Durgan,
Thanks for sharing this method.
Do your freeze after vacuum packing or dry store?
What's the shelf life?

Vacuum packed the material shown and just finished the last package all kept at room temperature. That is 7 months with no problem. The material was absolutely dry.

Thanks.

Strawberry Fruit Leather. Dehydrating.
 

[url]http://www.durgan.org/URL/?MJNXX[/url] 16 June 2013 Dehydrated Strawberries
Five pounds of strawberries were dehydrated as a slurry for 12 hours at 145F/63C. This is a fruit leather.The product may be vacuum packed and kept for long periods depending upon he amount of moisture left in the product. If perfectly dry and almost like leather it will keep indefinitely. There is always an issue with sticking to the pan.On the next effort a thin film of vegetable oil will be applied to the pan in an attempt to eliminate the sticking problem.Strawberries have little sugar and usually the leather is almost as sour as a mild lemon.

Dehydrating Vegetables
 

[url]http://www.durgan.org/URL/?EIVPU[/url] 29 June 2013 Dehydrating Vegetables.
All the vegetables available in the garden were collected and made into a dry dehydrated product for long term storage at room temperature.Purpose to preserve abundant, quality produce for off season use. The product will be reconstituted in water and used as a soup base or simply a drink. Vegetables utilized are, carrots,beets,snow peas,Romaine lettuce, Pak Choy,celery, two kale, collards,purslane, basil,dill, garlic,mint,tomatoes,chives. The vegetables were washed and blended into a slurry. Weight about 10 pounds, which after dehydrating was reduced to slightly less than a pound, about 10 to 1. Only enough water was added to facilitate blending.My new Ninja blender was utilized. The blended slurry was placed on Teflon pans, lightly greased with butter to reduce sticking. Dehydrating was at 145F/63C for about 15 hours until quite dry. The end product was blended into small pieces almost a powder and vacuum packed in 100 grams size packages. Pictures depict the preserving process.

Great job but I have a concern and a suggestion. It seems to be that lightly greasing the pan with butter or any oil for that matter could potentially lead to rancidity and possible pathogenic toxicity. Parchment paper or even a silpat lining would be a much better choice. Both would keep the slurry from sticking and wouldn't add anything to cause spoilage. Parchment can be reused as long as it doesn't have anything sticking to it and silpat can be reused indefinitely.

Certainly the silpat lining will get a close look. First time I heard about it. I have tried parchment paper and found it wanting.

The butter is almost a "no see-em" coating so rancidity is probably not of too much concern. I found vegetable oil to be useless.

Wow, amazing work. I would never have thought of drying lettuce! But then my family used to dry cucumbers. They are sliced then mixed with wood ash to preserve the green skin color, sun dried.
We also dried lots of zucchinis, large ones, before the skin turned tough. Cut the fruit in harf, empty the seeds, then take one half, turn and cut it on a blade fixed on a board... keep turning and go as long as you want, then hang the thin stripes on clothline to dry, and braid the strips when dry but pliable to store.

Interesting how people find ways to preserve the bounty from the summer.

dehydrating question
 

Purchased a used dehydrator this week and am using it for the first time for tomatoes. I put in about 5 trays of sliced tomatoes about 2 PM. It is now 10:30 PM and they are not finished drying. Since this is my first time dehydrating, I was wondering how to proceed... Since it is late at night and I would like to get some sleep, should I turn the dehydrator on low and let it run all night? I'm afraid if I just let it run at the suggested dehydrating temp, the maters will be done to a crisp by the time I get up in the morning. Or should I turn the machine off and continue tomorrow? It is EXTREMELY humid out and I'm afraid that if I turn it off, the maters will mold. I do not have a timer (either on the machine or otherwise). Need I sit up all night????

Donna

I turn the dehydrator on and forget about it, for however many days... (yes I wrote days)... that it takes to finish. Things are crisp when finished dehydrating. That's just what a dehydrator does. They don't get any crisper if I leave them in for an extra day after they are already crisp.

[QUOTE=DonnaMarieNJ;374143]Purchased a used dehydrator this week and am using it for the first time for tomatoes. I put in about 5 trays of sliced tomatoes about 2 PM. It is now 10:30 PM and they are not finished drying. Since this is my first time dehydrating, I was wondering how to proceed... Since it is late at night and I would like to get some sleep, should I turn the dehydrator on low and let it run all night? I'm afraid if I just let it run at the suggested dehydrating temp, the maters will be done to a crisp by the time I get up in the morning. Or should I turn the machine off and continue tomorrow? It is EXTREMELY humid out and I'm afraid that if I turn it off, the maters will mold. I do not have a timer (either on the machine or otherwise). Need I sit up all night????

Donna[/QUOTE]
I would turn it off and leave the door open on the dehydrator. If you have a small fan, set it to blow near them. it will continue to dry them some but not to a crisp and will prevent mold.
Donna, Did you cut the slices pretty thick? It is hard to gauge a machine, new or used until you use it a few times. As there is no timer, for subsequent batches, you might consider purchasing one of the digital timers available to plug it into and then the timer plugs into the socket. They are like 10 or15 bucks. You can then set the "on" and"off" times on the timer. This is what I use on my greenhouse lights... I dry 400 to 600 lbs a year so I more than understand your dilemma !

[QUOTE=joseph;374153]I turn the dehydrator on and forget about it, for however many days... (yes I wrote days)... that it takes to finish. Things are crisp when finished dehydrating. That's just what a dehydrator does. They don't get any crisper if I leave them in for an extra day after they are already crisp.[/QUOTE]

Same here. For me, small cherry tomatoes sliced in half took at least a day and a half. If I just cut the tiny ones, without slicing them all the way through, some of them were still soggy after 2.5 days so I composted them.

I tried some sliced tomatoes last year that got moldy, but it looked like someone turned off the dehydrator, so that could be why. I also sliced them too thickly and wasn't around to check the dehydrator more than twice a day. If I do sliced tomatoes again, I'll (a) use parchment -- it gets messy to dry juicy tomatoes, and (b) make sure I'm around to check on them a little more, to make sure it doesn't get turned off, and to rotate trays, and (c) even though my dehydrator has 7 layers, I'll use only the 3 bottom layers for tomatoes, to make sure they have a chance of dehydrating before mold sets in.

I have had pineapple guavas turn darker colors and taste a little overdone, but generally I check only once in 24 hours. If you're checking every 8 hours or so, it should be fine.

I like to dry my food so it's crisp, so that there's no chance of mold forming. If they're even a little bit pliable, that means they still have some water content and are susceptible to mold.

How thick do you slice tomatoes to dry?

Thanks for your replies. Since it was my first time (and with a used dehydrator, no less, purchased from a stranger), I experimented and sliced the tomatoes in a variety of ways. the cherries, I sliced in half, and they are still wet (after 24 hours). The slices, tho, are mostly dry now. They are not crispy, but chewy. What made me so nervous was the fact that I didn't know what condition the dehydrator was in. The seller said it was in almost new condition, but I had no idea if that was true. Not only was I afraid to overdry the tomatoes, but what if the dehydrator had electrical problems during the night? I had an anxious night's sleep. However, I fretted for nothing, as it is still going strong.

Another question - do I have to put the dried tomatoes in the freezer to kill off any bug larvae (sp?) that might be inside the maters? I was under the assumption that residential freezers were not cold enough to kill bugs.

Thanks again.

Donna

I cycle all of my seeds through the freezer to kill bugs. Two days seems to be about right. If I'm feeling really anal about a particular batch of seeds, I'll put them in the freezer for two days, take them out for a week, and put them back in for another two days. I've never had a bug problem in seeds treated that way and stored in glass jars. Bugs can chew into plastic bags and re-infest seeds.

I don't typically cycle dehydrated food through the freezer, but it wouldn't hurt to do so as long as it was in an air-tight container.