Dehydrating

I scored a good deal on organic carrots from the local grocery store recently. I got two 10 pound bags of carrots for $6.00 each. This was a good opportunity to stock up the shelves a bit with my dehydrator.

Here are the results.

The 20 pounds of organic carrots getting their wash up.


Here are the same 20 pounds (minus enough for dinner) after drying.


The majority went into carrot coins that will be used for adding to soups, stews, casseroles and rehydrated as side dishes. The coins were blanched before dehydrating. They were not peeled. These carrots were very sweet and you can tell that because they actually caramelized slightly as they dried. That is why they turned ever so slightly brown. I also dehydrated 9 well packed cups of unblanched grated carrot for use in carrot cakes and baking. As you can see it loses some color compared to the blanched stuff. Blanched carrots also cook faster. This was 9 very full cups fresh and ended up as 3 cups dry product.



All in all a great easy way to preserve a lot of food, shelf stable in a very small space.

Looks good, I don't care for the texture of dehydrated veggies when reconstituted. How well do the shredded ones work in the cake?

PATRICE IN IL wrote:Looks good, I don't care for the texture of dehydrated veggies when reconstituted.  

Really? Most people can't tell the difference. I especially like having them on hand to add to recipes. The shreds do well in the recipes. I either add extra liquid to the recipe and just chuck them in or you can rehydrate with some boiling water and then add to the recipe.

I'll have to keep that in mind if I find a good deal on carrots.

Maybe I need to try dehydrating veggies again, I used frozen veggie blend last time and wasn't thriled with the leathery texture of some of the stuff after rehydration.

Probably the entire problem. Start with good fresh veggies and prep them like you would to freeze.

My family loves most veggies dehydrated - green beans... not so much. Green beans do turn out leathery in my opinion. They still do fine if you are putting them in a soup or something, but as a side dish yuck.

Thanks for the advice, I'll have to give it another try.