Dehydrating Mania

I have always liked dried fruits but the stuff I like (blueberries, strawberries and cherries) are kind of expensive and they usually have chemicals and sugar added to them.

I started doing a little research and it turns out that dehydrating is really easy so I picked up a food dehydrator and started experimenting. 

There are lots of food dehydrators out there so don't get overwhelmed. The things you want to look for are units that have varying temperatures and units with the fan on the top. A timer would be super helpful but I think those are a bit pricier and it isn't a necessity. This little guy was $64.00 but I had a 20% off coupon from Bed, Bath and Beyond SCORE!

Brand new dehydrator and some strawberries and we are ready to go!

 

Dehydrating food is super complicated. Ha ha, just kidding. It is really easy. Almost too easy, you think you are for sure doing something wrong because it is way too easy.

You start out with a whole mess of strawberries and then you pull out all the stems. This handy little gizmo made quick work of this task.

Trying to get a little artsy with the photography and this is what you get

Once the strawberries have all their little green tops removed you must rinse them thoroughly and then you slice them all up.

They look so deleeeeshious

 

 

I read different articles about the required thickness of the slices from 1/4 inch to 1/2 an inch to just slice them in half. I went with about 1/2 and inch because I was hoping for some chewy dried strawberries. Once I sliced them all up I placed them on the dehydrating trays.

I turned the dehydrator on to 160 degrees for the first two hours and then dialed it back to 135 degrees for the rest of the time. So... when we are talking about time, we are talking about a looooong time. Strawberries can take anywhere from 10-14 hours. It is best to start this project first thing in the morning or in the evening. You don't want to have to be getting up at midnight to go check on your strawberries to see how they are doing.



These strawberries took about 11 hours. It maybe been a little bit faster if I hadn't been lifting the lid on the dehydrator every hour or so to see how things were coming. I couldn't help it, the whole house smelled like strawberries, it was intoxicating.

This is about 5 hours in. I forgot to take a finished product picture.

As the strawberries dry out you will realize that slicing them uniformly is pretty key. Some of them are pliable and others are crunchy little strawberry crisps. The crunchy ones taste ok but the chewy ones are what we are going for. 

When I felt like they reached a good consistency (pliable not crunchy) I shut off the dehydrator and let everything cool down then I put them in a quart size jar with a screw top lid and have been munching on them ever since.  Look out blueberries! You are next!

Can you believe this is all you get from all those strawberries?