dried vegetables

Have you ever tried to dry the vegetables into small pieces and then use them in soups? How do you proceed?

 

I use one of these 700w dehydrators which is on 'sale' at the moment for £116, and have two extra trays for it (another £17.50) for vegetables, apple rings, pear chunks, tomatoes, etc.

But you can get them much cheaper (250w) from here - £39.99 + £4.99 P&P: Food Dehydrator at Westfalia Mail Order - UK



Lakeland used to do one for about £40 that's quaranteed for life - I'll have a look for it........

and here it is - 250w for £50.99 (seems to have gone up quite a bit!):

http://www.lakeland.co.uk/14210/My-...ssionid=778A6B7BF879B8774A913C10BC7C3E06.app2

 

Dead easy! Just slice and pop in the dehydrator for a few hours. Cherry tomatos just cut in half, peas and broad beans just shell. Once dry just pop into self-seal bags. The produce keeps for a very long time.
When it comes to using the dried produce you can soak in water to rehydrate or in some instances just added directly to wahtever you are cooking.

 

I chop carrots very finely & dry them on a tray in a very low oven. Did have a solar drier but that got a bit too hot & caramelised a few things.

 

Is it not perhaps better to vacuum pack them fresh and then freeze? .... My mom does that when she buys stuff in bulk and according to her, it stays fresh for several months

She does the same with meat (she buys in bulk .... beef hindquarter etc), and vacuum packs it

She has an industrial vacuum pack machine and buys special plastic bags

 

I'm impressed that somebody else actually dries peas these days. We do it and re-hydrate ours to use in curries.

 

This thead is about drying vegetables, not beefy stuff, so about drying/dehydrating veg and not about not wasting freezer space/using electricity/losing your crop if there's a power cut.;

 

maybe you misunderstood .... what I was trying to say is that perhaps vacuum freezing is better than drying as you don't loose any of the nutrition/vitamins when drying and I have yet to taste a dried fruit or dried mushroom that tastes like a fresh one

I never saw anything mentioned about power cuts or crop failures or planet X or droughts

 

How did you know about the Drought on Planet X ? Now there would be a good place to dry things