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Post by StepfordRenegade on Nov 21, 2014 13:37:04 GMT 10
I've been experimenting with my dehydrator, trying to find out the ideal dehydrating times for particular things (the guides in the book are rarely correct for me), and I've been curious to see how much the food changes in mass and weight from raw to dehydrated.
I've been taking photos and trying to keep a track of things, and thought I'd share some of my experiments here. If anyone else has anything similar, please post here as well, I'd love to see what sort of things you dehydrate!
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scoutmum
Senior Member
North Queensland
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Post by scoutmum on Nov 21, 2014 13:42:24 GMT 10
I'm fairly sure a dehydrator is in the cards for Christmas! Can't wait.  |
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Post by StepfordRenegade on Nov 21, 2014 13:49:17 GMT 10
FRESH CHERRIESThese are in my dehydrator as we speak, so I'll update the thread once they are finished. I started out with 100g, freshly washed (totally delicious and toddler approved) whole cherries, and used one of my stainless steel straws to pit them:  ... and ended up with exactly 60g of pitted cherries which pleases my OCD greatly  They are in my Fowlers Vacola on the fruit setting, which is roughly 58°C. Dr Google tells me it could take 48-72hrs to dry, and I'm totally impatient so I've cut some in half to see if that makes any difference. EDIT: 7hrs later and the ones I cut in half are dry. They taste like Christmas pudding (which I really don't like). Haha! The whole ones still have a while to go. EDIT: 27hrs later the whole cherries are dry, and I ended up with 11g worth (which displeased my OCD greatly):  I really don't like them, but my mother in law who is a Christmaspuddingaholic loves them, so I suppose it depends on your taste. So 100g of fresh cherries ended up as 11g of pitted, dehydrated cherries, 27hrs later at 58°C (that's 11% of original starting weight, or 18% not including the stems and pits).
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Post by StepfordRenegade on Nov 21, 2014 14:20:43 GMT 10
APPLE FRUIT LEATHERI don't have measurements for this, but my apple fruit leather is so. damn. tasty. and surprisingly simple. Firstly I roughly chop and core a whole bunch of apples, enough to fill my slow cooker. I don't bother peeling them, because they get blended later on and I'd like to keep all the nutrients that hides with the skin. Then I put a couple of sticks of cinnamon (or a teaspoon or so of ground cinnamon), and about a cup of water. I put my slow cooker on low for about 4hrs, or until the apples are super soft and don't offer much resistance when poked. Then they get blended in batches, and spread on my lightly spray oiled fruit leather sheet about 5mm-10mm thick. In this pic you can see the fruit leather about to be dehydrated, and the chunky gross looking stuff in the bowl in the top right of the picture is the stuff that hasn't been blended yet:  I put it in on the fruit setting (roughly 58°C) for at least 6hrs, I generally just leave it on overnight. It's ready when it looks like leather and isn't sticky any more. If I'm super impatient sometimes I flip it and remove the fruit leather tray once it's firm, because it speeds up the process. Once it's finished, it looks deliciously ugly:  To store, I either cut it into strips and put it in a tupperware container or jar in the pantry, or roll it up on baking paper and secure it with an elastic band. So far we've never had any left after a week so I have no idea how long it would actually last if we didn't go through it so quickly! My slow cooker full to the brim with chopped apples makes 4 or 5 fruit leather sheets, depending on how thickly I spread it. I'll try and remember to weigh it next time I make it.
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Frank
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APF Life Member
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Email: frank@ausprep.com
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Post by Frank on Nov 22, 2014 16:58:43 GMT 10
Great stuff Step, the apple fruit leather looks awesome.
Will post up some pics of my next lot of stuff when I get to it
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Post by StepfordRenegade on Nov 22, 2014 19:25:37 GMT 10
Great stuff Step, the apple fruit leather looks awesome. Will post up some pics of my next lot of stuff when I get to it Can you pretty please weigh it before & after? I'm really curious about how much space you save by dehydrating food, especially if it's going in a BOB or something. |
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Post by StepfordRenegade on Nov 23, 2014 7:36:04 GMT 10
FRESH MANGOI started out with 1.236kg of small mangoes, and once peeled, de-seeded and sliced into roughly 5mm slices I ended up with 724g:  I got as much flesh of the seed as I could, so included all the 'ugly bits' I could scrape off. I left the dehydrator on overnight (probably 10hrs) at 55°C bit it could have easily done with less. This is one of the things I love about my dehydrator, an extra few hours in there isn't going to do any damage. I ended up with 149g of amazingly delicious mango slices. These babies get rationed strictly or they are GONE before I've finished taking them out of the dehydrator. I think these are probably our favourites - even tastier than the dried strawberries I've done before.  So 1.236kg of whole mangoes made 149g of dried mango flesh after 10hrs at 55°C (that's 12% of original starting weight, 20% if you aren't including the peel and seed).
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Post by StepfordRenegade on Nov 23, 2014 16:09:00 GMT 10
Currently in the dehydrator is 11 small mangoes worth of fresh puree (I don't have the weight because hubby put it on). I'm hoping it works out all right going on raw, because with the apple and strawberry leather I've made the fruit was stewed first. The white you can see down the bottom edge of the tray is just a bit of spray oil that we use to grease the fruit leather tray before the puree went on:  So the end results of that batch ^ got cut up before I could take a photo, but here's a pic of hubby's latest effort:  As you can see he's been really generous and left his wife and 2 children with roughly 1/3 of the fruit leather he made last night... I'm guessing he either inhaled the lot for breakfast this morning, or he's taken it to work. Apparently I have to get in pretty damn fast if I want to have any The texture of the fruit leather (compared to the regular dried mango strips) was really soft, they weren't very chewy like the strips. They were SO tasty , and I ended up having to cut off the toddler so we didn't have a dried fruit induced climbing-up-the-walls sugar high! I'm not sure what is faster from a prep point of view - cutting up even strips of mango or pureeing chunks of mango... it's probably slightly faster to make the puree because you don't have to be so careful with your cutting. They both take roughly the same amount of time to dehydrate. |
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Frank
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Post by Frank on Nov 26, 2014 12:12:41 GMT 10
The mango looks good. Its amazing how much weight is lost in the process
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scoutmum
Senior Member
North Queensland
Posts: 189
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Post by scoutmum on Nov 26, 2014 19:13:06 GMT 10
Currently in the dehydrator is 11 small mangoes worth of fresh puree (I don't have the weight because hubby put it on). I'm hoping it works out all right going on raw, because with the apple and strawberry leather I've made the fruit was stewed first. The white you can see down the bottom edge of the tray is just a bit of spray oil that we use to grease the fruit leather tray before the puree went on: Wondering how it went being raw? Better/worse than stewing? |
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Christos
Senior Member
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Post by Christos on Nov 26, 2014 19:18:28 GMT 10
Hey Guys, first post on this forum. I have recently been using my dehydrator to dehydrate prepackaged frozen peas and corn. I laugh at my self now case the first 2 attempts i tried i did not let the veggies thaw out and could not work out why 12 hours later they were still wet, haha. 3rd time lucky i suppose cause i thawed the veggies out and they were dry in 10hrs. Next step is lots of pre cut beans and then i will start with dehydrating carrots. Trying to get some beef jerky recipies. Thanks, Chris
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Post by Peter on Nov 26, 2014 19:35:04 GMT 10
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Post by You Must Enter A Name on Nov 26, 2014 20:44:28 GMT 10
Hey Guys, first post on this forum. I have recently been using my dehydrator to dehydrate prepackaged frozen peas and corn. I laugh at my self now case the first 2 attempts i tried i did not let the veggies thaw out and could not work out why 12 hours later they were still wet, haha. 3rd time lucky i suppose cause i thawed the veggies out and they were dry in 10hrs. Next step is lots of pre cut beans and then i will start with dehydrating carrots. Trying to get some beef jerky recipies. Thanks, Chris Welcome to the forums mate. If you get a chance pop into the introductions section and say hello Also thank you for sharing your experiences with the dehydrator. |
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Post by Paul on Nov 26, 2014 22:47:35 GMT 10
Hey Stepford, I was going to ask about you fruit leather then saw you had it there, I remember when my partner had some she loved it, she even mentioned it on the way home that day. I will try an get her to try and make it for the kids, I saw the mango man on the way to work today so I might stop in and get some and try the mango this weekend. But they won't last long.
Paul
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Post by StepfordRenegade on Nov 27, 2014 7:56:14 GMT 10
Currently in the dehydrator is 11 small mangoes worth of fresh puree (I don't have the weight because hubby put it on). I'm hoping it works out all right going on raw, because with the apple and strawberry leather I've made the fruit was stewed first. The white you can see down the bottom edge of the tray is just a bit of spray oil that we use to grease the fruit leather tray before the puree went on: Wondering how it went being raw? Better/worse than stewing? It was really good! I haven't tried it stewed so can't compare the two, but it worked surprisingly well. |
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Post by StepfordRenegade on Nov 27, 2014 8:17:25 GMT 10
Hey Stepford, I was going to ask about you fruit leather then saw you had it there, I remember when my partner had some she loved it, she even mentioned it on the way home that day. I will try an get her to try and make it for the kids, I saw the mango man on the way to work today so I might stop in and get some and try the mango this weekend. But they won't last long. Paul I'd forgotten how much your missus liked it If you don't have a slow cooker (or need to get it on in a hurry) you can just make apple sauce/stew on the stove top. I tried that once but got distracted by the Tiny Dictators and burnt the bottom of the pot, so now I use the slow cooker because I can set and forget None of our dehydrated stuff lasts long at all, so it's really been a prepping fail because my intention was to set some aside. NOPE. We eat it too damn fast (and I'm the worst culprit). |
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Post by StepfordRenegade on Nov 27, 2014 8:20:00 GMT 10
Hey Guys, first post on this forum. I have recently been using my dehydrator to dehydrate prepackaged frozen peas and corn. I laugh at my self now case the first 2 attempts i tried i did not let the veggies thaw out and could not work out why 12 hours later they were still wet, haha. 3rd time lucky i suppose cause i thawed the veggies out and they were dry in 10hrs. Next step is lots of pre cut beans and then i will start with dehydrating carrots. Trying to get some beef jerky recipies. Thanks, Chris Welcome to the forum Chris! I'd love it if next time you do a batch, you could take before and after photos and weights and add them to this thread? I haven't tried those yet but am keen to give them a go. How will you prep the carrots? Are you going to thinly slice them, grate them, etc? That's so funny that your first attempt stayed wet for ages, putting them frozen is exactly what I would have done |
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Christos
Senior Member
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Post by Christos on Nov 28, 2014 9:05:23 GMT 10
Ha ha. That's pretty funny that your batch turned out still wet also. Will weight them on my next dehydration session. Well with the carrots I was just going to buy the frozen diced carrots just so I didn't have to try and make them all the same size cause they would have already been machine cut in the factory. Chris
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Post by StepfordRenegade on Jan 29, 2015 12:29:06 GMT 10
So my latest experiment where I actually remembered to take photos was with lychees. I started out with 150g of fresh whole lychees, and once they were peeled, cut in half and de-seeded I had 117g left (so my lychees were roughly 78% flesh - they had very small seeds though so most I would assume most lychees would have less flesh):  I cut some into quarters and left some in halves to see if it would make much of a difference to drying time, end result, texture etc (it didn't, really), and put them on at the fruit setting (roughly 58°C). I thought I'd start with overnight and see how they went. Man, these babies took AAAGES. It was 2 nights and a day worth of dehydrating before I thought they were sufficiently dry (I put them on in the evening, and took them off in the morning of the 2nd day). I ended up with only 22g of final product, so they lost a lot of liquid. This works out to be 14.6% of the original whole lychees, or 18.8% of just the flesh. Here's what they looked like when done:  The sweetness has concentrated and they actually taste like honey now. I've had them in a tupperware container in the cupboard for 9 days with some strawberry fruit leather and they are still going strong. |
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shinester
Senior Member
China's white trash
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Post by shinester on Jan 29, 2015 13:22:11 GMT 10
I just dry stuff till it's rock hard.
I use 'another' one a fair bit more to dry out wet brass, water dropped bullets which heats them up making them perfect to add lube to.
It's probably worth looking at 'solar' drying for SHTF as I wouldn't bet on power.
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