Get Outdoors - Tips and Techniques: Step-by-Step Food Drying

There is something satisfying and miraculous about the metamorphosis involved in food drying: changing food into such a reduced, withered form; food that will wait patiently for the moment you choose to return it, again miraculously, to its original state.1. Food Sources

A dehydrator grants you the freedom to indulge in bulk, to take advantage of foods that are in season or on sale, and to dry at the peak of freshness. Farmer's markets and fruit stands are terrific sources of fresh, unpackaged produce. Orchards often have seasonal specials or pick-your-own deals. Your own garden can provide good quantities of vegetables and herbs/spices. Instead of canning or freezing your excess garden produce, try drying it. For big projects, don't limit yourself to fresh food alone. Some canned or frozen products dry well, cost very little, and add variety to your stock. Canned green chilis dry up until they're nearly weightless and add character to enchiladas or chili.

2. The Prep

Fruit
Fruits are almost ready to dry without much treatment. Wash them well, core or pit apples, pears, peaches, and the like, cut away any bruised areas, and you're ready to go. For best results slice fruit uniformly, so it?ll all be done at once. Small fruits like cherries can be cut in half. Larger fruits should be sliced evenly, but not too thin. To dry apricots or other halved fruit, lay them skin-side down on the trays to better retain flavor.Skinning fruit is a matter of personal preference. Without skins the drying goes more quickly and evenly, but it involves more prep work and some people prefer the tangy flavor of skins. Check drying charts for temperature.

Fresh Vegetables
As with fruit, select vegetables at their peak, wash them in cold water, and cut away bruises. Peel or pare the tough, fibrous sections, and core if necessary (outer sheath of broccoli, outside leaves of cabbage heads, innards of green peppers). Slice, shred, or chop vegetables uniformly to suit your recipes.

Almost all vegetables require a pretreatment step to retard the enzyme action that can eventually lead to spoilage. Only a few varieties, such as mushrooms, tomatoes, and onions, escape this fate. The easiest method of treatment is water or steam blanching (steam retains more of the water-soluble vitamins and minerals). Use a double boiler or streamer insert, and pile the vegetables loosely no more than 2 to 3 inches deep. Steam until heated through and slightly tender (not fully cooked). Stir contents periodically, if necessary, to steam evenly. Check drying charts for temperature.

Meat and Dairy
High fat content in meat and dairy products make them the trickiest of the food groups to dry and store. The general rule is to handle them as little as possible, dry them quickly, and use them up before prolonged storage permits them to go rancid. Prepare by cooking thoroughly (usually by boiling), then allow to cool. Pick off or cut away any remaining fat. Chop into cubes, shred, grind up, and dry until all discernible moisture has been removed. Avoid uncooked pork products, because even high-temperature drying won't completely assure the destruction of trichinella parasites.

For vegetarians or those who remain leery of dried meats, tofu is a viable substitute. Try to get firm tofu cakes. Butcher it into 1-inch cubes or thin strips, and dry without any treatment.

Eggs are the main dairy product worth the trouble of drying. Again, high fat content is a concern, so minimize the time spent handling and processing. Break the desired number of raw eggs into a bowl (I do 8 on a tray) and beat them together. Add spices if you like before pouring onto the tray insert. Set at fairly high heat (140 degrees F) until the surface is dry and crumbly to the touch.

Grated cheese can be dried for good snacks.

Canned and Frozen Food
Canned foods - from green beans to refried beans, pineapple to green chilis - are as simple to dry as one could ever ask. Open the can, drain out the liquid, dash the contents evenly on your trays, and fire up your dehydrator.

Frozen foods are almost as easy. I usually steam-blanch frozen vegetables slightly, both to thaw them and to retard any stubborn enzyme activity, then get on with it.

Liquids
Fruit leathers, leftover spaghetti sauce, eggs, tomato sauce, stews, hummus, all require containment. Most store-bought dehydrators come with tray or shelf inserts for this purpose. If you opt for a homemade dryer, you'll need to customize your own plastic sheets, or use a plastic wrap or waxed paper layer to contain the fluid. To dry liquids quickly, spread the layer fairly thin (less than 1/4 inch deep).

Blend or puree the food so it's a fairly consistent thickness. Big chunks won't dry at the same rate as sauce, resulting in pockets of moisture. If you want to retain the chunkiness of a dish, stick a balance between overdrying some of it and underdrying the rest. Once packaged, the moisture will distribute itself throughout the contents.Beans
Dried beans should be soaked overnight and then cooked until tender. Rinse beans thoroughly and add a bit of salt (optional) for flavor. Dry whole, mash into pieces, or coarsely puree in a blender or food processor. Dry at 135 degrees F until hard (3 to 10 hours).

To rehydrate, cover beans with water for 1 hour or more before mealtime, or simmer gently, adding more water as needed. If you simmer too long, the beans will start to disintegrate.

Rice
Cook rice until tender, then spread on solid trays. Try to avoid big clumps. Dry at 135 degrees F until hard (2 to 6 hours). Put the rice in a plastic bag and work it between your fingers to break it apart. Rehydrate by soaking in water before mealtime or recooking it with twice as much water as rice. Cooking time will be about half the usual.

Pasta
Cook pasta in plenty of boiling water, rinse, then spread on trays. Dry at 135 degrees F for 2 to 6 hours, until noodles are brittle and hard. Soak in warm water to rehydrate, or boil noodles for about half the normal cooking time.

Not Worth the Effort
After years at this game, I've come to the conclusion that there are a few foods that simply aren't worth the effort to dry. Onions fall into this category. I recommend buying diced onion bits; they can be found at very reasonable prices through local health-food stores. Dried potatoes are also cheap and readily available, and save you the chopping, blanching chore. Powdered milk is expensive but worth the price. You may find other dried products in your area stores that will be worth the laborsaving convenience.

3. Into the Heat

You?ve done the hard part. Now it's time to zap food into the dry dimension. Remember, drying should be a steady, gentle process. High heat robs nutrients and vitamins, and too prolonged an exposure risks contamination and spoilage.

In general, dry similar foods at the same time to minimize mixing flavors and odors. Load the trays evenly, with space between pieces so the airflow is free to contact all parts of the food.

Becoming accustomed to a dryer is like working into the idiosyncrasies of a new backpack or discovering the quirks of a strange boat. Every machine is unique. Use the drying charts as a guideline, but understand that altitude, climate, fluctuations in the amount of food in a batch, variations in dehydrators, and other factors will shorten or lengthen those times.

Testing for doneness is an acquired skill, more a matter of experience and feel than of hard and fast rules. Fruits should be leathery. Vegetables should have less moisture remaining than fruit, so they'll often feel brittle and crisp. Meat and dairy products need to be quite free of moisture. When they're done, they'll be crumbly, flaky, very dry to the touch. Don't overdry foods. If you do you run the risk of losing nutrients, making food tough, and turning your hard-earned provisions into tasteless chips.

4. Storage and Packaging

The enemies of dried food are sunlight, air, moisture, and high temperatures. The ideal storage site, therefore, is cool, dark and dry. Meats and eggs should, if possible, be kept in a freezer until you depart.

As soon as possible after drying, place foods in sealed bags or containers. Try to divide it up into meal-sized or one-day amounts to minimize repeated exposure to air.