Dehydrating Foods

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  • Pinecone

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Feb 4, 2013
    28,175
    I have a cheap smoker we picked up at Shot Show in the 90s.

    Basically an aluminum box with a small electric coil in the bottle. You put shredded wood into a basic fry pan. The electric coil heats the box for dehydration, and heats the wood chips for the smoke.

    We smoked a lot of home made sausage in it, when my FIL had his grocery store.
     

    lazarus

    Ultimate Member
    Jun 23, 2015
    13,678
    My 2 cents is dry what makes sense to dry and can everything else.

    My last 3 cents, because I think my advice is worth at least a nickel, you should end up canning most of the stuff that comes out of your garden in the end.

    Of course somethings you don't need to dry, like beans (because you should be allowing them to dry in the pod on the vine/bush). You can can corn, beans (but I'd again just harvest them already dried), peas, turnips, radishes, squash, zucchini, tomatoes basically any fruit and berries, etc.

    IMHO I wouldn't can sweet potatoes or potatoes, but you certainly can. We mostly just dry herbs. Venison mostly gets frozen, but we do make some meat sauce from it and our tomatoes as well as some chili with everything else from the garden (beans, corn, tomatoes, onions, garlic and venison from the woods. Only thing that doesn't come from our land is salt, pepper and cumin. Even the chilis are from the garden).

    We pretty much stick to drying herbs and usually some onion and garlic (and use the rest fresh/off the shelf as it lasts for months in the pantry). Though have tried and generally succeeded in drying just about everything. Prefer canned.
     

    MigraineMan

    Ultimate Member
    Jun 9, 2011
    19,109
    Frederick County
    Our oven crapped-out at the beginning of the pandemic. We swapped it out, in a hurry, right before the quarantine. Picked up a modern Samsung unit.

    pretext: "Hey, this thing has a 'dehydrate' function."

    MM Jr. and I are making jerky tonight.
     

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