What are you DEHYDRATING today?

[BriteChicken]

If you have the vented shelves do you keep the parchment paper under so the mashed sweet potatoes don't just plop through? Can you use this same method with regular potatoes?

 

[VickiLynn]

I have an Excalibur dehydrator with the mesh shelves. I just plop it right on the shelves and it holds together - but the mesh is flexible, so I can bend it a little to get the dried stuff to come off later. If you can't do that, you might want to have something under it (like making fruit leather?).

For white potatoes, I've only done slices. I'll have to give mashed a try next time and see what happens.

 

[deb4o]

Vickilynn, this sounds so cool, I love sweet tators, so do you just kind of play with the amount of water? I don't see why it wouldn't work with whiote spuds just as well.

 

[ORChick]

I have dried mashed potatoes in the past, though I have to be honest and say that I haven't yet re-hydrated them I just spread them out on the sheets I have for fruit leather. They appear to be fine.

 

[xpc]

I was gonna say liver but that would be apropos

 

[murphysranch]

I've got turnip leaves and Kale leaves drying in my car.

 

[Wifezilla]

I dried some ginger a few week ago. I thought it was OVER dry, but no biggie. Today I went to use some and I had a bag of mold! WTH??

 

[VickiLynn]

I dried some ginger a few week ago. I thought it was OVER dry, but no biggie. Today I went to use some and I had a bag of mold! WTH??

Didn't you have some moldy apples a few days ago, too? I guess the little fuzzies like it at your place.

 

[Farmfresh]

That used to happen to me until I started pasteurizing my dried goods before long term storage. Especially juicy things like apples or berries or your ginger. I would get some surface mold after storage.

If you pop it in the oven at 160 for a few minutes before storage those last little spores are killed.

 

[xpc]

That used to happen to me until I started pasteurizing my dried goods before long term storage. Especially juicy things like apples or berries or your ginger. I would get some surface mold after storage.

If you pop it in the oven at 160 for a few minutes before storage those last little spores are killed.

Remember you have to get to 160F quickly (inside temp) so as not to spawn more bugs for when the food does wake up it starts from where it left off.

We used double plate heat exchangers with counter-flow, in the dairy business "LAW" lockouts and seals had to monitor milk runs at 161F for 16 seconds, if it wavered for 1 fraction of a second the whole mess was sent to the drain fields.

I would have to take the USDA inspector around for his tours and the stories he told me would scare the chitterlings off a bull rhino. Like all dairy's we had a hidden button that the inspector could never find that bypassed the timing pump until all was up to speed, otherwise you'd dump a 1000 gallons every time you started the pasteurizer.