5 THINGS I WON'T DEHYDRATE AGAIN AND FIVE THINGS I LOVE : My favorite dehydrating projects

hi darcy hi darcy hi folks it's darcy from the purposeful pantry and today we're talking about the five things i will and the five things i won't dehydrate again and if you like talking about food storage and food preservation and grocery shopping and stocking your pantry to feed your family click the subscribe button down below to get more things just like that because that's what we talk about all the time so i asked my group the dehydrating tips and tricks on facebook about what they thought their worst project to do what they will never dehydrate again and the results surprised me quite a bit because the number one answer was watermelon i didn't expect that i knew it would be high up there because it's one of those things that you either really like or you really don't there are very little in between feelings about watermelon number two was cucumbers that was probably number two number three was just a toss-up and then it was just like you know just a free-for-all so what i want to do now is talk about those things that i will dehydrate every day all the time forever and those things i probably will never do again and i'm never gonna say never except for one of them um because i may need to do them you know for me i may need to do them for a tutorial or video or something down the line but things um that also are not necessarily because i don't like them but because my family just won't eat it so there's no point in me continuing to dehydrate something that my family is not going to eat especially if i can't find another use for it okay um my first one is going to be something i'm going to dehydrate again now i won't use a lot we use it but not a ton but i love them and i know this is also a love hate relationship with people you either like these or you really don't if you have a sweet tooth or if you don't then this is definitely not something you're gonna like but kids love these they make great gifts for holidays they are perfect little just crunchy things that change the the texture of the original product completely and they make a whole different kind of food but that one is going to be marshmallows i'm going to do this again i do this every year every christmas time we'll go ahead and make another batch of marshmallows to use in our hot chocolate or i'll make marshmallow snow and i'll make a batch enough to get us through for a while we don't keep them around all year long but we definitely keep them over the winter because we love to have hot chocolate in the winter this year we did the lucky charms marshmallows um last year we did um we did the the peppermint a viewer one of my readers actually sent me marshmallows the peppermint ones we couldn't find them around here and it was great because i had we hadn't had these before um so marshmallows are kind of like that fun favorite treat that we'll do they're not a staple i won't go out and just try to make sure that i have them all but i will definitely do these again because they were fun now one that i won't do again and it's an issue of texture which may end up being a problem with a lot of you when you're doing dehydrated goods and you eat it you go i don't like that you might want to try again with preparing it a different way for me it's apples i don't like skin on my apples so i found out that my family doesn't either our little snack jar here has all the strawberries have disappeared but the skin on apples are still here so that leads me to believe that nobody really likes these i certainly don't and the boys don't either so i won't do these again but what i will do is i'll skin them first then do it and then that will be a much different texture for the bite and probably everyone will like these and even if they don't i will something else i will do every day all the time forever and forever um you guys i mean if you've been with my channel for a while you know this and especially if you're in the dehydrating group with me green powder is my go-to for nutrition boosting in everything that i make so you will find that i will have greens running in my dehydrator all the time because we go through this probably a quart like this every three months me yeah about every three months it's about how long it takes me to get through one of these so i have greens going a lot um this adds extra nutrition to just about anything that i cook um i don't add to things like uh lightly colored um desserts but i will put it in brownies i will put it in in some cookies they've been there before too um i've put it in pancakes i've put it in everything that i cooked that's savory um we even use in our eggs and many many mornings our eggs are green because we add this to it this adds so much nutrition in a way that we typically might not get it so while we love salad while we like salad and we will eat salad we don't eat it really often um and we none of us like cooked greens so this is the way for me to get greens in our diet the best way that i can do to make sure it's there all the time so greens are my just they're my favorite just because they're so utilitarian something else i will never dehydrate again um and i will use that pretty no i'm not gonna say never never never because but grapes are gonna be something that i don't dehydrate again for my family um nobody eats them and i've tried and tried to give them different kind and they just really don't like them and i think it's because we're just so used to the commercial variety of raisins and that they like the plumpness of a raisin that i can't recreate at home very well especially if i plan on them being shelves stable so um grapes are off they'll eat them first like crazy but dried they just really aren't fond of but they'll eat commercial raisins so if it means that i'm getting more fiber and nutrition in my kids that's what i'll do i'm okay with that another thing that i love that's very utilitarian for me and it's the second thing that i dehydrate the most of is vegetables now what i do to make this easier on me because what i do with it most of the time is create vegetable powder that i add to things the same way that i do greens but what i'll do is take advantage of sales of freezer products freezer vegetables make this so easy because it's already blanched it's already prepared you don't have to do anything but open the bags put them on trays and dry it it makes it super easy to go ahead and stock your pantry up quickly especially if you're just now building until you want to put more things in there using freezer uh using frozen vegetables is a great way to do it and especially because they're so easy they're almost foolproof it's a great beginner project and it will help you build your stock of dehydrated goods very very quickly now they don't always make the best just returning to a side dish but they're perfect to toss into a soup or a stew or a casserole or even into your eggs to try to have some additional vegetables in your diet and make good use of your dehydrated products so vegetables will always be up on the top of my i will dehydrate more of these down the road something else i won't be dehydrating again but i'm gonna put a caveat for snacks raspberries berries dewberries all those kind of berries i will not be dehydrating these again for eating as a snack part of the reason is is that to me they dry into a kind of husk instead of a berry um there's no bite to them there's nothing left and i just don't enjoy them and pretty much nobody in my family does either but we like the freeze-dried varieties so that's what we'll probably go ahead and invest in to keep some on the shelf for being self shelf stable but i will always always do berries whenever they go on sale every summer i always stock up on a couple of flats worth because what i do with them is create powder now you may think that all you do is dehydrate make powders well i do a lot because these become more versatile to me than just trying to use uh whole dehydrated goods sometimes so i can powder all the vegetables all the greens and add things to my foods or i can do like this and have a flavor to add to yogurt to oatmeal to breads if i want to kind of spice something up it's icing and a whole bunch of different ways that you can use powders to help elevate the flavors of your food all right something else that i love um and it's a surprising thing because my husband is what drives this one a bit my husband does not like onions he hates them he hates onions he hates the texture he hates biting into a raw onion he hates biting into a diced onion he doesn't like having onions in any of his food but the weird thing is he loves onion flavor so we use a lot of onion powder and dehydrating onion onions on their own just like this makes the best onion powder it tastes so much better than store-bought but because i don't have them with me i had to start at this point caramelized onions are the thing that i will dehydrate a lot because they are so good um and because he'll eat them like candy he just will sit and eat eat them um they remind me a lot of the french fried onions that you put on top of a casserole like the green bean casserole of thanksgiving and for you guys that don't live in the states you might not be familiar with them they are like breaded onions not like an onion ring but breaded minced onions that have been deep fried that you use as a crunchy topping to to a casserole that we make that's uh like pretty mushy for christmas for thanksgiving and these just give it some onion flavor and some crunch that gives you a better texture so when you do caramelized onions and you dry them they are amazing and they're just like little bits of fried onions but much much healthier for you they do powder well to create their own caramelized onion powder but it's pretty sweet um so you might not like it i like to add it to things like chicken salad because it gives it a nice flavor and still elevates that chicken salad to something a little with adding a little sweet to it if you don't typically put anything sweet in it so i like it for that but um but we just like to eat them like snacks because it's just good something else i won't do and i don't have it here because i will never do it again i didn't even finish it the first time i tried it but that's liver and i'll never ever ever ever ever ever deliver again it was gross it was disgusting it stink um i was doing it for a project trying to figure out if i was gonna do it in uh for a dog treat to kind of do another dog treat blog post and then i was gonna you know give them to our neighbors because our neighbors all have dogs and then i couldn't get through it i had to trash it because it was just disgustingly gross to me another project that i love that you don't hear very often but i really love doing it and it's a great way to use these up if you've made your but made your own to use the leftovers is another way to extend it without just throwing them away um vanilla powder i make my own vanilla and i get vanilla beans from a co-op that's on facebook i can link it below that you get really great vanilla for a pretty decent price and then they don't or they order it throughout the year and you just chip in for the order and then you get sent vanilla so when i make vanilla i'll go through two or three rounds of it to get as much of it as i can i'll go through you know a whole bottle they last me for quite a while but at the end when i have vanilla beans left over instead of just taking out the the inside and using it somehow and then chucking the whole bean i actually will put them between two paper towels on the counter and let the alcohol evaporate so whatever is still there can be dissipated into the air and it's not an issue and then i go ahead and dry my dehydrator and powder it and i have this great vanilla powder that i can use to flavor things down the way it also makes a great addition to teas if you want to make a vanilla flavored tea on your own you can add this to it and steep it along with your tea leaves the only thing i'm going to say before you go off and try to do this is read the manual on your dehydrator to make sure that it suggests or doesn't suggest that you do anything with alcohol in your machine some of them actually say don't which is why i do what i do is that i put it out to to be overnight so that it can dissipate my machine doesn't say don't do it but i know many of them do so you'll want to check yours to make sure it's okay another thing that i won't ever dehydrate again are bananas i know that they are a favorite but i also know that they're a big failure point for a lot of new dehydrators that come in and try to think you know i'll just make bananas like the ones i get at the store it's easy i'll just cut them up i'll put them on trays they'll go we'll be good the problem is is that people don't realize that it really takes a long time to get a banana fully dried and fully to the point of getting kind of past that hard that hard uh banana to dry even further and there's a there's a stress point within the ripening stage that you you need to be in because too right makes it hard to dry and not ripe enough has no flavor um but we have found we just don't like them okay another project that i will dehydrate a lot and it will be just for me because i'm pretty much the only one in my family who likes them but then that's what makes it great for me and then i'll share one that i do for only my oldest son because he's the only one who likes this and i will do it for him pomegranate arils you can see that these are just the the arrows that you get out of a pomegranate the those little juicy things that you pull out this is them um i dry them and i have them all year long until the next season because we only get to see them like in november and december and january now pretty much just november december they come out just in time for christmas and we really see them any other time during the year i love these things they are tart and crunchy and they make a great addition to salads they make a perfect little compliment to go into a chicken salad to give it some texture and bite um i made quite a few last year when i the tutorial so i still have quite a bit left over um but i'll still do some more this christmas because i don't want to miss out in the whole next year having these available to me and it's something i do for my son just because that's what he loves i will dehydrate picante sauce now those of you who aren't from texas may not know what picante sauce is it's basically a really a watery version of salsa that's not so chunky it's very it's much more smooth it's got some chunks in it but it's just a hot sauce that you dip your chips into or you put on top of something else we dehydrate this you can do it with salsa too just as easily and flake it my son loves adding it to the top of his ramen he'll put on the top of breakfast burritos he'll put it on top of his eggs in the burrito and it adds a little crunch factor um it also can be rehydrated to be picante sauce again it's great for backpackers they can have a little flavor without necessarily having to carry the sauce so do me a favor in the comments below tell me what your favorite thing to dehydrate is and what your least favorite thing to dehydrate is um and you don't have to have an explanation but you know if you don't like it you don't like it and that's okay and if you happen to be a youtuber or do video just for the heck of it why don't you do a video response to this and a video about your favorite five favorite things and five least favorite things to dehydrate you can use the hashtag i won't dehydrate that again and then i'd love to hear your responses so thanks for stopping by and listening to me talk about my least favorite and favorite things to dehydrate if you love dehydrating or other forms of food preservation to stock your pantry for your family please be sure to hit the subscribe button down below i would love to have you join us and until next time happy dehydrating see you again soon

Channel: The Purposeful Pantry

Views: 359,513

Keywords: the purposeful pantry, dehydrating, favorite dehydrating projects, dehydrating food, dryingfood, dehydrating tips, what not to dehydrate, what can I dehydrate, what food can I dry, how to dry food, how to dehydrate food, bad dehydrating projects, what foods are good to dehydrate, food storage, pantry storage, preserving food, dehydrating bananas, dehydrating apples, how to dry food for storage, dehydrating food in a dehydrator, dehydrating donts

Id: yKu7yHA51aQ

Length: 15min 33sec (933 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 24 2020