How to buy and use
a Food Dehydrator
The recipes on these pages require a food dehydrator and it’s essential to get one that has a built in fan and thermostat. I use the American Harvest FD-50. Its list price is $80. It comes with 4 stackable trays and can handle up to 12. Its trays are flimsy, but its base—which contains the heat source, thermostat, and fan—is quite sturdy and has served me well for 15 years. Fortunately, the trays can be replaced for $20 per pair.
There are two accessories that you should get for your dehydrator. You’ll need a mesh screen and a solid sheet for each of your dehydrator’s trays. The mesh screens are for foods that shrink so much that they would fall through the trays, and the solid sheets are for drying purees and liquids.
With a dehydrator you have a wider range of choices when it comes to food. You can dry tomatoes, red bell peppers, and okra for Chicken Gumbo. And spaghetti sauce dries into a substance like fruit roll-ups. It doesn’t even need simmering to reconstitute. Just tear into pieces, put in a 500 ml Nalgene Lexan jar, pour boiling water over it, and leave to soak for 30 minutes. Of course you will need to reheat it before serving.
Most vegetables are dried at 145 degrees Fahrenheit for the first 2 hours, after which the temperature is reduced to 135 degrees for the remainder of the drying time. You should be aware that the drying time of the same food can vary from day to day depending on the relative humidity of the air and the moisture content of the year’s crop. In most cases vegetables are briefly steamed until half-cooked before being put in the dehydrator. This is called blanching and it’s also done with frozen vegetables.
Most fruits are also dried at 145 degrees Fahrenheit for the first 2 hours, and at 135 degrees for the remainder of the drying time. For the most part, I find it more economical to buy dried fruit in bulk at the natural food store than to dry it myself. Exceptions are things I can’t find on the commercial market, such as dried strawberries. I’m told that strawberries soak up insecticides like sponges, so it’s best to get organic strawberries even if you don’t ordinarily buy organic produce.
Meat is usually dried at over 145 degrees Fahrenheit. Salted raw meat makes jerky, and cooked ground meat can be dehydrated and reconstituted for use in backpacking meals. Ground beef and lamb reconstitute beautifully, but the fat in ground pork tends to go rancid. If you want chunks of unground meat, go with freeze-dried, because chunks of dehydrated meat don’t reconstitute to an appealing texture.
When it’s time to rehydrate your food, soak it in plain freshly boiled water. This is important because salt, sugar, and sauces interfere with the rehydration process. Most vegetables require 30 minutes of soaking, followed by 20 minutes of simmering. Ground beef and lamb require an hour of soaking and 30 minutes of simmering. Add your seasonings after the simmering is complete.
If you’d like more information about dehydrating food than is presented on these pages, I wholeheartedly recommend How to Dry Foods, by Deanna De Long, published by HP Books. You can buy it online from Amazon or better yet, special order it from your local independent bookstore.