Save the Skin! Learn to Dehydrate Citrus Zest for long-term storage!

before you juice or eat your citrus make sure that you save that zest because you can dehydrate it and this can make an incredible or lemon powder that you can use to flavor breads that you can use to flavor your fish dishes you can use in so many ways that you would use fresh zest but you can do it in your dehydrator so let me show you how hi folks it's Darcy from the purposeful pantry and today we are zesting oranges and lemons to show you how to dehydrate orange zest you can also air dry it just as a quick thing or you could even freeze it we didn't even talk about freezing but you can freeze it too but let me show you how to do it in dehydration so that you can save this zest even when you end up eating the inside of the the Citrus that you're playing with foreign okay I've already gotten started on some of these I've done some larger oranges like this where I just take my peeler and I will go and peel my orange like I'm peeling an apple and just work around the sides and get what I need of the zest you don't want to go too deep in here because what you're not trying to do is peel off all that pith which is the pith right here you're trying to get at just this little top layer of orange zest where all of those good essential oils are they give everything the flavor of orange that you want now you can use a peeler if you're really good with your knife and you have a great knife you can sit and just take off the pith I mean the zest that way but I find I'm not great with that you can use a microplane with a microplaner you get something like this where you just go through and it takes off just that bare zest so that you're not looking at getting any more than just the good orange flavor and not any of that pith and you just rotate your orange around and what you're left with is this really great dense orange flavor you can zest all of your oranges that way as well that might take you less time than peeling them but I prefer to actually have these larger peels even occasionally I get a little too deep and get a tiny bit of pith on it but I'm okay if you don't have a planer uh or a microplane sorry or you don't have a a zester which is this uh tool that has a little kind of blades that are in circles and as you pull it across it makes these little strings of orange or zest of any kind that you're working with we're going to keep that a little separate you can also just use something like your grater that you have at home you can use one of the smaller sizes I find that it doesn't work anywhere near as well as having a hand tool but you can use this if it's all you've got so I'm going to go ahead and do this with the next one I'm going to peel is my some of my lemon we're going to do it the same way as we do the orange just peel it like you're peeling an apple I find that lemon skins can be a little thicker than orange skins and it may be because the way they grow or the or the variety that you have so you have to be careful about going too deep into that pith because you don't want it so I've got a tiny little pith here but for the most part this zest is good and I'm going to finish peeling all the rest of these after we get off the camera so that you don't have to watch me do it now here is one I've already peeled it's part of this pile here and you're going to ask me what do I do with this leftover orange because yeah I've got all the zests but what am I going to do the same thing that you would do with oranges anytime you could peel this and eat it um but what you can also do is dehydrate these I'm going to take a bread knife because I find for me this is the easiest tool for slicing into Citrus to get a small sliver I'm going to put my finger right about where I want that slice to go and I'm just going to slice straight down and get a really nice thin slice of lemon okay or orange this is the orange you want really thin slices because it will be the easiest to dehydrate when they get too thick it becomes harder to get them completely dry foreign ER with some mesh on top of it because I'm going to want that and I'm just going to lay out my pieces I do want to lay them out um on their own to get as much drying time as I have I'm in as much drying surface that I have can get I don't want them all pounded up on each other the reason being is that this stuff is thick and it's got a ton of oil in it and I want to make sure it gets good and dry in the least amount of time possible so I you know I'm dedicating uh a tray to not a lot of orange zest to do okay for some of these pieces you may notice that like this one it's got a little bit of zest on the I mean a little bit of pith on the back but that's fine I may have a couple of other pieces that actually have like a lot like this one has more than I would want uh if I can go through here with my knife and scrape off a little bit more of that I would uh it doesn't it doesn't it comes off fairly easy but it takes a little work it really depends on how much work you want to put into getting rid of the last that bit of pith but on something pretty thick I'll go through here and just try to take it off but if there's a little bit on there I don't care uh I'm fine with it because this is not me using orange zest to flavor something that's really intense and that's the only flavor you're going to have this is going to be things like I put into maybe morning oatmeal or maybe I'll do into some bread if I'm already making some kind of lemon bread I might just add a little bit more zest or I might just sprinkle some on top of chicken when I'm cooking it this is not something that's going on Fresh into anything so I'm not as picky about getting off all of the pith as possible here's a good piece that has very little pith it will of course depend on your dexterity and the sharpness of your blade that you're using to cut this with so there is our first tray lemons I'll keep them on just by themselves to keep them separated now this seems like by the time you power this down you're not going to have much lemon and that is true you are not going to have a lot of zest left but what I do with this is I collect it over time I make sure that you know as I if as I peel another lemon the first thing if I'm going to peel the lemon for any reason I'm going to zest it first if I'm going to get the juice of a lemon I zest it first because at this point I can still do any kind of thing that I need to do for a lemon like this then I can still cut it and I can still squeeze the juice out okay so that pith I mean sorry I keep doing that so the zest on the outside isn't necessary for holding the structure of this lemon together it's the it's the pith that's doing it so I can do whatever I need to do with that way so if I'm going to use a lemon I zest it first throw it in my dehydrator if I have space or I can do something like this what I can do for something like this that is the zest that's really fine it's going to go through I should have put something down first but I can put it out like this and then just leave it and that I can air dry it now what I might want to do is depending on my home environment what I'm doing I might want to lay something on top of it just to protect it from things falling on it you can do that and I just wasted quite a bit of that putting on here without any sheet below it which is what I should have done and I'm going to save this is any good food preservation person will say what you can and yes I can even just put it onto paper towels that's what my grandmother used to do she would just put it straight onto her paper towel and just leave it like this and she would put another one out on top of it and then just let it dry the air will dry this you just want to spread it out the best you can and the air will dry this within I don't even know I don't even remember how long we used to take but it shouldn't take more than you know it's not even take probably more than a day or two if you just leave it out like this the smaller the pieces the more you can spread it out the better it's going to be and my hands are just like that okay so then so I'm going to put the rest of these on a tray you can also do this in your oven uh just do it at the lowest temperature that you possibly have you can turn it on get it hot let it warm up and then just turn it off and let your zest sit in the oven for as long as it needs to dry but I am going to go ahead and do my dehydrator because it's warm and I do not want to it's unseasonably warm actually for us right now it's the uh in January and we are in Spring type temperatures which is really unusual for us and we don't want to heat up the kitchen any more than we have to so this is all going to go into the dehydrator foreign here they are in my dehydrator yes I only have three trays I'm going to be adding more to this after a while but for right now for what we're doing today you're going to see just three trays in here you can do as many or as or as few trays in your dehydrator as you'd like just make sure you follow the manual for those that are stackable because sometimes they require a minimum a number of trays to work efficiently and a maximum number of Trades to work efficiently but what we're going to do is we're going to treat these just like we have herbs so herbs and greens 95 35c I'm going to turn on our machine oops too far it's in the camera turn it on we're going to set the temperature as low as it goes because I want to keep all the flavor I don't want to do more my machine happens to go to 90. then the time I don't care about because I don't follow the time the time is just there to tell me the machine went off I will check this periodically in order to make sure that it's good then we are going to get it started and then turn on the light and already within like I don't know 20 seconds 15 20 seconds I can already smell that orange flavor coming out it smells so good it's going to make your house smell awesome here we go this is after about eight hours of solid drying we're done for the day and here's what you get little shards of really hard orange zest and it's not going to do it well so it will just break up like crazy okay I've poured everything onto one tray and four dehydrating products you always want to let them cool off before you test them for dryness sugars in most foods will stay pliable when it's warm so you want to get it completely cooled and then you can test for this we're looking for complete crispness there is no resistance whatsoever these are breaking they are fine they are good and crisp and they are ready to go so for an airtight container I'm using a canning jar and I'm using a commercial lid from some spaghetti sauce that we use but something I do to ensure that this lid is always airtight is I insert a used canning jar lid on the inside of it it doesn't matter this lid itself is airtight it's fine because it has a silicone ring on the inside of it let me see if you can see it right here that is airtight and yes this is clean it's just stained so I go ahead and put that there and then I can do this and I am assured that's airtight it's just a second step that I like to do but you can use a commercial jar that you had a jam in or salsa or spaghetti sauce or any of those things that you might buy from the grocery store pre-done if they're in a glass container save them they are good for storing your Foods in Okay so we are simply going to put color them out of this here and we're going to condition our zest now this is a step I recommend for most dehydrated foods and what it does is it allows you to have some time to catch any mold issues that you may develop in storage in case you didn't get this dry enough so what we do is we put it in a jar in a container whatever airtight container you have doesn't have to be this it can be a tupperware tupperware container it can be you know anything that has an airtight seal and is good plastic not not a zipper towel bag those don't work okay so we're going to put in the container not completely full and we're going to shake it once a day just that's all you really need to do for about five days and what you're looking for is any of these pieces sticking together any of them sticking to the side of the jar that when you turn it over you see some sticking to the top and if it doesn't shake off like that then you need to put it back into your dehydrator okay so the next thing I'm going to show you how to do is make lemon zest powder and you can do this with any Citrus that you have okay before we get started with that this is the zest that I created with this microplane okay when I I rubbed the orange and lemon on the top then it had this really fine zest on the bottom that was just pure zest there was no chance there was going to be any uh any kind of pith in it because it doesn't let you get that far down so what I did instead of leaving it on the counter to dry which is what I showed you could do with it I went ahead and put this in my dehydrator because my counter space is precious in my house I have very few places that I can put this and let it dry safely so I just went ahead and put it in my machine and let it dry it did not blow around it did not get messed up however if you are uncomfortable with that you can always bend it fold it right there before you put it in and it will help so to store this is the same put it in an airtight jar you can by hand just crumble this really small and it smelled almost as fresh as when you zested it immediately it's a great it's a great smell okay to start this we're going to use my personal um grinder Choice which is a kasori coffee grinder I've gone through a lot of coffee grinders over the years they all work really well but eventually many of them will burn out because they aren't meant for the kind of use that I give them for powdering dehydrated foods but so far the kasori has turned out to be my favorite okay so I'm going to do this I'm going to crush them up a little bit just to help it go a little faster and work Less on your coffee grinder you always want to follow the grinder instructions for how to run your particular machine some are very finicky because these motors are not meant for really hard use for long periods of time like a like a neutral blender I'm in any kind of bullet blender or a regular size blender okay so what I have is a oh what I said let me finish my sentence uh you really want to work not work these so hard that you burn out a motor so here is a tip now again read your manual and how it recommends that you do that but for many of them a great way to run it without burning the motor out completely is to pulse it a few times before you hit it hard because that helps break up the larger clumps and gets it smaller for the blades to work better so I'm going to do this simply oh this one's tight all right okay what you're going to see here is lemon powder okay you're going to have some clumps that get clumpy because this is a lot of oil in it and you may need to run this again again go by what your machine says to do because some may need a little bit of rest time to let that motor go because sorry recommends not running this harder than a minute and then letting it rest for a few minutes then starting it again you may have a different need for your grinder but for the most part we've gotten a pretty fine grind in here there are some pieces on the top that need to be done a little bit more but most of what you see in here is just clumping because of the oil because this is full of natural oils that will make it a little bit sticky but it's fine okay so I'm going to do this one more time foreign [Music] okay we're pretty good place now if I was doing a larger quantity what I could do is come through here and take this out sift a little bit and then pull in anything that I needed to redo with the next batch or just put a larger batch in because they do work a little better with more product just because it keeps things moving through the blades a little faster when you get them this small and it puts it all up to the top not enough of it gets down into the blade so okay so there we go that is lemon powder that is it smells so so good uh granted it is not as as an intense of a flavor as if I had just freshly zested a bunch of lemons and I was you know and that oil was just released this is a little um I won't say Tamer but it is a little muted but it still works great if you don't have lemons available to you all the time this can serve as a different lemon zest your machine may come with one I happen to use this because I can use it in my larger uh blenders I just use a brush to get out anything here that is that comes out because almost every blender will always have a little bit of powder sticking to sides sticking to the top and you can just easily use a brush to get it all out this is a an art brush that I got from the hobby store that was on clearance so it just cost me like a buck and I'm just going to clean off my lid because you do not want to waste any of this hard worked for lemon goodness so I'm going to pour it in here okay so what and then if I was cleaning out the cup the same way I would just you know empty it and then just scrape down the sides of the cup now how can you use this my favorite way to do this is with tea um I will if I'm making any kind of tea blend I will add this to the tea blend if I am CR if I'm using loose tea and I want some lemon flavor and I don't happen to have any fresh lemon to squeeze into it I can put a little bit of this powder in with that tea blend into whatever tool I use I happen to use this as my tea uh bag because it is a very fine mesh strain here so I don't get many of the loose leaf into my tea so I can put a little bit of this in or what I'll do is actually put the tea leaves in first and then I'll add this to the top so it doesn't come straight through here and then I will put it into my tea and let it steep but that's my favorite way to use this stuff what I can also do this if I'm making something like let me poppy lemon poppy muffins I could add some extra powder to it to give it a more intense lemon flavor than what the recipe calls for without affecting the recipe I'm not adding more liquid to it it just adds some intenseness of flavor to something like that you can add it to any kind of cooking thing that you're doing that you want some intensity of lemon flavor you can add some more this way put this in a vinaigrette that you're making there are so many ways that you can use this that make it just a wonderful thing so how do I store this the same way we store the regular zest is that you want this in an airtight container super airtight as small as you can get because this will degrade pretty quickly over time because it's just so exposed to everything it will start losing all of that flavor and smell which is why I recommend don't powder until you're going to use it for the next few like for this stuff I don't powder and unless I need it for the next few weeks as opposed to three or four months okay this is you want that smell and that intensity of flavor and doing it for any longer you know you don't necessarily get to keep that so you know those leftover pieces of of orange and lemon that I had in here if you want to see how to dehydrate those you can watch this video right here where I show you how to dehydrate Citrus of all kinds and the trick to keeping them the color that they need to be and not brown and until I see you again next time happy dehydrating

Channel: The Purposeful Pantry

Views: 25,837

Keywords: the purposeful pantry, dehydrating food

Id: WziBliCFbLM

Length: 21min 8sec (1268 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 14 2023