What are you dehydrating today?

[taxlady]

Bliss, have you ever used the banana chips for banana bread or muffins? I think that is the one that would be most useful for me.

 

[blissful]

Bliss, have you ever used the banana chips for banana bread or muffins? I think that is the one that would be most useful for me.

I haven't but that is only because we buy lots of bananas when they are 19, or 29, or 39 cents/lb and use them fresh for smoothies, or to bind oats in 'cookies', or for banana bread, or for nice-cream. For snacking I like the texture of the chips but I don't care for the texture of a fresh banana.

To use dehydrated chips you could break them into pieces/crushing them. Then put them in a little water until they soften and use them in bread or muffins. Or you could put them in a blender with water to get a puree (like I would do with dehydrated squash for pie).

 

[taxlady]

We often forget to eat bananas. I want them to have a faint bit of green near the end. DH wants the first black spot or two. I find those too sweet and he finds the kind I like too hard. So, they often get far riper than either of us like, which is perfect for banana bread. I used to put those in the freezer. But, since I have fewer spoons, the quantity of black bananas in the freezer was getting out of hand. I just wasn't making banana bread or muffins as often. Also, I think the bananas ripen past enjoyable much quicker nowadays.

 

[larry_stewart]

I made these Banana / Peanut butter roll ups for dessert today.
Very simple recipe
2 ripe bananas ( 3 if small)
2 - 3 Tbs peanut butter
2 - 3 Tbs walnut pieces
2 - 3 Mini chocolate chips

Peel and mash up the bananas
Add the peanut butter and whisk in until smooth batter
Spread evenly over a silicone sheet for the dehydrator ( a few mm's at most )
Sprinkle walnut pieces and chocolate chips evenly over the banana/ peanut butter spread
Dehydrate at 130F for 8 - 12 hours, rotating every few hours so it dries evenly.
Take out of dehydrator and let cool a but
Roll up like a crepe
Although we didn't, it would taste even better with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

I sometimes also cut the rolls into 1 inch pieces , but personally, like picking t up like a burrito and eating as is .

 

[pepperhead212]

I have at least 18 butternut squash almost ready to harvest out there (some definitely ready to harvest), and what is almost unbelievable, I still have 7 (plus the 4 I just cut up) butternuts from last season, almost a year old! I always watch them closely for any bad spots forming. Surprisingly, they have lasted a long time, even that very small one. Only one of these 11 was getting slightly soft by now, and it wasn't the smallest one! Amazing how hard they have stayed. I got 2 trays of cubes for the dehydrator, and I only cut up 4, to leave room for other things - I might cut up more.
A small butternut squash, almost 1 year old, and still good! 9-28 by pepperhead212, on Flickr

7 of the 11 butternut squash I still have from almost a year ago! I cut up 4 of them, only one slightly soft, others rock hard. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

A little more than a cup of seeds from the 4 butternut squash I cut up, to dehydrate. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

 

[blissful]

Beautiful @pepperhead212 , a whole year in storage is amazing. I've heard of it for some squash but butternut wasn't one of them. Do you cure them outside in the sun for a couple weeks - three weeks? I'm just doing that now for this year. It's suppose to harden the skin, dehydrate the squash a little, and concentrate the sweetness.

 

[pepperhead212]

@blissful I usually put my butternuts on my back porch for a couple of weeks, where it will be warmer, and no chance of moisture, and it will dry the skin out some. And something that I've been doing for many years, is sealing the stem, and the small section on the other end, where the flower was attached, with some shellac - something I always have in my workshop. Sounds strange, but shellac is a natural product, and even though it is not waterproof, it is the best wood finish to limit the passage of moisture through the surface. Something clicked in my head way back, and I started using that for sealing the squash - I just take a quarter cup or so of shellac flakes, and dissolve them in some alcohol, and brush this on the stems and flower buds of each fruit, and repeat this maybe 3 times. Now, this doesn't make every variety of butternut store so well - I've had some only store 2 or 3 months, before they would start softening. This variety, I have been growing for decades, that stores well, and produces well, is a hybrid - Polaris - that I get from Pinetree Garden Seeds. Unfortunately, all of the OP varieties I've tried would only produce 2 fruits/plant, and/or did not store well. So I had to keep buying the hybrid. This year, I got some seeds from someone down in GA, so he gets hotter than I do, and he said his OP variety produces well (5-7/plant), and stores well. So next season I'll plant half of each variety, and compare them. And if they turn out as good, and store as well, the next season I'll plant only the new variety, and save some seeds.

 

[blissful]

@pepperhead212 I never would have thought of shellac for sealing the ends of squash. Why not! Another thing mentioned is washing with a mild bleach solution then drying and sealing the ends with wax. I'm leaning toward wax since we have that from the hives. We can use it like a crayon, then heat it with a heat gun to melt it. I don't actually have a heat gun, but it's from my art supplies, like a hot hair dryer without much air flow. I don't have butternut to keep but I have the hopi gray squash and blue hubbard, different seeds, but they are so similar. These are said to last more than a year-though I haven't experienced that yet.

 

[taxlady]

Yesterday, I dehydrated some cooked ramen noodles. They should re-hydrate as instant ramen. The package was frozen, fresh ramen, but double what I needed for half the recipe of the noodle and tofu dish I tried yesterday. The noodles were all frozen together and the instructions were to cook from frozen, so I sort of had to cook them all in one go. I'll see how the re-hydrating goes. Dehydrating pasta wasn't an idea I came up with. I saved a whole bunch of recipes from the website that blissful recommended, The Purposeful Pantry. If anyone else wants to try dehydrating pasta, here's the link:

How to Dehydrate Pasta

Dehydrate Pasta? It's already dry, isn't it? Dehydrating pasta is beneficial for those creating hiking/backpacking/camping meals, or creating truly 'instant' meals for the pantry. Give it a try!

www.thepurposefulpantry.com

 

[pepperhead212]

Today I peeled, seeded, and cut up the last 7 of those butternuts, I still had from last season, and I got almost 7 trays ready to go into the dehydrator. Only one of them had some spongy spots, but there were no "bad spots" on any of them, turning rotten, or anything that that. And I got another 2 cups or so of seeds, though the 2 small ones had seeds that were sort of flat - those might have been some of the ones that didn't totally ripen before the plants were pulled out, like the last 2 out there now. I got about 3 gallons of trimmings for the compost.
About 3 gallons of trimmings from the last 7 butternut squash, from last year. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

 

[larry_stewart]

I still got a half dozen butternuts from last year too. Im glad they lasted so long. I didnt plant any the year cause I had so many last year.

 

[pepperhead212]

I only got enough eggplants to fill one tray, peppers to fill 5 trays. I still have a bunch more peppers out there, but I didn't want to wait for those, and I know there are more than 3 trays worth.
5 trays of cut up peppers, and one tray of eggplant slices, ready to dehydrate. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

 

[blissful]

I have 8 trays of dehydrating cooked squash, and I froze the seeds until I have time to clean and bake them.
After that comes serrano peppers slitted, again.

 

[bethzaring]

Celery leaves all week and working with pears today. I have done some pears in the dehydrator and am remembering how delicious they are. Am cooking down pears for pear butter today. Then I will decide if I want to make more pear butter or pear chips.

 

[blissful]

Dehydrated squash.

I finished a batch of serrano peppers a couple days ago, and today we put in 9 trays of banana chips. (they were in the reduced produce at the grocery today, 45 bananas for $3)

 

[pepperhead212]

I am only dehydrating a plateful of aruna peppers. At this time of the season I don't really have enough of anything to fill the dehydrator, and most of the peppers I freeze now - this way, they are in the freezer less time, and when dried early in the season, it doesn't really make much difference. And I just put trays of some things on the griddle on my range, which I turned the pilot lights back on under the griddle, making it warm enough to dry those thin arunas and Thai peppers, and similar items.

 

[taxlady]

Can anyone tell me which dehydrated foods are easy to rehydrate and which ones are hard to rehydrate? Any tips for making it easier to rehydrate the difficult ones?

 

[taxlady]

Today, I decided to test out this recipe for making "instant rice" at home. Of course, being me, I dehydrated some brown basmati rice. I cooked rice for supper and immediately put half of it on parchment paper on the dehydrating racks and dehydrated it. So far, so good. I'll condition it for a few days, just to make sure that it actually dehydrated properly. Then I'll try using it, to make sure I like the result, before I make a bunch of it.

DIY Instant Rice with a Dehydrator

DIY Instant Rice is so easy to make in your dehydrator. It's perfect for backpacking meals and quick meals. These instructions work for any kind of rice and quinoa, too!

www.thepurposefulpantry.com

 

[blissful]

@taxlady Some mushrooms are hard to rehydrate. Maybe I just need to let them sit overnight in the refrigerator to get them soft.
Dehydrated carrots that aren't steamed before drying, are hard to rehydrate, so in the future I'll steam them first before dehydrating.

Now that you have dried rice, you can put together dried veggies with it and make a soup mix if you want to.

 

[taxlady]

@taxlady Some mushrooms are hard to rehydrate. Maybe I just need to let them sit overnight in the refrigerator to get them soft.
Dehydrated carrots that aren't steamed before drying, are hard to rehydrate, so in the future I'll steam them first before dehydrating.

Now that you have dried rice, you can put together dried veggies with it and make a soup mix if you want to.

I want to try out dehydrating some vegis first. I might start with her (of the Purposeful Pantry) suggestion of dehydrating store bought veg, that have already been cut and blanched. But, definitely, soup is on my radar.