10 Essential Dehydrated Foods You Need in Your Pantry!

hi folks it's Darcy from the purposefulpantry.com and today we're talking about the 15 essential dehydrated foods that every Pantry should have now I'm going to go with a caveat of yes it will matter about your food needs your dietary restrictions what your family can get a hold of what your family actually eats but these are the 15 foods that I think are really important for every dehydrated Pantry to have give or take what works for your family okay so at least you can start with these and work your way to a pantry full of dehydrated foods that you love just like that one right there can you see it over there that's half empty because it's all sitting on my desk so I can show you what they are okay so uh these are in no order uh I'm gonna have a list on my website down I'll believe it down the bottom so that you can go and look to see how to do all these things it will take you to each uh recipe and to walk you through how to do it number one onions every Pantry should have dehydrated onions on their shelves now I know that they can be really stinky and you may not like doing them because they smell the house up do them outside okay because that's the best way to do it as long as it's not raining and yes of course look at your manual to see if your dehydrator says don't use it outside don't take my word that you can do it outside anyway just use an approved Outlet yeah those kind of things that I'm not supposed to say do it outside however or in your garage or wherever however I found a trick to doing dehydrated onions that doesn't stink up your house as badly I should say it's still gonna smell but it's not going to be anywhere near as bad as if it was fresh use frozen onions okay yes Frozen onions are probably fresher than the onions that you have on your tables at your grocery store because they didn't have to get shipped in from other parts of the world if you don't have somebody locally who grows them all year long so that you can have them in your store all the time they are harvested and sent right to the the warehouse or to the the manufacturer to go ahead and get processed to be frozen so they are fresher than what you typically can find in the grocery store on the Shelf now that's not everywhere but that can be in a lot of places in the states they don't smell as much and they're wonderful to do and they are handy because they're already prepped for you you can just open the bags throw them on your trays and dry them and they are easy so every March when they go on sale at our store usually for about a dollar a bag I will stock up like crazy I will buy bags and bags and bags and I will spend the next few days drying so that I always have a gallon sized jar of dried onions the reason being is my husband does not like cooked onions ever in anything not even raw he doesn't like onions but he loves onions flavor so I make onion powder like mad so I keep a lot of this on hand all the time because it tastes so much better freshly powdered than it does coming from a store because that stuff has been sitting on the shelf for quite a long time powders tend to to uh lose their punch after a time so we have freshly ground onion powder that's almost never more than three months old on hand all the time so that's how I do this but there are some other options for doing onions too if you don't like white onions caramelize your onions I don't know if you can see it here if this is going to do it um there we go caramelized onions are basically stewed onions that are browned up is As intense as you want to go and then when they're dried they have this sweet intense flavor that is good to cook with it's good to make powders from and they're wonderful to eat you can also do those green onions or scallions I mean that's what this is I keep a jar of this all the time these are great to go on top of a soup uh or maybe even in ramen to freshen up maybe on some eggs you can rehydrate this if you'd like and use that way but I just let the soup rehydrate it as it sits but it's a great staple to have on your shelf so onions number one number two mushrooms in our family we don't like rehydrated mushrooms we love them fresh and we love them dried so we don't like the spongy kind of uh rubbery texture they can have when they've been rehydrated but what I do I found a trick for our family that works great it makes all the mouths happy instead of those of us who don't like it is I make mushroom bits so I run this through my vegetable chopper it's one of those full star choppers that you put a vegetable on and you do the handle and it takes it through a cutter it makes little dices of things but you can also do it in the food processor like with a really rough chop then when we rehydrate these and put them in a super stew or eggs or whatever we do with them it's not that big chunk of rehydrated mushroom in our food so we either eat them really fresh or we eat them really dried or we do these little bits and these bits uh this half gallon jar I use one about I would say maybe every four months we go through a lot of mushrooms in our house we like mushroom flavor so I use a lot of this and the bits have made it where I can put it in anything and we're all good with it but something else that you can do with mushrooms is mushroom powder all right so mushroom powder I have a whole quart Jar full of mushroom powder next to my stove that I use to flavor anything that we're cooking we special like them in eggs and I use it to boost the what it's called is the Umami flavor of anything that I'm making which is kind of like this meaty flavor that's not really meat um to give things a more intense flavor but then what I also do with it as I make this Umami seasoning which is a seasoning blend of thyme mushroom salt onion powder and some other things that I forgot because it's been a little while since I had to make some but I keep this on the Shelf all the time as a flavoring agent as well and I'll leave the link for this down below in the description box to be able to print off the recipe for doing this number three frozen vegetables now I could say just corn because corn is so easy to throw into things it's easy to grind to make some alternative cornmeal doesn't really replace regular cornmeal but if you're out you can make some cornmeal with this and make some some cornbread um but we're actually talking about sweet uh no we're actually talking about frozen vegetables the reason being frozen vegetables are already cut blanched and ready to go you can open the bags throw them on your trays dry them and have those vegetables on your shelf all the time and for those of you who don't have your own Gardens and have problems getting certain vegetables during the year this is the way to do it you can dry them and keep them on the Shelf including broccoli and cauliflower even but what I do with frozen broccoli and cauliflower is I usually cut those down a little bit and then make them uh smaller because they usually are too large of a chunk these carrots are also Frozen carrots I got to dry and have on hand all the time so you can get so many varieties of vegetables in your groceries freezer section that are easy to dry all year long and can be a way that if you have a garden and you run out of something and you need to dry more until the next season go to the freezer section they go on sale really often and that can help you out but here's the thing that you can also do with any kind of of dried vegetable that you have if you find that you didn't like how it tastes or you made more than you can rotate through in about two years you know that's about how long most dehydrated Foods last optimally you can make vegetable powder now what I did a couple weeks ago is I cleaned out my dehydrating Pantry of things that we are running low on and I know I know I'm not going to use them up soon or I had way too much of or I found that we didn't like or whatever I'll leave the link for that up in the description box and down below um but we make vegetable powder out of all of it and now this is probably let me see if I can remember how many vegetables went into this carrots broccoli cauliflower some zucchini some strawberry tops um peas green beans and I don't even remember what else went into here but this is a lot of vegetables that are in here ready to go that I will sprinkle into everything that we make even into pancakes I will put it in rice I will put it into uh you know I'll sneak it into anything that I can sneak it into they know I put it in there so it's not like I'm trying to trick my family somehow but we've used this in everything that we make because it's added nutrients to everything that you're cooking what number is this I've forgotten the next essential herbs Dill you can see that is a giant jar of Dill Rosemary mint whatever you use to cook with whatever herb you use you can dry it and you can store it whether you're doing it medicinally whether you have this huge Garden full of all these different kind of herbs you can dry them and keep them on the Shelf all year long if your growing season doesn't allow you to grow them all the time uh dry them dry them often dry them all the time the reason being is that when you buy stuff off the grocery store shelf oftentimes it all looks Brown and it all looks the same and it's hard to distinguish what they are because they've been sitting there for so long in storage waiting to even get to your grocery shelf and this is fresh and flavorful and tastes wonderful now what I do is I found a grocer that is an international grocer that I can go to that has fresh herbs and massive bundles that I can go get and I dry a lot of that throughout the year because I can't grow it in that kind of quantity here with my thumb and in our situation so I go there and I grab as much as I can come home and dry it and then I have that for the year now if you have your own then do it you know grow yours dry yours and you can do it in a variety of ways whether you air dry it by hanging it or laying it down on the counter whether you use your dehydrator whether you use a microwave because some people do it can be done I'll leave a link Down Below on all the ways that you can dry herbs but you can get these and keep them all year long now what what if you buy um the little canisters from the grocery store but you always find you're not using them well let them dry and save that until the next time you need some um it's it's easy to do with even what you get at the grocery store another essential for me strawberries whether we're doing strawberries for our rabbit yes we have a rabbit and yes we do strawberries for her or we do it for us for baking or for snacking um or for whatever we do we do strawberries and we use the whole strawberry so a strawberry comes with the fruit in the green okay when you slice the green off however you take it off you can dry that green to make teas with you can dry it to add your green powder or vegetable powder because it's just added nutrients to it we use our tops to feed the rabbit we give her treats every once in a while so she can have those we use strawberries for snacking on we use them to bake with I said that already but strawberries are an essential in our house and especially because strawberries don't last very long in the refrigerator and yes you can freeze them but I choose not to use that freezer space for something that I can make for everything that we do except for smoothies I find that they work better Frozen for smoothies but for every other thing we keep this now of course I can say every kind of fruit that's an essential not necessarily because not every fruit dries well not every fruit lasts well and fruits are one of those things that are hard for people to to like bananas are are one of those fruits and watermelon can be one of those very polarizing kind of fruits because you either get people who love dry bananas or who really don't and the watermelon is the same way it's you get like people who love it and people who absolutely hate it so not all fruit works well for all people but another fruit that I keep is also Citrus of every kind orange lemon lime are the ones I use the most I've done grapefruit on and off but I find that I don't use it so I end up just not using it ever and I've stopped making it I did one not long ago to show you how to do this but I don't do grapefruit much anymore but I use these MIT all year long so I will get oranges when they go on sale like right now is orange Etc season so I will go get oranges and I will in limes and lemons and use them for teas whether I use them for cold or hot tea that's how I use these the most I don't know what number we're on zucchini zucchini is so versatile and it can be used so many ways that it's worth dehydrating for it's worth it okay you get a glot of this every year if you are growing it yourself and if you go to the grocery store you see it everywhere because that's the the high season is summer for this you can what I do with it the most is I shred it and then I use it in a number of ways I can grind this down for powder to put into my vegetable powder I can use it as zucchini flour and baking it's an alternative to flour it's one third of the flour that you cook with is what you can replace with zucchini flour one third that's about a good ratio that's where you should start with so then you're adding more nutrients of that flour to add more nutrients to your baked goods you can put this in soups you can put this in casseroles as a layer of something extra to put in there for added nutrients you can you can dice this to have dices to go into your to your soups you can slice it some people do do slices of zucchini long to replace pasta in meals zucchini is a wonderful way to dry food for your dehydrator Pantry it's essential in ours and it's useful in so many ways and we don't even really like zucchini but I use this a ton the next essential Peppers whether you're doing sweet peppers like these bell peppers jalapeno peppers Chili Peppers cayenne peppers all the different kind of peppers there are that's what you can do to make them available to you year round even if you're not growing them or you can't get them at the grocery store that's how they make many of the chili seasonings that you buy off the shelf um the the cayenne pepper chili powder all those kind of things are dried peppers that are just grown and then dried and then powdered for your enjoyment I will add these to a pizza top and then bake it if we're baking it from home and I love it because I like the little chewy bit of it because it gives it a different texture than many of the other things that are on the pizza you can add this to any kind of super stew I like these in cheeseburger soup um because I think it's a fun flavor you can use this in so many ways Peppers should be in your dehydrating Shelf the next essential is tomatoes this is tomatoes this is tomato powder this is how I store most of my tomatoes because this is such a good flavor for so many things I can make sauce from this I just rehydrate enough to have enough sauce that I want it's a very versatile thing but you can do tomato slices dices you can do the small cherries in half and make like sun-dried tomatoes that kind of thing they are all great to have in your dehydrated pantries to have the best of the flavor of tomatoes in the summer available to you all year long those of you who can can make this out of your tomato skins and to throwing those away dry them powder them I use a kasori coffee grinder and a Nutri Ninja Bullet blender to do my powdering but you can use whatever you have and then I use tomato paste to make this in bulk so I go and buy those big number 10 cans every fall uh get them ready for the next year and dry them into into a fruit leather that I get really really really dry and then grind it and so I have it available to me all the time um because I don't grow my own Tomatoes except for the little small cherry tomatoes um and then uh and you can't get good tomatoes for most the year so I do it all at once so another essential is garlic just like onions you can dry garlic and then you can have garlic powder all year long that's absolutely wonderful you also can make this into any of the garlic that you used to cook with you rehydrate it and then you can cook with it it doesn't it doesn't Brown the same way that fresh garlic does but you still can use it to flavor so many things just the same way um but I enjoy this a ton just like onions you can buy this pre-made try that you can buy this Frozen or you can buy it in a jar in water and those the ones that you can dehydrate that makes it a little easier if you're not growing your own garlic or if you don't want to go through the process of trying to break up all that garlic to get it ready to dry so that can be a Time Saver if you want this garlic was made from a fresh this is fresh garlic but I've also done a version of this out of the can out of the jars the big big jars that you can get at warehouse stores that's in water and it it's not quite as flavorful but it works if you need to do a bunch at one time and get it ready for you for your for your pantry garlic is another essential another essential is potatoes however I'm going to tell you right up front I don't dehydrate potatoes anymore I will be doing a video on showing you how to do it and I will have a tutorial available to you on the web in order to see how to do it but I no longer dehydrate my own potatoes there sometimes there are foods that are just easier to do store-bought than dry but you should know how to do it from dried in case you ever get a glut of potatoes if you grow a ton of your own you should know how to do it if you're given a bunch whatever reason if they go on sale for an incredible price at the grocery store you should know how to do it but I find for me I prefer just buying dehydrate dehydrated potatoes from Thrive life from augason Farms from wherever I get it but if they go on sale I stock up this is one of those Foods I don't like to dry but that's me okay but that may not be you so you would want to dry them because you can have diced potatoes you can have sliced potatoes you can make mashed potatoes you can do shredded for hash browns it's very versatile it's a great way to do the bulk potatoes you get that when they grow on sale for a dollar for a 10 pound bag if you could ever get that anymore um but it's a great way to preserve those potatoes better than pretty much any other way you can do it I cheat but I do have these all the time in my dehydrated pantries I just didn't do it myself but it still counts another essential for your pantry in everybody's Pantry greens now look how sad this jar is it is so lonely and it's it's about to be emptied and I have not kept up with it because this has been a season of change in our family and so I haven't been doing as much as I normally do to keep things in stock greens every single kind whether you're using spinach kale collard greens turnip greens beet tops Carrot Tops radish tops dandelions some weeds in your yard that you want to do um strawberry green tops um let's see what else off the top of my head you can use pretty much any dark leafy green lettuce use lettuce I just don't use Iceberg because there's not really much in iceberg for me that it's worth drying I don't buy it I don't grow it so I don't I don't use it but any kind of green that you have can be made into a powder that you can add nutrients to everything that you eat now you can do it in a powder form this way which is how I prefer to keep it but I also usually have a small tub of dried leaves that I can crumble into things that I can have a little bit more bulk I can put them in whole if I wanted to like if I'm making some kind of uh like that Olive Garden soup that has kale in it which I can't remember the name of right now but if I want bulkier then I will leave those leaves whole and just let them rehydrate in the soup and then I have it or I can crumple it up to make smaller pieces or I can just powder it up all the way but greens are a great way to have green nutrients in your food all year long even when you can't grow them and even if they're not available to you in the store in the way that I bulk up when I'm doing this is that I go into the store first thing that I do at the store is I hit up all the clearance sections because our store has a great clearance and when I go to the to the produce section they often have Greens on sale they clearance them down because they're not getting used fast enough I grab all I can grab and I come home and dry them and so I will have greens all the time with me year round even when greens aren't growing in our area now up front we don't eat dried cooked greens we will eat salads but we don't eat like I don't cook spinach I don't cook kale we don't eat dark greens that are cooked because we don't like them we have them this way and I put them in everything in eggs in anything that I'm making I put these in brownies um I get laughed at on the internet because of it but yes if we make brownies I'll stick some of this in the brownies because it's just adding nutrients every place that I can add that dark leafy green nutrient we do it in Greens now is this going to be the next thing I do you betcha I am probably going to go and pay full price for whatever greens are in the stores right now because I'm out and I'd let this get too low and we eat this too much for me to let it get this low we go through this jar about I want to say oh I've got to replace that jar don't I it's got a crack in it I did not know this um we go through this jar about three and a half months three three to four months is probably how often we will go through and do a jar like this so I I dry greens a ton but I haven't in months and so this is the suffering for it how many do we have now now another essential is better okay in terms for those of you who do meals in a jar who do hiking and backpacking uh and camping these are essential to what you're doing rice and beans okay I do need to make more rice but I haven't used it in a while so I haven't restocked my jar and dried beans is something that I do use when I'm trying to make soups and I want to add a little more nutrient to mine because nobody else in the family really likes them uh but what you can do is all sorts of meals with this that make it easy to rehydrate those meals and cook them quickly especially if you're a hiker and a Backpacker and you don't want to carry in water or Source a lot of water and you want to make a meal faster than if you want to cook beans from scratch or even rice from scratch the rice is already cooked you don't have to deal with the starches you just need to rehydrate it in one to one hot water to rice the same with the beans one to one hot water to the beans and it rehydrates well now the beans don't stay whole they are broken because as they dry the Skins break so they're not going to be like whole beans but these make great meals in a jar just like this I keep at least one to two jars of taco soup on my shelf at all times dried beans I mean dehydrated beans they're cooked and then dehydrated dehydrated rice which is just just like the instant rice that you buy at the store and then all of the other seasonings and vegetables that I put in it I'll leave a link to you so you can make it yourself I keep at least one or two jars in my shelf all the time of just this particular meal it is a quick and easy meal that you can make up in about 20 minutes you just pour this into water let it rehydrate let it uh warm up and you've got a meal to go so these are Essentials on the Shelf now a lot of you will say why make dried rice when you can just go buy the instant rice at the store you are welcome to do that I just find that if I'm making rice I'm going to go ahead and make more and then dehydrate the rest and stock up that way because it just is easier for me and it makes more sense and I can use whatever rice that I like instead of the rice that comes in the instant rice you can do this also with any grain with pasta you can do it with barley you can do it with quinoa you can do it with all those grains pre-cook it dry it and it's ready to go just like this so those are the essentials that I think should be on everyone's shelf now you can have things like apples and cabbage and you know go to Every particular vegetable or every particular fruit I like to keep apples on the Shelf as well did I say that just now because I do diced in small pieces to add to oatmeal or baked goods I do larger pieces to be able to rehydrate to make apple uh apple crumble or or we can snack on those or slices to snack on them and apples are probably the best fruit that you can have on the Shelf to satisfy most needs for your family for snacking and for baking and it can be another essential so what I want to know or what are the essentials in your dehydrated Pantry I want to know what you find are the things that you use the most often and get the most use out of I'll leave a link down below like I said for for this list which will have some other things to it and the link to all the directions on how to dehydrate all of these things as well as the Umami powder as well as how to use tomato powder as well as I think that was it that was all of it so I'll leave all that down in the description box below and until I see you again next time happy dehydrating

Channel: The Purposeful Pantry

Views: 108,400

Keywords: the purposeful pantry, dehydrating food, necessary dehydrated foods, best dehydrated food, favorite dehydrated foods, best dried foods, essential dried foods, dehydrating for beginners, pantry challenge, stock my pantry

Id: Go2sPPPFF5U

Length: 23min 54sec (1434 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 07 2023