I’ve neglected Food Dryer Home because I was writing a book about preserving food! It includes a detailed chapter about dehydrating produce with many step-by-step sequences and photos. Click here to buy your copy from Amazon.com.

It’s no secret that I’ve neglected my blog about dehydrating food. This is, in part, because I was writing a book.

Canning, Freezing, Drying, Fermenting, Sugaring, & Cold Storage

My book, Yes, You Can! And Freeze and Dry It, Too, from Cool Springs Press, came out in March. It started as an idea for a book about canning produce, but evolved quickly into a survey of most home food-preserving methods.

I wanted Yes, You Can to feel as though you had asked me about preserving produce, and then indulged me by joining me in my kitchen to do a whole bunch of projects. Sure: there’s a linear narrative… we need to preserve some produce, after all. But along the way, there are dozens of digressions: tips, history, stories from my kitchen, and other tidbits to ease the learning process.

Yes, You Can! isn’t one of those dry, gray, “here’s how it’s done” books. It’s loaded with photos that illustrate step-by-step how to complete preserving projects and how to use the foods you’ve preserved. The chapter about dehydrating foods includes instructions for prepping produce, blanching vegetables, and drying vegetables and fruits. It suggests some great snacks to prepare in your dehydrator, and shows how to refill your spice jars from your own herb garden. It even explains how to prepare one of my favorite breakfasts starting with dehydrated shredded potatoes.

I hope you’ll click through to Amazon and see what others have said about my book. I had a great time creating it, and I think you’ll enjoy reading it and working from it.

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Today’s guest describes several ways to preserve chili peppers. The ideas are useful, but sometimes short on detail. For example, because he doesn’t have a food dryer, he glosses over using one to dry chilies. I’d encourage you to use your food dryer (if you have one) to dry cut-up sections of larger peppers, or to dry whole fruits of the smaller pepper varieties.

Of course, there are other alternatives as well. If you like pickles, try pickling your peppers. Or, make sweet pepper relish like the one described here: Red Pepper Relish from Your Home Kitchen Garden.

Great Tips For Preserving Chilies

Great Tips For Preserving Chilies

By Ric Wiley

There are several ways of preserving chilies and my favorite has to be drying, but more of that later.

The simplest way to preserve a chili is to freeze it. One of the major problems with this is that the chili then loses its eating quality. If you eat a raw chili, and be very careful here about the strength of any chili you eat, there is a crispy crunchy texture to the chili. If you defrost a chili and try this then you will find that this crispness has gone and the texture is soggy. This may not be a problem depending on what you intend to use the chili for. If it is to cook with then there are no drawbacks to freezing and I often just cut the stalk off the chilies and put them through a food processor to make a firm paste which I then freeze in ice cube trays. Once these are frozen I can put them in a bag and take out as many as I need to cook with.

Another way is to make some chili oil. There are many recipes on the internet for this and I suggest you try one of these but they all follow similar principles. Use top quality olive oil as the base, chop your chilies, add other ingredients and gently cook your ingredients in the oil. When finished allow to cool and strain the ingredients out. Bottle the chili oil. When I make this I only make small quantities as I have read that as the oil has had other ingredients added then bacteria could develop over time. I have seen it recommended that you should not keep home made chili oil more than about one month. Just remember that the more chilies you add the stronger the heat. I one tried adding some hot home made chili oil to a salad dressing. It ruined the salad so just think about what you are going to use it for.

As I have already mentioned, my favorite way of preserving chilies has to be drying and there are a few ways of doing this, some complicated, some easy. You can dry them overnight in an oven at a very low setting but I have never done this as it just seems too complicated. As easier way, (if you have one), is to use a food dryer and set this to the time recommended by your manufacturer. For those of you who do not have a food dryer, you simply space the food out on trays and switch it on. It dehumidifies the food and removes the moisture, preserving it over time. Simple enough to use, but I do not have one and I do not fancy spending lots of money to buy one just to dry chilies.

A shopkeeper in an Asian supermarket I use once told me the best way to dry chilies is simply to wrap a bunch of chilies in newspaper, put it on the top of a cupboard and just leave them. I tried this but one of the chilies rotted and this spoiled several more. If you use this method check them regularly for chilies which are spoiling. Another method is to string the chilies and air dry. Do this by threading the chilies using a needle on to a strong thread and hanging in a warm room to dry.

Whilst both these methods work, I have also tried two more methods. One is to dry them in a muslin bag next to a radiator. This works very well but the chilies dry very fast and become hard, so hard in fact that you cannot easily cut them with a knife. This is fine if you want to grind the chilies into chili powder or flakes for cooking but they are not too good for eating.

My favorite method of drying chilies is to simply put them in a tray and dry them on a windowsill. This is near a radiator but this is not always on. The windowsill gets sun on it for about 5 hours a day, (when it is sunny). Every couple of days, I simply stir the chilies up with my fingers and this also allows me to spot any which are spoiling. I remove these. The chilies are finished when I feel they are dry enough but still feel leathery. At this stage I simply keep them in an old biscuit tin and use them as needed. One thing I do though is keep the green stalks on the end of the chilies as these help to draw the moisture out from the middle of the chili. I cut this off when using the dried chilies.

Whichever method you use just make sure that surfaces and any utensils you use are clean as you do not want to introduce any disease to your harvest. You can also start the drying process off by leaving the chilies on the plant and not watering but only do this at the end of the growing season when production of new chilies has stopped. By leaving the chilies on the plant they will start to dry out naturally. Just watch them for mold or rot though and harvest immediately this is spotted on any plant.

To find out how easy it is to grow your own chillies, harvest and preserve them, check out http://www.highdensitygardening.com/home.html

Ric Wiley is an internet writer and gardener. His latest website about High Density Gardening can be found at http://www.highdensitygardening.com/home.html

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Preserving Herbs

By Rachel Paxton

An overgrown basil planter can provide ample clippings. If you don’t use all of them in-season, try freezing the spare or dehydrating it in a food dryer.

Harvesting Herbs:

• Harvest in the morning of a hot and dry day–wait until the dew is off the plants.
• Snip off the top growth–about 6 inches of stem below the flower buds.

Drying Herbs:

• If the leaves are clean, don’t wash them–oils are lost in the washing process. If they are dusty, wash briefly under cold water.
• Shake off excess water and hang the herbs, tied in small bunches, in the sun until the water evaporates.
• Hang the bunches (upside down) in a warm, dry place that is well ventilated and free from strong light. To prevent dust from accumulating, put them in a brown paper bag that you’ve punched some holes in to increase circulation.
• If you don’t hang them up, remove the stems and dry them on baking sheets, window screens covered with clear sheeting or cheesecloth, or even on a towel.
• You can also dry herbs in a food dryer. For the best flavor, the temperature in the dryer should stay under 105 degrees F.

Storing Herbs:

• Leaves may be crushed before they are stored away, but they retain their oils better if they are kept whole and crushed right before they are used.
• Herbs should be stored in a cool place, out of strong light, either in dark glass jars, in tins, or behind cabinet e-mail box every Fridays. It’s best to throw them out after a year and resto

Freezing Herbs:

You can harvest sage throughout the season for cooking… or for preserving in your freezer or in a food dryer.

• Blanch herbs before freezing them. Hold them by their stems with tongs and dip them in boiling water briefly, swishing them around a little. When their color brightens, remove them from the water. Blot dry with towels. Remove the stems, chop if you wish, or leave the leaves whole. Lay the dried herbs out in a single layer on wax paper and roll or fold the paper so there is a layer of paper separating each layer of herbs. Then pack, paper and all, in freezer bags or wrap in freezer-rated plastic wrap. To use, break off as much as you need and use frozen. You can also thaw them out in the refrigerator–they will keep for about a week.
• You can freeze individual portions of herbs by making ice cubes out of them. Prepare your herbs by removing the stems and chopping, and then pack them into ice cube trays. Cover with boiling water (to blanch them) and freeze. When frozen, remove the cubes from the trays and store in freezer bags.

Rachel Paxton is a freelance writer and mom who is the author of What’s for Dinner?, an e-cookbook containing more than 250 quick easy dinner ideas. For more gardening, recipes, organizing tips, home decorating, crafts, holiday hints, and more, visit Creative Homemaking at http://www.creativehomemaking.com.

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Dehydrate Vegetables for Long Life

By Judy Williams

Dehydrate vegetables in a food dryer so you can store them to use during the winter. If you don’t have a dedicated food dryer, use your oven.

Drying or dehydrating vegetables is one of the oldest known methods of food preservation. The really great thing about it is that you can do it at home with equipment you have on hand.

You should pick your produce at its peak and work as quickly as you can to preserve its colour and taste.

Prepare your vegetables as if you were going to serve them. Wash them well, trim, cut, chop, slice, whatever. Thickness will play an important role in how long your veggies take to dehydrate, so bear that in mind when preparing.

Next you must blanch the vegetables. This will preserve the colour and flavour of the vegetable. Most vegetables have an enzyme that, left active, is what makes them spoil so quickly. Blanching the vegetables stops the enzyme action.

Follow available guidelines for blanching (available at www.no-dig-vegetablegarden.com). Once blanched, chilled and drained, you are ready to dry or dehydrate your vegetables for long term storage.

The Rules

Of course, there are heaps of rules…but let’s start here.

There are three methods used to dry or dehydrate vegetables. Sun dried, commercial dehydrator or oven.

Sun drying is the least reliable method for areas with variable temperatures. Unless you live in a climate that is a consistent 90F with low humidity for a guaranteed 3 days in a row, you risk your produce.

Once the drying starts, it cannot stop until finished. So DO NOT let your vegetables cool again until they’re done. Having said that, lots of places do have that sort of weather…but more places don’t, so sun drying is a bit of a gamble for most.

You can purchase food dehydraters in a range of sizes, but unless you are going to be doing an awful lot of this, it’s probably better to wait or buy one with a group of friends to pass around. They aren’t very expensive, but they are usually used for quite short periods of time.

So, we’re left with the oven. It’s almost certain that you have one, so nothing new to buy. It is time consuming and a little fiddly, but it’s such a great result!

Oven drying

A home oven will only dry small quantities at a time (up to six pounds of produce, depending on the number of racks you have) so don’t be preparing bushells of veggies at a time!

Set the oven at the lowest temperature and preheat to 140F (60C). If you are uncertain of the temperature, put a separate oven thermometer on a rack you can see. Check your temperature every half hour or so.

Lay out your vegetables on stainless steel screen mesh or wooden frames covered in cheescloth. Do NOT use cookie sheets as the air must circulate around the food. Having the food sit next to metal sheets may also transfer a metalic taste. Using other types of metal materials may react with the food so please don’t.

Load up the veggies. Doing trays of items similar in size will keep the drying even. For instance, doing pumpkin, carrot and potato might be a good mix. Try not to mix strong flavoured items as the flavour may transfer from one vegetable to another.

Keep the oven door open about 3 inches or so during drying. It is vital that the temperature is maintained at 140F (60C) and that the moist air can escape. Move the trays around frequently to ensure even drying. No oven has even heat throughout.

Keep a close eye on your drying vegetables. Don’t let them scorch and keep them moving.

Depending on the vegetable you are drying it will take between 4 and 12 hours to dry. Once they’re done, the vegetable pieces will be hard and should shatter if hit with an instrument.

Store in a water tight container. To use, just add them to soups and sauces as they are, or reconstitute (cover them in a container with water 2:1 ratio) for approximately 2 hours before using.

Judy Williams (http://www.no-dig-vegetablegarden.com) splits her time between being an executive and an earth mother goddess.

No Dig Vegetable Gardens represents a clean, green way to grow your own food. The site covers all aspects of growing, cooking and preserving your harvest.

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