Chubbs
13-01-2016, 05:43 PM
I've owned a dehydrator for a while now but not really put it through its full potential. I have had good success with jerky and dried fruit but after a weekend on Dartmoor with various tinned foods, I started thinking what else I could dry with the machine.
I thought it would be a good idea to start with one pot meals, mainly as I'm still really a dehydrating virgin and keeping the price down would be easier in case I made any mistakes which needed to be thrown away. Only last week I visited a local cheap food store which sells goods that are very close to their use by date or are out of date. The out of date debate has never really bothered me as smell and taste are always the best indicator to how edible the food is. While in there I picked up three 800g tins of high end Italian tomatoes along with a few other bits from a local superstore and I made up 20 decent three ladle portions of tomato soup. The whole lot only cost me a maximum of £3.50, and to be honest it tastes very similar to the country's leading brand of tomato soup !.
My first one pot meal will be a real hearty vegetable soup. Yesterday I took a large onion, some swede, a couple of carrots, celery and potatoes and prepped them before boiling everything but the onion and celery. The latter were steamed so that I had more control over the cooking time. Once they were all done they were dropped into cold water to cool before drying them off and dehydrating until rock hard. A portion of the soup is now in the dehydrator on top of an adapted baking sheet and will stay there until its dry and can be broken into pieces. The only other ingredients I will be adding to the machine will be some peas and maybe a handfull of cooked pasta.
Once everything is dry it will be seperated into two small resealable bags. Everything but the potatoes will go into one and the potatoes the other. The potatoes will be rehydrated seperately from the others as I imagine they will fall to pieces and end up like mash if they were rehydrated for the same time as the others. I'm not too bothered about the amount of water that is needed to make the soup at the moment as this is only a trial. Its pretty easy to work out whats needed for the soup as you weigh the cooked ingredients before and after drying and the difference in grams is whats required in mililitres.
When it comes to making the soup I will pour hot water over the ingredients of each bag and leave for an hour until reheating and consuming !. No doubt there will be minor problems as I start the path to dehydrated foods but thats all part of it. One problem I have had already is the drying of the cooked potatoes. Some come out perfect and white while others are black. Just wondering if anybody has an idea of how to rectify this.
If anybody has any good recipe ideas, post them here as it will be appreciated.
Cheers
I thought it would be a good idea to start with one pot meals, mainly as I'm still really a dehydrating virgin and keeping the price down would be easier in case I made any mistakes which needed to be thrown away. Only last week I visited a local cheap food store which sells goods that are very close to their use by date or are out of date. The out of date debate has never really bothered me as smell and taste are always the best indicator to how edible the food is. While in there I picked up three 800g tins of high end Italian tomatoes along with a few other bits from a local superstore and I made up 20 decent three ladle portions of tomato soup. The whole lot only cost me a maximum of £3.50, and to be honest it tastes very similar to the country's leading brand of tomato soup !.
My first one pot meal will be a real hearty vegetable soup. Yesterday I took a large onion, some swede, a couple of carrots, celery and potatoes and prepped them before boiling everything but the onion and celery. The latter were steamed so that I had more control over the cooking time. Once they were all done they were dropped into cold water to cool before drying them off and dehydrating until rock hard. A portion of the soup is now in the dehydrator on top of an adapted baking sheet and will stay there until its dry and can be broken into pieces. The only other ingredients I will be adding to the machine will be some peas and maybe a handfull of cooked pasta.
Once everything is dry it will be seperated into two small resealable bags. Everything but the potatoes will go into one and the potatoes the other. The potatoes will be rehydrated seperately from the others as I imagine they will fall to pieces and end up like mash if they were rehydrated for the same time as the others. I'm not too bothered about the amount of water that is needed to make the soup at the moment as this is only a trial. Its pretty easy to work out whats needed for the soup as you weigh the cooked ingredients before and after drying and the difference in grams is whats required in mililitres.
When it comes to making the soup I will pour hot water over the ingredients of each bag and leave for an hour until reheating and consuming !. No doubt there will be minor problems as I start the path to dehydrated foods but thats all part of it. One problem I have had already is the drying of the cooked potatoes. Some come out perfect and white while others are black. Just wondering if anybody has an idea of how to rectify this.
If anybody has any good recipe ideas, post them here as it will be appreciated.
Cheers