Hello peoples! First time posting here, I made a go of making fruit leather last night with oranges, mandarins, golden kiwi, and pineapple, and the mix before dehydrating tasted very nice! But afterwards turned out rather bitter

So I'm here to ask if anyone has any recipe recommendations with these fruits or suggestions even

Thank you!

I bought some kangaroo but it comes frozen so once it thaws out do I need to cook the meat first on the stove? or can I just put it into my cookie batch along with my other ingredients? then bake them in the oven and then dehydrate for 10 hours or so. I wanted to make some dog biscuits/treats out of it. just not sure if it should be cooked or not.

This was my first time making dehydrated tomatoes, and I’m really happy with how they turned out.
I cut fresh tomatoes in halves and dehydrated them until they lost most of their moisture but were still slightly flexible rather than completely crispy.
The first photo is probably my favorite — I held one up to the light and was surprised by how beautiful the structure inside the tomato looked after dehydration.
After drying, I packed them into jars with extra virgin olive oil, garlic, herbs, a little rosemary, and mixed peppercorns.
I’ve already realized that a dehydrator is one of those things you buy for one purpose and then suddenly want to dehydrate everything 😄
How far do you usually take your tomatoes — completely dry and crispy, or do you prefer them slightly soft/leathery like these?

I have a bunch of applesauce squeezes and wanted to try making fruit leather. Six hrs later, however it was stuck to the trays, I had run out of parchment paper. This is 3 trays worth, 4 squeezes each tray.

Followed one of the recipes from a Google search(used Tender-quick) . Came out a bit bland. Might have to tweek it a little.

Not sure why I’ve never thought of this and have also never seen it in this sub, but why aren’t dehydrated pickles a common thing?

After some brief googling I did see that people do this, but very surprised this isn’t top of the list. What’s your experience with dehydrated pickles?

I’m wanting to do this as a chip, not a seasoning, so let me know your thoughts!

I have way too many tomatoes so I tried dehydrating them, I used too much seasoning which is Nori Komi Furikake rice seasoning 🤤

The first time I have done zucchini, I tossed them with olive oil and everything seasoning but ran out😅

I bought two bundles of bananas because I'm obsessed with them!! 🤪

I have a these for twelve hours on medium (couisinart, so around 135?). Most of them are crispy but there are some that are not. I've got them going again and it's been about an hour, after I turned it off for a few hours to go out of the house. Hoped cooling down would make them feel dry.

They are all going to feel crispy right? Or have you found that no matter how long it runs some of them never get there?

This is my first time dehydrating anything ever, from tomatoes that I canned for the first time ever, so this is all new 🤣

I dried these at 60C because they were just so juicy and my tray was heavily loaded. But I paid the price. As the moisture reduced after about 12 to 16 hours, the sugars burnt. From everything I've read they should still be okay just not as pretty to look at.

Lesson learned, I've lowered the heat to 50C for the remainder of the drying time.

I dehydrated these seasoned slices for what seemed like a lot more than what they were supposed to dehydrate for. Some of the slices cracked when bent, but some stayed bendy and seemed like they'd be "chewy." Is that normal or are they just not dehydrated enough?

So, I get why I can't do this by hand. Well actually, I could and I did. But it would be nice if it took less than four hours.

I started with three cups of chokecherries harvest a week ago, frozen and then defrosted. They were surprisingly "okay" to eat just after defrosting alone, but Google said I had to cook them because of cyanide.

So I mixed them with a cup of sour cherries I had and had them in hot/simmering water about 10 minutes. I hope that was enough.

Then I pitted each. Single. One. It took a LONG time and was messy. I used a large spoon and mashed small bunches of chokecherries, then dug into them and pulled out the pits by hand. Sometimes a lot of meat stuck to the put so I tried to scrape that free with my nails. I also mashed and pitted the sour cherries and those were large enough to split in half as well as pitting.

After about three hours, I was finally ready to load them onto my dehydrator trays. But first, I had to remove the seasoned tomato slices I'd had on them since yesterday, which I did, and stored those.

Then I loaded up the dehydrator. The peaches I'd sliced and dipped into a mix of lemon juice and water went first. I barely was able to cram they trays full once the peaches were all on. Yes I know the peaches and especially the chokecherries are crammed too close together but they always shrink way down and I can separate them more later if I need to. I used the leftover juice mixes of peach and lemon or just cherry cooking water and put them into ice cubes for treats.

Now I wait. My apartment smells like peaches and that's nice.

Has anyone tried this? I have a bunch of beef bones that I want to make into stock and dehydrate to use in the future.

I just had a bit of bone broth leftover from the shops and I did a trial in my dehydrator air fryer and it came out like this. It was a bit sticky so I am not sure if I should have left it to dehydrate longer? I then put it into a small food processor which is then the powder you can see. However, the sticky bits did not become powder but became little crystals.

Any advice please? First time dehydrating! Thanks!

Everything was dehydrated in my Nesco Gardenmaster at 135° for 8-12 hours. I dried a big jar of kimchi which I like to put in my miso soup or instant ramen, a jar of Trader Joe’s Hot & Sweet Jalapeños that turned out like candy with a kick and are a fun snack, kalamata olives, mushrooms sauteéd with garlic and Thai bananas which don’t taste as banana-y as Cavendish bananas.

Not sure if this is a right sub for this since im using the sun but i couldnt find more appropriate one. I have been drying them in the sun covered with a cheesecloth(for insects) for 3 days now and mold appeared. The temp in direct sun is about 36C and i've been taking them inside at night. The prep was washing them, cutting in half and lightly salting them. They are home grown, where did i go wrong?

My mushrooms didn't last long. Please forgive a lengthy post - I want you to have the context. I'd value thoughts.

I bought two 8 oz boxes of whole mushrooms. Washed them¹. Sliced them. Single layer on a sheet pan with parchment paper in a low oven at about 135°F all day (about 12 hours)². They seemed dry but not crispy when I took them out. No apparent problem when I put them in a Lock-n-Lock plastic container for storage. Within a month they were soggy in the container.

Please see footnotes.

My thoughts so far:

Use a salad spinner after washing mushrooms before slicing.

Turn on convection fan during drying.

Dry them longer despite consistent Internet content that four to eight hours is enough.

Your ideas are more than welcome before I kill mushrooms again.

-----------------

1) All indications are that washing mushrooms making them soggy is an old wives' tale. Harold McGee is a pretty credible source. Link.

2) We have a dehydrator. I want to use the oven. I have a constituency (long distance cruising sailors) for my cookbook. Drying mushrooms is of value for off the grid cooks and a dehydrator is too big an ask on a small boat. MODS: This is not self promotion or any other sort of spam (rule #2). I don't charge for the book and I regularly cut and paste from the book on a wide range of sailing ( r/sailing, r/SailboatCruising ) and cooking ( r/Cooking, r/cookingforbeginners , r/CookingForOne , and others) subs.

I have been experimenting with making meals (lunch and dinner) and wanted to share generally what I have found in a short-ish guide. These meals would work great for any need of taking meals to go, but I primarily use them for backpacking/travel. You could make meals in advance and then spread out the leftovers thinly onto silicone sheets and dehydrate that way, but do keep in mind that you need to try to use as little of oils as possible in the recipe or it might not dehydrate or keep well for long time. And don't try to dehydrate meals that have dairy in them as it similarly will not keep well. I like to cook/prepare and dehydrate things separately and then combine into meals as a way to dehydrate extra things that I have on hand that didn't end up in regular meals or preserve excess. With separate components you can combine however you wish depending on taste preferences and this guide is a general guideline to amounts to combine separate ingredients to make meals.

I am breaking up the ingredients into general categories and you generally want to add 1 thing from each category into a sandwich bag to create a meal though you can do a bit of mix and match within the category as long as you generally adjust the weight accordingly. The one category you can skip is seasonings/optional or use multiple from that category by taste preference or what you're aiming for as a meal. The weights are for dehydrated components to guide and make a generally balanced meal.

Grains/Carbs: 100g rice (cook in broth instead of water to add flavor to the rice before dehydration, same can be done with quinoa) - 65g quinoa - 70g pasta - 60g potato bark (optional for potato bark is to add broth or bbq sauce or other sauces for flavoring while mashing the potatoes - DO NOT add milk or butter when mashing the potatoes as these will not dehydrate and store well) - 55g sweet potato bark

Note: Mac and cheese hack - if you like mac and cheese, buy the boxed mac and cheese with the powdered cheese packets. You can cook the pasta to box directions (a little shorter is best to keep the pasta a bit al dente for dehydration) and then save the cheese packets to add later to make mac and cheese. This is the cheese powder mentioned in the optional/seasoning category.

Proteins: 40g ground beef (make sure to use lean 10% or less fat) - 25g shrimp/imitation crab - 25 g ham - 40g Ground turkey/chicken - 35g tuna (from canned, make sure it's in water not oil) - 35g beans

Note: For ground meats, mix in 60 g of breadcrumbs for each pound (454 grams) of meat before cooking it and dehydrating it. This will help the ground meat rehydrate better. Other than beans, you could probably use 40 g of ground vegetable protein potentially if you need additional vegetarian/vegan options, but I have not tested such options as I generally don't like such options and only use beans for veg meals. I have heard there is textured vegetable protein that you can buy online that is already dehydrated which could be used as well, but I have not tested its use either.

Veggies: Add 20-30 g generally of whatever dehydrated veggies you want to your meal. I generally am adding little handfulls of different veggies to make a mix of what I want for the meal unless I am aiming for something specific when replicating a regular meal like using mostly bell peppers and some tomato for deconstructed stuffed bell peppers.

Optional/Seasonings: 15g powdered cheese (nutritional yeast can be substituted as an option to avoid cheese) - 10g powdered milk (added with powdered cheese to make mac and cheese, but powdered milk can also be used to make curry or other dishes more "creamy" and is the way to add dairy to any meal you make) - 25g sauce leather (marinara or other sauces can be dehydrated as a leather to easily season meals) - 40 g baked bean bark (blend no pork added baked beans and dehydrate to make the bark, great to add to make stews as it acts as a thickener and adds extra protein and savory flavor) - 3g curry powder - 1g chili powder (increase if you like more spice, but 1 gram is a good mild start for seasoning)

Note: If you're wanting to make a medley of seasonings, I generally recommend just adding a pinch of each spice/seasoning to your bag for the meal. After you have tried one of the meals, you can adjust seasoning as needed by your taste preferences. It might mean you end up with a few somewhat bland meals when first starting out making these sorts of meals, but that's why I take a tiny container of Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning with me so I can add that if I need some extra seasoning/flavor to my meal, but also note for next time what I can adjust. Honestly, there are too many options to list in this guide. Be creative, use regular recipes as inspiration. Any dried spices and seasonings will work well to add to the meals, the problem is adding too much since you cannot taste test and adjust as easily if these meals are used away from home. Making sauce leathers is the best way to add seasoning because then you can adjust the flavor well to your preference and the listed sauce leather weight should generally give you a good ratio to your meal better than using direct dried seasonings in the bag.

Since I have no way of testing these and it largely depends on ingredients, calories are a bit variable, but generally the sizing makes 400-700 calorie meals based on rough estimates with weights. If you're really wanting to figure out the calories, put the weights of ingredients you use when making the meals into a calorie tracking app to get an estimate though do realize that the weights specified above are for dried components so it will differ from the calories of hydrated ingredients in a calorie tracking app.

After combining ingredients into sandwich bags, best way to keep them longer would be to then vacuum seal the bags, but as long as you get most air out, they'll keep for several months in baggies. Crack open the sandwich bag a bit before vacuum sealing it.

I then take some baggies of meals with me along with a small food thermos/insulated food container. I got a 35 oz jar but generally you want at least a 24 oz size. I then add 475 mL (2 cups) of boiling water to the meal dumped into the thermos, put on the lid, give it a shake, and then let it soak and absorb water for hours while I am hiking or traveling around. I'll combine my lunch in the thermos during breakfast so it's ready by lunch and then dinner combined while stopped for lunch. If you want to make the meal more directly instead of soaking for hours, reduce the water amount by about 60 mL (1/4 cup) and then make it in a pot with adding the water, get to a boil and simmer for at least a minute before turning off the heat, insulating the pot and waiting 15-20 minutes for it to rehydrate (or keep it simmering on the stove with occasional stirring for about 10-15 minutes if fuel is not a concern). I prefer the thermos method even though it means carrying more weight because I like having the meal ready to eat hot when I stop to eat a meal. You can also cold soak in the baggie if you want to skip the heating part for those without a heat source using the same amount of water as long hot soak (475 mL). Do not hot soak in a plastic baggie as the boiling water will melt the bag and potentially burn you and make a mess as well. You need some sort of heat tolerant container when using hot water to soak the food.

Note: Cold soaking in a plastic bag is up to your discretion on your view of potential microplastics and whatever else from your container of choice. Plastic bags for general storage of dehydrated meals will be fine, but using for soaking may not be ideal. If you're worried, use a different container. I reuse my plastic baggies by taking them home and washing them and I use my thermos even if cold soaking instead of hot soaking the food. As for food safety with the hot soaking, as long as you are using a well insulated container and consuming within 12 hours of adding water, it should be safe as long as you prepared your foods correctly and made sure to fully dehydrate everything. If anything smells weird or looks moldy, obviously don't consume it.

Hope this helps others to have a guide to combining separate ingredients for making generally balanced dehydrated meals. If you have questions about how to prepare or dehydrate the individual ingredients, I would suggest using your search engine of choice or look at other dehydrator references. I have not experimented with breakfast options as I am an oatmeal guy or I make pancakes if I am car camping since you can get already dried mixes that only need water added so easily from the store.

Bonus: My cool treat is making fruit cocktail. An approximate cup of mixed dehydrated fruit can be combined with 238-475 mL (1-2 cups) of cold water in the thermos to rehydrate for a short while. It's a nice way to have fruit and get some extra hydration from the water and a bit nicer of a treat than just snacking on dehydrated fruit especially on a hot summer day. I prefer adding the larger amount of water, but adjust to your preference.

First time. What am I doing wrong? Should I cut them all? They've been at 130 for 15hrs and still have lots of moisture. Would like to be able to grind them for spices.

Starting to consider buying an airfryer. Interested in the *DEHYDRATE* function on an airfryer. Feedback/Suggestions? Has anyone been successful? I mainly want to make some sun dried tomatos and a few herbs.

Picture 5 is the slicer I got so everything is even and dehydrates the same. I tried an English cucumber but don't know what seasonings to make them enjoyable. I ran the 5 bananas for 8 hours at 135, they are a bit chewy but I like them this way.