Why I Dehydrate for Food Preservation

hello friends Heidi here from rain country god is good all the time well today I'm going to talk a little bit about dehydrating and show you just a few of the things that I have dehydrated over the years and why I like to dehydrate now let me start by saying that whatever method of food preservation that you choose you've got to decide what's best for you there's no real one best method that's all-around good for everything form of preserving your food it's going to depend on the food it's going to depend on your needs it's going to depend on how long of a shelf life you want it to have and how you want to prepare it when you go to use it so I will do different things I might take one thing and preserve it a few different ways such as blackberries I'm dehydrated blackberries I've frozen blackberries and I have canned blackberries they all have their benefits so today I just simply want to talk about dehydrating I do all of these things and fermenting as well but why I like to dehydrate let's just talk about this today now I don't have a freeze dryer that's a totally different thing some people don't understand that dehydrating and freeze drying are different things they're both they both involve drying the food and removing the moisture from it but they work very differently and they also yield a different result dehydrating tends to change the flavor where freeze drying you're more apt to preserve the flavor and it will taste fresh it's just dry and it also has a different texture it's a very crispy as opposed to dehydrating especially when you're talking about fruits and certain vegetables can have more of a leathery type of texture now your herbs should all dry up very crispy there's no need for freeze drying herbs I'm not sure about this but I think freeze drying my preserve more of the nutrients of regular dehydrating now one of the things I do like about dehydrating is especially when it comes to my herbs of my really highly nutritious stuff like kale and things like that I definitely prefer dehydrating over canning because dehydrating is going to preserve more of the nutrients than canning will you lose a lot more in canning than you do in dehydrating and yes you still lose some in dehydrating and how you dehydrate how high you set the heat is going to also determine how many and what types of nutrients you use for example Sun dehydration is going to you're going to lose more of your vitamin A with Sun dehydration rather than dehydrating let's say in a an electric food dehydrator so these are different things you have to take into consideration now I'm not gonna list off all these things partly because I'm not going to remember them all but I will put a link down below if I remember to find it that gives you kind of a list of the different types of vitamins and minerals that get leached out depending on the form you use for dehydrating and whether or not you blanch it now apparently blanching your foods before dehydrating is going to be one of the better ways to preserve even more than nutrients but even that can be different from food to food and nutrient to nutrient so just it's just going to depend on what you want to do now for me I do not like blanching every time I try it whether it be blanching before freezing or blanching before dehydrating I am never happy with the result to me it seems like taking that extra step just is not worth it so let's talk about some of the stuff I have here now right here is some tomatoes from my garden from 2017 these are just chopped and then dried I use a little bit of oil avocado oil is going to be preferable for a long-term storage as opposed to olive as if it's going to get hot at all and so I'm dehydrating it with heat that's why I'm going to use Abba kado oil because it can handle heat better and I just do that with tomatoes I don't do that with anything else it just I just get a better result using it alone I do have a video on just dehydrating tomatoes like this and I'll go ahead and link to that up here that one's probably about two years old and then I have last year I started another way of dehydrating Tomatoes they each have their own uses and that is by dehydrating them in the form of flakes and I have a video on this as well they did last year and I'll link to that right up here now this can be ground up into a powder if you want I just don't bother because I'm using this more as a thickener for my spaghetti sauces chiles barbecue sauces and stuff so if I take a jar of home canned tomatoes add some of these Tomatoes it'll just thicken it up without the need of cooking it down for so long and I would think you could also make tomato soup out of these I haven't done it yet I like tomato soup myself but Mr rain doesn't so I just I just never make it but anyway jalapenos is another great one that I love to dehydrate dehydrate up very nicely and they're so easy to describe and to throw into whatever I want to add that kick to especially when it comes to soups and stews and things like that or you know chili if I'm making a big pot of chili these are really good for adding to that now I've got a lot of flowers that I dehydrated like the rose petals the dandelions let's see here I've gotten to mister some flowers let's see what else pansies calendula these are actually from 2017 Mike calendula is the times that I'm shooting his videos has only just started really producing so I I'm getting some dehydrated out but I don't have much to show you yet these things are going to be used more for things like using to infuse my oils for using in my skin creams my lip balms they can also be used in making teas if one lights I like to use these a lot in making my herb soaps so if I have like a dandelion lemon soap I'll throw the whole dandelion flower and then and then process it up into the soap and the nice thing about adding these different things is not only are they good for your skin it just gives the soap a little bit of texture so it makes it very scrubby using it as is calendula is very good for the skin and nasturtiums I'm supposed to be really good for hair health and hair growth I know certain flowers that is now when it comes to certain other herbs such as canister some leaves not very much in here excite just got started and I used up all the ones I D hydrated up last year let's see comfrey this is another good one for skin for making appointments and stuff like that marshmallow another one I like to use for cells but also has many other medicinal properties Oh catnip feverfew I don't have everything out here echinacea where's my echinacea echinacea right here this is from last year these things I like dehydrating them because these are my more medicinal herbs and so I'm going to be using them for making teachers and or extracts and for taking for different kinds of illnesses and stuff and the echinacea i like to add to my cold and flu medicine now i did do a video on that and I don't remember if in that video I'd started adding echinacea to it but I'll go ahead and link to the video up here so you can see it and if I don't have that in there echinacea and marshmallow are a couple of excellent ones to add to that because marshmallow in particular is very soothing to the throat and then the echinacea as we all know is really good for helping to fight and prevent colds and flus so I like to dehydrate up medicinal herbs for that purpose most you know so that I can teach her them so that I can extra and then use them for medicinal purposes in that way they like the catnip in the feverfew I like to use for my headache remedy and I'll be talking more about more tinctures and extracts and how I do them in future videos I do have some older videos but some things have changed a little bit in the way I do some things you know we all kind of grow and morph things as we go and as we learn and so some of my earlier videos I was still pretty new to understanding tinkering and extracting and and I've learned a lot since then thanks to people like Amy fuel she has an excellent book and a rosemary glad star and the more I learn the more I start implementing these different things but I still have my own style and way of doing things and I like to come up with my own recipes now other things that I use both medicinally or just for the sake of drinking an iced tea would be like the myths all the myths from my garden and I try to get several jars of just mint I already have this is one I'm working on filling up I'm getting there and I already have a couple more full and I will hopefully have a couple more marshmallow I really like tea as I do lamb's ear I think this is my third jars lamb's ear and yeah so lamb's ear I like adding it to my tea blend but I also like keeping some separate if I just feel like having a lamb's ear tea because I I like the very mild flavor of it stigand and all things like stinging nettle forage kale and red mustard grape leaves and that kind of stuff I like to use for adding to my mixed greens blend and again this is just some of the things that ID hydrate up so dehydrating these and then blending them together in just a real nice very highly nutritious mixed greens I can take that and add it to just about anything especially for those people we don't we're not super picky you know eaters around here but let's say you have people coming over that might be picky you have kids that don't like kale are so many things but you want to make sure they're getting all the good nutrients of the dandelion leaves because that that's in in my mixed greens too and all that great stuff into their foods well dehydrating will help subdue the bitter flavor of things like their dandelion greens and just the flavor in general up stuff like kale and stuff so people don't like that it not only subdues it but you can powder it or just flake it up like I do and add it into dishes and it's pretty well hidden as far as flavor I never noticed a difference in flavor unless I add a whole bunch I've tried adding tons to something one time just to see and it took quite a bit before I actually noticed a difference in flavor and when you think something's dehydrated it's shrunk down a lot smaller in most cases than it was and so it's uh you're getting quite a bit if you put a handful you're actually getting quite a bit that might be like three or four handfuls of the fresh vegetable so and borage by the way I talked about this in another video is one of the ones I'm going to start adding to my mixed greens blend because I can't remember if I did it last year or not but I definitely want to get that in there so I'll have a jar for adding to that a jar for using for medicinal purposes for making soaps and different things and then another jar maybe 40 ok let's talk a little bit about apples now I do plan on doing a separate video just on dehydrated apples sometime down the road probably more like in fall and all the many uses for dehydrated apples on why you should dehydrate your apples this is my favorite way to preserve apples I do like to make apple butter I have a video I did last year of all the different ways I like to preserve apples and I'll go ahead link to that right up here but I'd like to talk at some time just about dehydrated apples and all their many uses but I'll talk a little bit about that right now is and one reason I like to dehydrate the apples is that you can put so many apples in one quart jar and I like the way they turn out better than when I've canned my apples and I can get a lot more in here doing it this way rather than doing the canning method maybe you could only get a couple apples in here we're here I might have five apples or six apples in this jar depending on the size of the apples and this can be used to make pies you can make dried apple pie I have a video on how you can do that right up there you can powder it up if you want and use it for flavorings you can break it up I've broken these up into just smaller bits and throwing them into oatmeal there's I've used them for making a water kefir really really just makes a great water kefir because you're getting that flavor in there throw a cinnamon stick do the same thing when you're making tea so a small handful if your dried apples and a cinnamon stick into a pot of water and let it let it cook a little bit and you'll have a cinnamon apple tea that's just delicious it was cheap cheap cheap to make you didn't have to go buy some expensive teabag down the store you're just using your apples from your own tree that you preserved and you may have to buy the cinnamon sticks but by the way I'll go ahead and link down below to the organic cinnamon or the Ceylon cinnamon sticks that I like to use and I go a little sparing on that since it is something I have to purchase but it is really nice for some extra flavor and by the way when you're done making that tea or that Keiffer take those cinnamon sticks the the spent ones and just throw them out in your garden and they will help to prevent certain garden pests from eating their plants I just toss them out there or wherever wherever I think they're most needed and and just let them do their thing and they'll break down and all that now another thing that I dehydrated up several years ago and I keep forgetting my habit is I had several jars this is one I just recently opened and started using of dehydrated rhubarb now this is one of those things that well you're supposed to blanch it I tried blanching it and it was and I did it right according to the instructions and it was really messy it stuck to the dehydrating picked race so badly I hated it so much and so what I did just to experiment is I just tried cutting them up rock put him on the dehydrator trays and drying them they dried faster and cleaner and now I'm starting to put them to use I will be finding out how well these may work and making let's say a pie or anything where you want to cook them into it and or just rehydrating them and using them in making like my my creamsicles because I like getting a little bit of robot to the different fruit creamsicles I make for mostly mr. rain because there's so much vitamin C in it that I just think it's an excellent choice now here's one thing I'm trying right now with the dried rhubarb in fact this is all dried stuff and this is my recent just started water kefir look at the color of it I didn't use coconut sugar in this one by the way and all that yellow color is from all the things I stuck in there so I've got dried lemon slices right here a dehydrated just dehydrated up a bunch of lemon slices and threw those in there and they've this was yesterday I started this and then the rhubarb and then a few pansies in there for color and and just some health benefits because the the pansies will add a very mild flavor but it's very mild that probably won't even notice it because of the lemon and the rhubarb so this should be a rather tart one we'll see how it turns out I'll be trying that later today and just really like the way the color turned out I just now noticed it because it's been sitting down here on my dark counter and kind of shaded and I didn't realize how yellow it was but anyway this is one of the many things you can do with your dried fruits is use it to flavor water Kieffer's and teas blackberries are another really good one they dehydrate up really nice if you don't mind the seeds which we don't I love the seasons there's so many good nutrients in the seats but I know not everyone can have the seeds for various reasons however I've dehydrated blackberries up and then put those in oatmeal or other types types of hot cereal and that's really good so I'm probably going to be dehydrating more black braces here and one day I'm never dehydrated yet is blueberries I always end up freezing them but this year I'm gonna go ahead and dehydrate some of them put them up and give them a try and see how I like them I just have part of the reason I haven't done it is I'm afraid I'm not gonna like the flavor of them as well because when it comes to a lot of the fruits I like freezing them best because I think they they hold their flavor the best that way but I want to give it a try with the blueberries like I do with the blackberries because some things seem to taste like the blackberry still had a really great blackberry flavor once they were rehydrated into the cereal oh and of course if you watched one of my lastest in that videos I had a thing on there about dehydrating barrenly Gibson so that's one of the things I got going on here for adding to my tea blend and then there's man you know I could talk for a very very long time about dehydrating on all the many uses but I'm dehydrated so many different things from fruits to vegetables and I just can't pull everything out but dehydrated bananas the ones that you do yourself are really good I haven't done a lot with those as far as cooking with them those to me or something I like to just snack on right out of the jar so if you got a good deal on banana somewhere you just slice them up now one thing you can do if you don't like them to turn brown at all as you can coat them with a little bit of some kind of juice like a lemon juice or orange juice and that will also help preserve the nutrients better while it's dehydrating I used to do that but it's another one of those things where it makes the drawing process take a lot longer and it's a lot Messier it's harder to get them off the trace I just usually slice the bananas up put them right on there and I actually like the better that way I I just think I just think they're good I love to snack on them right out of the jar some other things to consider and I've done this before just for fun is taking your peach peels you know you get your your peaches your canning them up and take your peach peels if you don't want to turn them into vinegar because maybe you already got lots then take them and just sprinkle a little bit of some kind of healthy sugar you know the healthier sugars you know such as like a you know a coconut sugar or something on each side and dehydrate him and then you got kind of a candied peach type thing and those are good to snack on right out of the jar as well so that might be one of those things that could be a good comfort food to try out some other things I really like to dehydrate is carrots even though I usually break down and buy my dehydrated carrots from Mother Earth products if I get a really good deal on fresh carrots from the store I just don't go to the store that often but if I happen to go and see oh wow it's a really good deal some organic carrots then I would like to dehydrate those up especially if I can get a good deal on organic rainbow carrots those are so beautiful to add to soups and different things like that they cook they cook up so nice and they add so much color and they they they turn out really good especially when added to soups and I also like adding dehydrated carrots to a lot of my Italian sauces depending on what I'm using them for especially if they're going on spaghetti now right here I have a basket of a few of the things I harvested from the garden I just did kind of a willy-nilly pick today but only to show you just some ideas so you've got radishes these greens are edible you can dehydrate these up and I have and add those to a mixed greens that blend here's some dandelion leaves of course I've got the red mustard not radicchio like I thought it was for the years it's actually red mustard thank you for telling me that I always wondered I didn't think that was quite right but anyway one of my favorite things to do you hydrate there's some fresh tea and elion flowers I'm going to you hydrate up and another thing that you can dehydrate I've got some board sleeves in here there's also all your urge you know your rosemary your time your oregano your basil all that kind of stuff but another thing that dehydrates up really nice our snow piece I've done this and I'll be doing a separate video just on snow peas and how I like to preserve them but dehydrating is one of the ways that that work that turns out really nice you can store them in your jars and if you want to add some snow peas to anything especially if it's something like a soup or stew and you just you just like the idea of the snow peas in there just grab a handful throw them in there they turn out really really good and then the last thing I want to say about dehydrating and again people this is just a fraction of the things I'm dehydrated uh but is sealing that vacuum sealing them like this right here is all sealed nicely with my brake bleeder and I did just do a video on only how to vacuum seal into your jars because I get a lot of people asking me that and since I never had a video just on that I find you did that so I'll link to that video right up here because it's a really important to know there's two different ways that I use actually there's only one that I use now but there's another way I used to use I'm going to show a show them both in that video and how you can vacuum seal vacuum seal all your dry goods whether it be your beans or anything into your jars and they will last for a very long time on the shelf as long as your jars don't you lose their seal so it might be a good idea to check your seals every now and then because every now and then I'll have one well this is not silly doesn't just opened it but that's how you can tell you just press on if it does that do you know it's not sealed but the good thing about it is when it's dehydrated as long as you check it every now and then it's already dehydrated it can last a really long time just like that without being vacuum sealed but vacuum sealing will keep it for even longer and keep it fresher that way so it's a really good method to use and go check that video out so you can learn how to do for yourself and then one last thing I want to say before we go is actually something I want to ask of you is to go ahead and share with us your favorite things that you like to do hydrate and your favorite ways of using them so that we can either go yeah I do that too I love doing that or we can go wow that's a really great idea so that we can all learn from each other it's always fun getting new ideas on how to dehydrate I mean that's how we learn right we learn from each other alright I hope you enjoyed this video and they learned something new thanks for watching take care and God bless [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Rain Country

Views: 69,998

Rating: 4.9210734 out of 5

Keywords: traditional, old-ways, Health, Garden, Frugal, Homesteading, Self-Sustainability, Cooking, DIY, Homemade, natural-living, herbs, food preservation, dehydrating, prepping, preparedness, putting up food, preserving herbs, medicinal herbs, dried apples, garden abundance, old paths, long term

Id: 2KIyyGsBCbQ

Length: 24min 48sec (1488 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 13 2018