Dehydrating Green Beans

This year has been an awesome year for growing green beans in our garden. We have eaten all the fresh beans that we have wanted to eat...and then some. We canned green beans, froze green beans, and the bushes are still producing so we are now dehydrating the beans..

Green beans are perhaps one of the easiest vegetables to dehydrate. Once dehydrated, you can easily add them to soups, stews, casseroles, or just eat them plain as is for a snack. While you will need to check with the manual for your dehydrator for specific instructions, this is how I dehydrate green beans:

 

After picking beans, carefully break off ends and break beans into desired lengths. Some people cut off the ends off with a knife rather than breaking them, but I was raised breaking them so that is how I do it. Either way is just fine.

Thoroughly rise off the beans to remove any residue left by insects or other kinds of dirt.

Place green beans into boiling water and boil for 2 minutes.

Immediately place beans into ice water to “shock” them to stop the cooking process.

Drain off beans and place beans onto trays and place into dehydrator.

Dry at 125°F for 6-11 hours or until beans are completely dry and brittle. Store in an air tight container.

To Use: To rehydrate beans, for every 1 cup of dehydrated beans, let soak in 2 ½ cups of water for at least 1 hour. Then, place onto stove and allow to simmer until the beans are tender.

Thanks for reading and visiting my blog. :-)

Apples – Dehydrating

There are many different way to preserve apples. There is canning, freezing, placing in root cellars, and dehydrating. Today, I will be talking about dehydrating apples using a dehydrator as opposed to solar dehydrating or dehydrating using your kitchen oven.

Step One:

Wash and dry the apples. Peel the apples. You can leave the peel on if you want to, but I have found that it makes the dehydrated apple tougher. Core and slice the apples. Keep sliced apple pieces between 1/8 to ¼ inches thick.

 

Step Two:

Using one of the following methods to treat the apples to protect them against discoloration.

• Lemon Juice: mix 1 cup of lemon juice and 1 quart of water together. (This is what I used this time, and I am not liking the coloring of the apple after they were dehydrated. I think that using ascorbic acid gives a much better result.)
• Sodium Bisulfite: mix together 2 teaspoons of sodium bisulfite with 1 quart of water.
• Ascorbic Acid: mix 1 Tablespoon and 1 quart of water

Don't let the apple slices soak in the mixture for more than 10 minutes. Drain the liquid from the apples. (I used a slotted spoon to lift the apples out of the liquid and drained them in a colander.)

Step Three:

Place in single layers onto the dehydrator trays. Place in dehydrator and allow the fruit to completely dry rotating trays every 2 hours. For me, the total time for drying the apples in the dehydrator took about 6 hours.

Step Four:

Store the dehydrated apples in an air-tight container and use within 1 year. (I used sandwich bags.)

Enjoy and thank you for visiting my blog.

Dehydrating Celery

For some people, the subject of dehydrating is a real yawner, but other people seem to feel that it is just about the only way to preserve food. I am somewhere in the middle. Dehydrating has its good points and some bad points. Dehydrated foods does save storage space as opposed to other methods of preserving foods, you don't really need any special equipment like you do with other preservation methods, and it is a very simple thing to do. However, dehydrating does not retain the taste and texture of the food like canning and freezing does. It also takes more time and attention. To me, being diverse in the way you preserve food is always a good thing.

There are several ways to dehydrate food. You can do it the traditional way by placing it in the sun, or you can use your kitchen oven. The third way, is to use a dehydrator. This past Christmas my darling hubs bought me a new dehydrator. Its a fairly inexpensive one as far as dehydrators go, but it works fine and gets the job done.

I have been asked by a few people how to use a dehydrator, so I thought that I would write about how I do it. Note: You cannot rehydrate celery as you can other foods, but it is good  in salads and soups.

First cut off the root end of the celery. Don't throw the end away. You can regrow your celery indoors which I will blog about on another day. Clean the celery stalks as you normally would.

 

Chop the celery into ½ inch crescents.

 

Place celery into boiling water (blanching) for 1-2 minuets.

 

After removing celery from boiling water, place it immediately into a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking process. 

Lightly pat the blanched celery dry using a clean cloth.

 Place celery onto dehydrator trays in a single layer.

 

Dry until crispy which takes 6-10 hours. After celery is fully dried, remove trays from dehydrator. Allow to cool about 10-15 minutes. Put dehydrated celery into a glass jar and screw on lid. Store in a cool, dry, place away from direct sunlight.

Enjoy and Thanks for reading. :-)