13
Preparing Vegetable For Dehydrating
1. Select only high quality, crisp, unblemished vegetables.
2. Wash thoroughly to remove bacteria, pesticides, dirt, etc.
3. Remove soft spots, blemishes, and stems. Soft spots do not dehydrate well
and could spoil the entire batch.
4. Peeling is optional. The peel and just below the surface contain minerals
and vitamins, but skins can become tough when dehydrated. If desired,
slice or cut vegetables. Optimum thickness is 1/8 to 3/8 inch. Cut vegeta
-
bles uniformly to ensure even dehydrating.
5.
Pretreating before dehydrating is recommended for most vegetables, ex-
cept onions, garlic, tomatoes, and peppers.
6. Preheat Dehydrator while pretreating vegetables, or loading Trays. See
pretreatment for vegetables, page 14.
7.
Arrange vegetables on trays allowing space between pieces for good circu-
lation. Do not stack or overlap vegetables.
Vegetable Dehydrating Tips
•
The dehydrating time of vegetables varies due to humidity, ambient air
temperature, thickness of pieces, water content, and arrangement on Trays.
• Prepare only enough vegetables as you can dehydrate at one time.
• Arrange similar sized pieces on the same Tray.
• When dehydrated, vegetables should be brittle, hard or crisp. To ensure
even dehydrating, restack Trays, moving the top Tray to the bottom two or
three times during the dehydrating process.
•
To test for desired dryness, remove a few samples from each Tray and
allow to cool.
•
Because vegetables are dehydrated to such a waterless state, conditioning,
as recommended for dehydrated fruit, is not necessary.
• Always cool dehydrated vegetables completely before packaging and
storing.
