Dehydrated Vegetables - Great for Winter Soups and Sauces

It’s August and you can’t give a tomato away. Before you start leaving unwanted tomatoes on the vine to rot, consider drying tomatoes to use during less bountiful months. Dehydrated vegetables will provide a welcome taste of your garden in the middle of February.

Dehydrating lets you to store the produce from your vegetable garden for months and even years. Dehydrated tomatoes, carrots, onions and other vegetables take up a fraction of the space of frozen or canned produce.

You can dehydrate garden vegetables in the sun, the oven or a dehydrator. Dehydrators are expensive and the sun can prove unreliable, so try the oven. Follow these steps before dehydrating:

• Harvest vegetables at peak of ripeness and dehydrate them quickly to preserve flavor and nutrients.
• Wash vegetables and cut them into small pieces. The smaller and thinner the pieces, the shorter the dehydrating process.
• Blanche vegetables in boiling water for one minute. Tomatoes do not need to be blanched before drying.
• Cool and dry blanched vegetables then begin the drying process.

Oven Drying Your Vegetables

Set your oven to the lowest temperature possible (ideally about 140 degrees). Allow the oven to preheat. Keep a thermometer in the oven so you can check the temperature during the drying process.

You need to keep air flowing around the vegetables during dehydration. Place cooled, blanched vegetables on mesh racks or metal frames with cheesecloth stretched over them. Do not use cookie sheets.

Place several trays of vegetables in the oven. Leave the door open about three inches. Move trays around to prevent scorching. Vegetables will take four to 12 hours to dry. When done, properly dried vegetables will snap in half easily or shatter when hit with a mallet.

Remove tomato seeds before drying. Dry tomatoes at 200 degrees for six to 12 hours.

Store dehydrated produce in airtight containers. To use the dried vegetables in cooking, add them directly to soups or sauces, or reconstitute them in water for two hours.

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