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Food Dehydration Essentials (Preserving Food Naturally)
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Jul 3, 2024
Food dehydration isn’t just a modern kitchen technique—it’s a practice as old as time, stretching back to when ancient civilizations first discovered they could use the sun’s warmth to preserve their food for leaner times. Here is the full article: https://thefarmerslamp.com/food-dehydration-essentials/ Our Dehydrator: Excalibur: https://excaliburdehydrator.com/?rfsn=7848669.dc8b94
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Hi, welcome. Today I want to talk about the essentials of food dehydration. We've talked
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a lot about how we dehydrate most all of our things here on the farm. We only can tomatoes
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and meat now. Everything else is dehydrated. And I get a lot of questions about it, and
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I've just never actually written an article dedicated to food dehydration. So, that's
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what we're going to talk about today. Food dehydration has been around since forever
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since Adam and Eve started gardening, I suppose, because it was done with the sun. Now, today
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we have modern electric dehydrators that allow us to very efficiently and reliably dehydrate
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our food. One of the questions I get a lot is, why do we dehydrate most of our garden
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produce? And you can find all these answers and a lot more information in the article
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on the Farmer's Lamp. So, we're just going to kind of talk in general on this video to
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keep it short and simple. The beauty of dehydration is its simplicity and effectiveness. It just
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takes moisture out of the food, stops bacteria, yeast, and mold from spoiling your food, and
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it extends the food shelf life. There's no chemicals needed. There's just good old drying
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This method also helps keep your food safe. It keeps the nutrients locked in. Now, what
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we do is something called the Living Foods Method, and that is where we dehydrate everything
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at 118 degrees, as long as it's not over 120. At 120 and above, the enzymes in the food
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are killed. So, that's why we do the Living Food Methods. One of the things I personally
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like about dehydrating foods is, let's say I'm canning peas, and I have three quart jars
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of peas. I can get all three of those quart jars that are put through the pressure canner
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into one quart jar of dehydrated peas. So, it saves me a lot of space, and if you're
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like me, you don't have a lot of space. I like that. It's a huge help to me in my pantry
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In the article, we talk about the science of dehydration. I won't go into that in any
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depth in this video. You can always go to the article and read the article. But at the
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general temperature of 118 degrees, the antioxidants are preserved. C and B vitamins, especially
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because they are destroyed at high temperatures. So, this keeps them alive. And honestly, the
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taste of the food, to me, is just fantastic. Preparing the foods for dehydration, most
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of the time, it's just a matter of slicing or chopping and washing, you know, getting
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them and then getting them in the dehydrator. There are some foods that may need, if they
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turn brown, may need some apple cider vinegar or some lemon juice tossed on them just to
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keep them from going brown. But it's not necessary for dehydration. But you're going to wash
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everything, you're going to peel it. Now, every dehydrator comes with its own instruction
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book. And so, while these are basics and guidelines that I'm offering you in this article and
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in this video, I don't want you to not look at the book in your dehydrator. Because, like
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I said, everyone has a different wattage, they have a different shelf setup, they have
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a different airflow, and there's just all kinds of things that can be different. So
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let's say you're going to slice up bell peppers. We know you can set it at 118 degrees. That's
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going to be universal for living foods. But your book is going to have a recommended temperature
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and a recommended time for bell peppers. So, take a look at that, especially the time
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because we know we're going to use 108, we are, 118 degrees for living foods method
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So, let's say it says it's going to take 10 hours to dry your bell peppers. Then with
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the living food methods, at this lower temperature, you're going to allow 16 to 18 hours. And
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your book will tell you how to know when it's done. A bell pepper, you'll know it's done
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because they will be crisp, they'll snap. A pineapple is still going to be pliable
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It's not going to be wet, it's not going to be juicy, but it will be pliable because that's
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just how they work. So, check those things out in your book. You're going to harvest
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them before they go to bloom because that's when their peak oil content is. You're going
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to rinse them in cold water. I like to pat mine dry. Some people leave them out to air
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dry, but I like to just kind of pat mine dry. I won't take out any trash or any wilted leaves
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or anything you don't want in there. I leave mine whole. You can chop them up and just
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lay them out on your drying sheet. And you can use the temperature method in your book
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or if you want to do the living food methods, 118 degrees. Nuts and seeds, raw, unsalted
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nuts and seeds. You can soak them in water. It's not required, but it is beneficial, I
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think. We have a lot of hickory trees and pecan trees, and so you can do that. Rinse
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them, again, pat them dry. Everything in your dehydrator is going to be single layers. You're
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not going to have anything overlapping. We just replaced our older Excalibur dehydrator
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We actually gave it to somebody. It was still functional, but I wanted the stainless steel
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one with the glass see-through door, and I have been really thrilled with it. So, you
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know, that's just a way of information for you. Harvest legumes, peas, beans, okay, you're
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going to pick them from the garden or buy them from the farmer's market, however you
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get yours. Of course, you're going to shell them. You're going to remove any damaged parts
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You're going to rinse them, get the dirt, any residue out, any bad peas or beans out
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Again, spread them evenly, single layers, and then set your dehydrator according to
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your book or the living foods method. Each type of food, every type of food is just a
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little different. Again, it's mostly in the times. We've talked about the living food
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methods and why we use it. Now, most books, most dehydrator books are not going to talk
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about the living food method. I'm pretty sure the Excalibur book that comes with it talks
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about the living food methods because it's really important to preserve the enzymes
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Preserving the nutrition in your food. I remember just a little funny story. My aunt took her a jar
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of our peas, our pink eyed purple hull peas, and she called me and said, how do I cook these? And
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I said, you cook dried peas all the time. Don't you know, you know how to cook dried peas? And
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she said, oh, this is, that's what these are. She'd never had dehydrated food before. And she
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didn't realize that the dried beans that she buys at the grocery store were, that's what they are
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So anyway, she cooked them and she called me and she said, these taste just like you picked
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them right out of the garden and brought them in here and cooked them. And I said, exactly. That's
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the beauty of dehydration. That flavor and that nutrition is locked in there when you dehydrate
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your food. So a little bit more about the living food methods. We've talked about the temperatures
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and how to prepare your food, that it's single layers. You can, some people set their, their
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dehydrators on 120 for living food methods. I don't because it's temperatures above 120 that
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some of these enzymes are killed and some of the more sensitive ones are killed at 120. So we just
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always go with 118 degrees. Now, when the time is up, check your food to be sure it's ready. You
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can't just say, okay, the timer's off. The food's ready because, um, every piece, uh, every type of
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food, you know, will be a different temper, different texture. So, you know, different
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uh, like bell peppers are crispy and pineapples are pliable. So, uh, never store your warm food
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because it's going to be warm when it comes out of the dehydrator. It won't take it long to cool off, but just leave the door closed because it will absorb moisture from the air. So just leave
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the door closed on your dehydrator, let it cool off, and then you can store it. Now there's a few
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different ways you can store your dehydrated food. I store mine in glass, uh, pint, or quart jars
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just depends, uh, on the food that I'm storing. And we have an electric mason jar vacuum sealer
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There's a link to it, uh, in the article on the Farmers' Lamp, uh, that we suck all the air out
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and it seals the jars. I like that. I really like that. I haven't had it very long. I've only had
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it a couple years, um, before I was using oxygen packs and that's still a great method. But with
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this method, I can open the jar, take out what I need, and then reseal the jar. And you can do that
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with oxygen packs, but at some point in time, that oxygen pack is going to be full so you have to
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keep replacing it. Uh, vacuum sealer bags, um, you know, where you put the food in the bag and then
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you put the vacuum sealer. That's a great way to store dehydrated foods. We talked about oxygen
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uh, absorbers. Uh, mylar bags with oxygen absorbers, uh, is a good, um, good method
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a long-term storage method. So regardless of the storage method that you choose, it's crucial that
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they, your dehydrated foods be stored in a cool, dark, dry space. You don't want them in direct
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sunlight. You don't want them exposed to heat and definitely not moisture. Um, they can shorten the
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life of it and even spoil your food. Okay. I'm going to find some more tips on the farmer's lamp
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for that. So I encourage you to give, uh, food dehydration a try. Um, see if it fits your homesteading
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practices, even if you're not on homestead. If you're in town and you can get to a farmer's
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market and buy bulk produce, uh, this is a great way to preserve it and not take up a lot of space
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in your home or your apartment or wherever you are. Until next time, be sure to check out the
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full article on food dehydration essentials on the farmer's lamp, links down below. Until next time
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safe and happy journey
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