fruit leathers (fruit roll-ups), jerky, etc.  I love it!  I can do a fruit roll-up in the matter of a few hours.  Whenever I do orange 'chips' they are GONE in a few days!  My husband tends to eat them like potato chips! I've even done grapes to make raisins and they were huge!  Those took a lot of time though but they were sweet and delicious!  Over the next few weeks I will post some recipes of things I'm doing with my dehydrator and put them here!  Have a great night!!

Strawberry-Guava Fruit Leather (Fruit Roll-ups)
Candied Eggplant
Dehydrated Dill
Dehydrated Ginger
Dehydrated Red Bell Peppers