EASY DEHYDRATING PROJECTS FOR BEGINNERS: Learn to Dehydrate with Easy Recipes - DRYCEMBER

hi folks it's darcy from thepurposefullpantry.com and welcome back to another edition of dry simmer where we're taking a bite-sized chunk where we're taking a bite-sized chunk out of learning to dehydrate all month long and today we're going to be talking about 10 easy dehydrating projects for beginners now when you're learning to dehydrate you're either one of two people the one who jumps all in and tries all the things and just finds this an intuitive process and you may be the other person who like me was a little afraid because i was afraid of wasting food i was afraid of getting my family sick and i just didn't have the confidence that when i first started that i could do this well and so i want to be able to share with you those things that i find are some of the easiest projects to do especially after experiencing the effect of people who have started dehydrating and kind of jump into some of the big projects and and just get so frustrated and stop dehydrating because those projects went bad so i want to be sure to give you some easy projects as we start on our journey of dehydrating our first few projects for the rest of the month some easy ones that you can pick out to start with your new dehydrator or if you've been afraid to get into yours or if you just need one to give you an idea for what you're going to do this week so first before we get started i want to talk a little bit about why projects showed up on this list and why they didn't i find that that dehydrating like i said before is really intuitive for some people but for some people it's not and it doesn't mean that you're not good at it it means you haven't found that project to give you confidence to build your skills to dehydrate that's what we're going to work on today also sometimes results aren't what you expected and that can make you feel like you've done something wrong and that's not always the case sometimes it's because of texture and taste we all have different opinions about what things are like the other thing is if if you try some projects because you've had your experience based on what commercial projects are like then you come home and try to do that at home and find out that it doesn't work exactly the same way it can make you feel like you've done something wrong when it's not you at all but it's about the process and how it's so much different for commercial foods than it is for home foods bananas are the top one a lot of people like to tackle bananas first because they're so easy you slice them you throw them on a tray you dry them and they're done and they're going to be all crisp and and crunchy just like the store-bought ones are but the problem is that the bananas often won't be like that at all um you have to know that if you're going to dry bananas you really need to dry them for a really really long time to let them get to that point where they're getting really dry not just sort of dry they'll never be quite as crunchy and snappy and perfect the way that store-bought bananas are because those are often fried and we don't we can't do that at home so a lot of people will try that first and get dejected and then never touch their dehydrator again i don't want that for you i want those first projects that you pick up to be the ones that give you confidence and build your skills and make you a dehydrating fiend okay so my number one favorite first thing to dehydrate for beginners is frozen vegetables they look just like this you can go pick them up for about a dollar or a dollar fifty for a small bag at most grocery stores within the u.s i know prices will be different around the world but still they're one of the most cost effective projects to start with and all it requires is for you to take a bag to open it to throw it on your trays to dry them all out and you've got this beautiful concoction of vegetables that you can throw into any casserole into any soup into shepherd's pie cottage pie depending on what meat you're using you can throw it into a pot pie you can throw it into soups i mean you can do so much with this and what makes this really cool for a first project is that it converts so well to vegetable powder now i do this more than i use these okay my family's not a big casserole eater they're not big soup eaters so i make soup for me but i don't necessarily make soup for the family a lot so i tend to make powder out of all of it so this is an ever-evolving powder of every kind of vegetable i've ever dried then i will powder it if i'm not using it up quickly enough or i dry it specifically to put into powder then i add a tablespoon to three tablespoons on this depending on the size of the portion that i'm cooking and it adds extra vitamins and minerals to the meal and you never even know it this is a perfect first project for beginners because it's basically foolproof my second favorite thing are greens now greens i'll eat fresh every day and the rest of my family is the same way but for most of us we don't like greens that are cooked in fact we just we don't want to eat it but i know we need our greens i know we need to add those vitamins and minerals to our diet so what i love doing is dehydrating greens grains are just as easy as vegetable as the frozen vegetables you open your bags you you need to wash them off because no matter if the bag says double washed or not you need to wash your bags or if you're you're getting them from your garden or you're getting them fresh from your grocery shelf always wash them first then lay them out on your trays if you have some that have really thick stems pull those aside let them dry separately you dry them until they they're just crumbly now what i do with those most often is i will flake them and keep them to just toss into things that i'm cooking and it makes it look like like i've been sprinkling parsley and everything except i use it by the handfuls and then we've added spinach or kale or collard greens or turnip greens that would never eat on their own into a lot of things that we cook but the cool thing about what you can do with it is make powder and okay powders to me are the thing i love making powders but adding this green powder to everything that we're making just like with a vegetable powder i sneak this into everything it goes into eggs it goes into pancakes it goes into brownies well i'm going to say pancakes if it's a light meal vegetable powder if it's a meal that can be covered most of the time it's greens as well but it goes into everything i cook and it makes it versatile it makes it to where i'm adding more nutrition into my diet and it just is the thing that i go through a lot i will go through this entire jar about every two to three months so that's how much we use it the next project are strawberries because i find them so incredibly easy to do you pop off the green if you don't want to use it but just what i do is i kind of slice the top off with my with a knife and i dry those separately because our rabbit loves them and so we use those as treats for her but then you just have these tart sweet little treats and they store well they're so good to eat you can chop them up if you want to to add them into oatmeal you can eat them as a snack on their own and of course you can powder them and add the powder to so many sweets to make things taste better and of course i've got a blog post down below on the ways that you can use fruit powder all right the next thing we're going to tackle is onions and yes onions because yes you can do onions they are so incredible easy they make the best at uh minced onions to meals and they make the best onion powder uh homemade onion powder tastes so much better than store-bought powder that has probably been sitting on the shelf for a good long time um basically i take an onion i run it through my my full star chopper like i showed on the essential tools the other day put it on trays and let it dry now of course the thing that might make this a project you don't want to tackle is the smell because some people are really affected by the big smell you can do them outside or you can sweat them down a little bit you might not want to caramelize them all the way but you can sweat them down a little bit and that takes the initial bite out of the out of the smell and dry them that way and they're fine but onions i think are a great first project if you can handle the smell okay that's the only it's the only caveat to this all right another easy beginning project or herbs herbs herbs herbs however you say it um because they simply just need to be tied together in little bundles and hung and that's it that's all you have to do however i um live in a house where we have a lot of pet dander because of our rabbits and our cats and the humans that live here too our house is pretty dusty we can have incredibly humid periods during the year that drying herbs out in the air is not something i like to do i just go ahead and enter them all in my in my dehydrator do it on the lowest setting that you have if you have a one temperature dehydrator i would suggest going ahead and hanging them but doing herbs gives you an incredible plethora of things to choose from that you've done yourself whether you have to buy them from a farmer's market from the grocery store or you can grow them on your own these make great first projects just know that they don't always dry in a couple of hours sometimes these things can take about 18 24 hours even for things like basil who have thick leaves lots of oils some things take a little longer but just be patient you'll know when they're dry when you pull them out and they break in or crisp after they've been cooled they're perfect and they can build such confidence in what you're putting on your shelf another first project that is super easy for me um are apples okay apples are easy because they're so forgiving in so many ways here's here we go we can slice them we can dice them we can do segments they are so easy you can flavor them with some cinnamon and they become great little snacks the only thing you have to do with apples is that you can choose to pre-treat them with a little lemon wash to keep them from turning brown not all apples turn brown quickly but because people may not like the way they look it doesn't affect the flavor but because you may not like the way they look try it out you can use pineapple juice if you like to dip them in or a lemon wash or soak them in a little bit of lemon water those are the easiest ways to get started with it or you can just sprinkle some cinnamon on it and nobody will notice that they turn brown ever because they're already brown so you can eat them as snacks like this you can rehydrate them to make pies or turnovers you can chop them up a little bit if you didn't dice them ahead of time and make great little bits to put in your oatmeal and they are wonderful as a snack on their own my next project which i'm totally out of and i'm so sad that i don't have any to show you we have to get some and we've been out of luck trying to get them from the pickup at the grocery store is ginger ginger is so incredibly easy to do you dice it up you slice it up you throw on your trays you dry it you store it you powder it when you need it and it's incredible how good it tastes alright my next project is canned fruit because the work has been done for you and for me for pineapple it is a better flavor in the end from a canned fruit than it is from fresh probably partly because i think that the canning process breaks down those fibers and it just makes it something i enjoy more but for some people if you can't get fresh fruit a lot during the year you can use frozen or canned and do those well i have little incredible fruit snacks to have all throughout the year and they're so easy to do most of the time it's simply opening them out putting them on a tray and drying them if you're doing it from frozen oftentimes i will suggest you thaw them first save that to make a syrup for doing on pancakes or something but then put those on the tray because a lot of those fruits might release a lot of water that you don't want to have to deal with in your machine one of my last projects i think we're getting at 10 and we're going to be close to it are mushrooms and here's why mushrooms are so easy to do all you have to do is wipe them off if they're not too dirty if they are dirty and it may not be dirt but it could be the growing medium you just don't want the grit in your final project you can rinse them off but they will turn a little darker and dry if you rinse them just don't soak them but a little water is fine it's not going to hurt your mushrooms do that slice them dry them until they are crisp and break when they're done and then you've got some incredible mushrooms that you can use in anything but because i don't like the texture of rehydrated dried mushrooms i prefer to do this and of course once again it's powder this powder and i'm almost out because 2020 being what it is i wasn't able to get to aldi when they had mushroom sales and i missed out on all of them and i'm having to wait another sale so i'm being a little stingy with this right now but mushroom powder adds a deep deep umami flavor to almost any casserole that you make any soup that you make that you want that deeper meaty flavor to it mushroom powder adds that and in eggs it's incredible so this is what i do with all right another one that i only have fresh available right now because i'm about to do another dehydrating round with it is celery celery is one of those things that you can do now do it in one big bundle by three or four stalks of celery remember a stalk is the whole thing the rib is the small thing buy three or four big stalks of celery dehydrate and you can have it for a good long time and only have to do it once and then you've got the celery to add to any meal all the time it is so easy wash it slice it dry it condition store it's that easy now sometimes you may want to choose to blanch it which adds an extra step and it depends on how you like the texture after it's recommended that you blanch but because i don't i i'm fine with the texture of it the way it is when it's not blanched i don't blanch it um but it's one of those things you can choose and again i've got tutorials down below for you to find out how to do all of these things to make it easy for you to me one of the super easy things to do also are zucchini zucchinis are so easy to prep and get ready to go into your machine then you can use them to throw into soups or casseroles you can grind the powder and use it to bake with you can slice them really thin and flavor them with seasonings and have like little zucchini chips that are fun to snack on they're really versatile they're really easy to use and they're inexpensive they're foolproof and they are incredible to me to use for so many different things so zucchini is on that list as well i just don't have any to show you because i'm out for the very last project that i find being so fun uh kids are gonna love it um my group is well known for everybody diving into this project um and it's super super super fun and especially in time for holidays it can make a great gift for people so what's it gonna be i'm sure many of you who've been following me for a while are you gonna know what this is uh but it's marshmallows okay marshmallows become this um let me see if i can open it and show you what it does do i have this one bathroom still no i don't because we've used it they become these tiny tiny little bombs of goodness they are crunchy they shatter in your mouth when you get them fully dry um if you do these peppermint kind that you probably can't get right now you'll have to wait till next christmas but they're incredible and hot chocolates um they are fun for kids to throw into cereal they're fun to throw into hot chocolate they're fun to make like trail mixes for christmas with kind of cereals and pretzels and things and little chocolate chips um they can be what i've seen some incredible projects in the group this year are people taking large marshmallows drying them fully dipping them in a little chocolate then dipping them in like a pretzel mix or like a crunch crushed up pretzel mix or nuts or anything like that and have these little s'more bites that are crunchy and instead of soft and you can give them away and they're so cool looking and the other thing i like doing with it is making marshmallow powder this can be used to flavor hot chocolate and it just melts into the hot chocolate if you liked a little sweeter peppermint flavor my hot chocolate mix is something that we use at home a lot now and one of my sons likes a little sweeter than i make it so he adds some marshmallow powder to it um to make it make it taste just a little bit sweeter but marshmallows are so fun um so those are the projects that i i find are super easy to get started with to give yourself some feeling of accomplishment and dehydrating so i know i've rambled i know i've talked and been excited about projects but uh but i'm excited for you to get started dehydrating and for those of you who've not found great success i want to be able to give you a project that you can do that that makes you feel like you've been able to accomplish something with your dehydrator so which one of these projects do you think might be versatile for you that you would use a lot that you think that you might be able to tackle soon please let me know down in the comments below and for those of you who've been at this for a while what would you add to that list of the easy first projects i'd love to know what you consider being something easy to do as well so stick with us for the rest of the month where we have more projects coming up if you missed yesterday's it's right here and and the entire playlist is going to be available right here if you're catching up to this later and if you like what we do you want to see finish out the month of december and you want to see what happens in the next year subscribe to my channel here i appreciate you being around i hope i'll see you again tomorrow on another edition of dry summer

Channel: The Purposeful Pantry

Views: 23,985

Rating: 4.9552336 out of 5

Keywords: the purposeful pantry, drycember, easy dehydrating, easy dehydrating projects for beginners, beginning dehydrating, how to dehydrate, learn to dehydrate, simple dehydrating projects, beginning dehydrating projects, stock your pantry, dehydrating food for long term storage, how to make dehydrated powders, ideas for dehydrated powders, dehydrating for beginners, drying food, dehydrating tips and tricks, dehydrating tips for beginners, dehydrating tips

Id: 1KMlQPKTwOo

Length: 17min 12sec (1032 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 19 2020