The Everything Root Cellaring Book: Learn to Store, Cook, and Preserve Fresh Produce All Year Round! by Catherine Abbot

Author:Catherine Abbot [Abbot, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook
ISBN: 9781440504686
Amazon: 1440504687
Publisher: Adams Media
Published: 2011-01-18T05:00:00+00:00

If your family loves dried fruits as a healthy snack, choosing to dry your own fruits can save you a lot of money. Most dried fruits found in your local grocery store can be very costly.

Drying Your Veggies

Drying vegetables takes a little extra effort to get a good quality, tasty product. Generally, fruit, roots, tubers, or seeds dry better than the plant stems or leaves of a vegetable plant. Some vegetables, such as broccoli, asparagus, and cauliflower, do not rehydrate very well and so it is better to freeze these vegetables than dry them. Other vegetables, like potatoes and carrots, can be easily stored or purchased at a reasonable price all year round. It is really not worth the time and effort to dry these types of vegetables, unless you are doing it for convenience or for backpacking supplies. Vegetables have less sugar content than fruits, so they are best dried under controlled conditions. The drying time and temperature is crucial to getting a good quality item in the end.

Start by cutting your vegetables into uniform pieces. The drying time is proportional to the thickness of the cut vegetables. A ¼-inch dice dries in 2 hours; a ½-inch dice will take 8 hours. Preheat the oven or dehydrator. Arrange the vegetables on drying trays, placing similar sized pieces on the same tray and leaving a bit of space between each piece for air circulation. Place the trays into the dryer, and maintain a controlled temperature throughout the drying process so that the internal temperature of the vegetable does not exceed 140ºF. Temperatures higher than this will cause a loss of nutrients and tenderness while lower temperatures will allow bacteria to grow. Fully dried vegetables are usually brittle, crisp, and cracking hard.

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