Drying Mushrooms and Onions

I love the rich, earth taste of mushrooms in a homemade soup or stew. Canned mushrooms are just not the same as fresh, and sometimes fresh mushrooms aren't the easiest thing to have around all the time. So, I'm dehydrating 3 containers' worth of Baby Bella mushrooms I got on sale last week, and since I have two extra trays begging to be filled (and I'm using the electricity anyway), I also chopped up 2 onions and put them on to dry! They are also great for use in soups and such!

Dehydrating More Vegetables: Update

I thought you all might like to see how the veggies turned out this last time. :)

The corn is very crispy and hard. Even the "slices".

The cucumbers were a bit leathery still, so I put them in longer at around 135*. Same with the green beans. Leathery is fine; I am just experimenting to see if I can get them crisp and more like chips.  I gave a dehydrated cucumber to my oldest, who closely inspected and then ate it. He said, "Mommy, that dried cucumber you gave me rehydrated in my mouth! It was weird!" He makes me laugh. :)

I used about half of these green beans (I know they are purple here--they green up when they are cooked) in the turkey soup I made for my lunches this week. I just tossed them in as the soup simmered.  I could hardly tell the difference, once cooked.


I plan on putting more of my green beans from the garden in the dehydrater sometime today.  I rather like drying them, and saving some freezer space for when I come across good deals on meat and other foods.

Dehydrating More Vegetables

Today is another day for using my Excalibur Dehydrator. We have lots of veggies in the garden waiting to be eaten or preserved somehow for later on.

Today I am drying:

1. 3 trays of Sweet Corn (hopefully non-GMO, though I'm not 100% certain. It came from a generous relative.)

2. 1 1/3 trays of sliced Cucumbers, and

3. 2/3 of a tray of my Royal Burgundy Bush Beans

I've never dried any of these before, so this is new territory for me. Still, it's pretty easy. :)

For the corn, I had my oldest son shuck it, then I cooked it in hot water for a bit like you would do for corn on the cob. I let it cool, cut it off of the cobs, and spread it on the trays. I sort of like the chunks of corn you get when you cut it off the cob, so I left it like that for now. I will need to stir the corn a bit while it's drying, so we'll see how that goes. I'm not sure it will stay together once dried.

For the cucumbers, I just washed, peeled, and thinly sliced them. Then, I put them on the trays. According to some sites, they are good to incorporate into veggie soups(though I admit I have never knowingly  had cucumbers in a veggie soup!), as snacks, and to blend up into powder and make some sort of dip with them.

For the beans, the books I have do not say to blanch the beans. I simply washed the beans, snapped off the ends, broke them into pieces and spread them out on the tray.

I set the timer for about 10 hours. I will check on them once or twice in between to see how it's going and maybe rearrange the trays. 

Here's to Real Food!

Dehydrating Vegetables: An Update

I love my Excalibur 5-tray Dehydrator!
I thought I would update on how the veggies came out that I posted about here.

BEETS - just over 2 Trays




I had hoped the beets would turn out crispy like chips. Instead, they came out more like fruit leather. I even put them in for 12 hours longer or so to see if that would crisp them up, and it didn't.

Still, they are dried and will keep for awhile.  I have yet to reconstitute them and see if I like the texture of them cooked.

SUMMER SQUASH (Yellow Squash and Zucchini) - 1 Tray each

These also came out leathery, rather than crispy. They kept their color beautifully and I am hoping the kids will munch on them for a snack. I am also looking for soup mix recipe ideas in which to incorporate them.

ONION (just one) - about half a tray

The onion is also leathery, even after extended drying time. It should be pretty easy to use kitchen shears and chop it up into soups and such.

I think a higher temperature might yield crispier veggie chips, but then I think I sacrifice some of the nutrition due to the heat. I'll have to play around with it a little and see what happens.

So here is what I ended up with in the end for those 5 trays of veggies: