I hate wasting food- for so many reasons. It’s expensive and so many people are hungry that it pains me to toss good food in the trash.
So I am always looking for ways to preserve food that we just aren’t going to eat in time. Freezing is one of my favorite methods but dehydrating is another! It’s best to use foods before they get to ripe so if you overbought tomatoes or fruits this is a great way to preserve them!
Some of my favorite foods to dehydrate are tomatoes and fruits. If we have bananas we won’t eat before they become too ripe and we’re sick of banana bread- I pop them in the dehydrator and make banana chips. Dehydrated strawberries are great to add to oatmeal or cereal! Tomatoes are great to add to stews and soups. They seem to be much more flavorful once all the water content is gone!
PickYourOwn.org has a great step by step process of dehydrating food.
A few of my favorite recipes & directions:
Fruit Leathers
Drying Herbs
Vegetables
Kohls has a dehydrator on sale for $34.99- use CYBERWEEK to save an extra 20% and get free shipping
Amazon has a ton of choices ranging from$35 to over $400!
You can dry food in your oven too!
It takes about twice as long because most ovens do not have a fan that allows air movement so it’s not as efficient and uses more energy. The University of Georgia has some good directions for drying food in an oven.
For me with 4 children- I can’t leave my oven door propped open so I go the dehydrator route! Mine is an OLD version that isn’t even sold anymore but I LOVE it. My kids love helping to put the items on the trays big and plump and see them come out all wrinkled!
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