Dehydrator machine

[Slatterna]

Are these worth it?

I'm thinking of buying one for Brexit prepping and also just to have a reserve of different foods to hand for lean periods.

Are they easy to use (I'm clumsy and burn pizza)? Do they use a lot of electricity? I've read they can take over a day to dry stuff out.

My dad (leaver) said I should save my money, right enough he thinks it "will all be fine"...

Well, I've managed to gently cremate everything, clearly it doesn't take quite as long as I thought. I'll be messing around with it for a bit longer to see what I can do with it.

I definitely want to dehydrate some strawberries as I saw them added to stuff like frosting as flavour enhancers so to speak.

I'm also lazy so I read about dehydrating frozen veg as they're already prepped and it's possible. Obviously you thaw them out first, but still.

I think you just bung frozen veg on the machine. Haven't done it yet so I haven't looked into it properly but it's on my To Try list.

bellinisurge seeems you're right so I think I'll be giving that a go tomorrow as we have very limited freezer space and this will prevent us from getting scurvy .

Plus, DS occasionally removes meat and pretty much everything else apart from fresh fruit and steamed vegetables so would like to have a backup.

This weekend's adventures in dehydration are three sliced up lemons that were left over from a bag of "wonky " lemons I bought a few weeks back at Aldi. Plus some apple purée fruit leather. Three red apples that were declared "a bit soft" by my dh and dd but which have stewed up and puréed nicely. They were all fresh and in good nick.

And this weekend's adventure in dehydration is a bag of wonky peppers from Aldi. Behold the work in progress...

And the final result - six fresh peppers now in a jar. For whenever.

I love my dehydrator and do loads of peppers tomatoes chillies. The dgc love dried apples, bananas and pears are a huge favourite. I do a lot of raspberries and strawberry but no one else is allowed those.

I went through a big dried fruit phase. Gained 5 pounds and a stern talking-to from my dentist. Obviously for prepping purposes you don’t worry too much about these things but for the people eating three dried pineapples at their desk in a week or whatever would be much much much better served to just eat fresh fruit.

My kids’ dentist is also very anti dried fruit/fruit snacks.

If I can have fresh fruit and veg, I will have it. Prepping is having plans in place for when you can't have fresh @TaxiGood

Off work this morning. Sneaky trip to Morrison's and there was a stew pack reduced to 8p (!) in the reduced section . Turnip, carrot and parsnip all dehydrating nicely. Make a nice stew or mash at some point. I saved some carrots to eat fresh and I would never dehydrate the onions - too smelly so I bought some ages ago.
All in all, nice little extra.

This weekend's attempt - three punnets of raspberries - in the reduced aisle but still perfectly good. Obviously not uk in season ones. Spanish, I think, but pretty tasty.
Took an age so not sure if this way is better than usual fruit leather. Still , be nice on a dull cereal.

Mafe a gorgeous pasta sauce this week using dried chilli dried tomatoes, dried peppers and mushrooms. I bought the mushrooms before drying them but the rest was home grown. I've had a vile cold and couldn't face shopping.

Yum @InfiniteSheldon .

We needed some more peppers for a slow cooker curry. Recipe required more than we had - DH is a keen cook. Neither of us could be arsed to go to the shops at the end of a tough week.
Grabbed my jar of dehydrated ones and said "Tadaa!". He grudgingly allowed these.
Pronounced them "delicious ".

More dehydrator mania - this time I tried to dehydrate a bag of frozen mixed veg:broccoli, carrot and sweet corn. Came out lovely and fitted in a half pint jam jar rather than taking up space in the freezer.

ha had to come and tell you lot, I've just put my first load in the my dehydrated.

I've been wanting one for ages, inspired by reading about all bellinisurge antics. I too an waiting for the day you try your Turkey mince

I never mentioned to the family I wanted one, because I thought DH and DC might think I was going to far with the prepping thing, it's a standing joke about my Apoca box (it actually a whole pantry and 3 freezers plus non food items) although with BREXIT looming they have seen some sence in my prepping.

anyhoo dc have decided to go on a health kick and have started eating dried fruit. DH realised it's quite expensive, and came across dehydrators. I feigned interest and just said yeah sounds good. Then later sent him a link to some I'd had in amazon basket.

Yesterday he told me he order one. I was so chuffed.

Getting the kilner jars next

Well done! Just did some more frozen veg yesterday. I'm not keen on frozen veg generally and resent them clogging up my freezer just because I grudgingly accept they are dead handy.

Turkey mince usage is being plotted.😂

Those jars look really colourful.

So far I've tried out stuff for DC to nipple.
apples,banana, rasberrys and strawberries.

Non of us were keen on the Apple, so I think I'll stick with harvesting, stewing and storing apple sauce in the jars, for pies and crumbles. it's a bit more faff but at least they'll get eaten.

I like the banana, no one else does.

Raspberries, we have it up as a bad job, they didn't really work.

But the strawberries have gone down a storm. so have put big batch on today.

Next we'll try mangos and pineapple.

Finally ordered a cheap dehydrator after much deliberation. Have three large apple trees so will see if I can make some apple rings. My attempt last year to use apples to make cider were a complete failure, so hopefully I will have more success drying them!

Also look up apple butter - a non- dehydrator thing. But I am currently enjoying on toast some apple butter I made with apples that a colleague brought into work last year.

Enjoy experimenting,@perhapstomorrow . Fruit and veg are coming into season now and so should be a bit cheaper. Good time to give it a go.

Orange fruit leather was this weekend's project. Uncharacteristically I'm putting it in the freezer to prolong its life.
Dd has already nicked some.
Whizzed up some peeled oranges (really sweet ones) in the food processor with some stewed apple. Added some zest and a teaspoon of local honey and whizzed again.