Am fortunate in that I've had an Excalibur 9 tray dehydrator for about 13 years now, a real work horse, love it. The things I dehydrate most frequently include onions, peppers, carrots, tomatoes, celery, mushrooms and greens such as spinach & chard - using them primarily in soups, stews, dips and thrown in when cooking rice. I also make veg powder using a coffee / spice grinder. The veg have to be really dry for this, especially the tomatoes.
The past two years have dehydrated a lot of onions due to the weather being exceeding rainy and the onions beginning to rot in the ground before totally ready to harvest. A lot of peeling / trimming required but the results have been great – very sweet tasty dried onions, maybe even better than fresh and once the initial work is done, so easy to use.
Several things I was skeptical about at first we now really like - okra - used in all the above ways and cucumbers which make little chips of concentrated flavor that are great for a crunchy texture salad topping.
I tried potatoes from the garden for the first time this year, shreds and slices. The first batch I blanched after cutting up, did not work so swell, stuck together a lot and were difficult to separate to put on the racks, the second batch I cooked / blanched first then cut, much better. Next time I will try putting in the refrigerator overnight after cooking / blanching to firm up before cutting. One thing I am unclear on is how long to cook / blanch potatoes before drying. Would boiling whole potatoes to a point one would consider about half done and then proceeding with the drying process be enough or too much?
Tried blueberries this year, brought to boil to blanch / pop skins. The results were pretty messy but did dry well and broke up into blueberry shreds with intense flavor. Also do tea and seasoning herbs, did a bunch of chives this spring and was amazed at how well they have kept a bright green color.
So far I’ve had pretty good results storing dehydrated veg, but have never kept anything more than 2 or 3 years. The only losses have been peppers which became infested with bugs (not sure what kind) after about a year. They were in plastic bags in a large plastic container. I now store most everything in glass canning jars in a dark cabinet. Recently purchased some oxygen absorber packets. One of my next investments will be a vacume sealer. The info in this thread re: vac sealing jars answered a lot of my questions, never understood before how that was possible. Thanx.
