Taste Test Tuesday: Ham Potato Bean Soup

Got left over ham?  Or simply wanting another way of making it tasty?  I got this Ham, Potato and Bean Soup from my sister.  It is delicious.  It works great to use dry milk powder--use 2 c water mixed with 6 tablespoons of dry milk powder for the 2 cups of milk.  Also replacing cooked white beans with the canned is fine too, or using dried/freeze dried veggies, make it yours and  Enjoy!

Miscellaneous Monday: Food Storage Cookbook Review

Food Storage Cookbook Review:  Cooking with Food Storage Made Easy by Debbie G Harman

Layout:  Good.  Recipes are categorized by preservation method (preserving, drying, etc.) and then by type of dish (main, side, soup, etc.).

Recipes:  A total of around 200 recipes.  Many of the recipes use home-canned/dried foods or expanded food storage items like cheese sauce powder or sour cream powder.  As far as using LDS home storage center long-term food storage items, this cookbook does contain recipes using dry milk powder, wheat, beans, etc.

Overall:  If you will be preserving your own food (canning, drying, freezing) and/or buying these types of items, there are plenty of recipes to help you here.  If you want a cookbook that uses the basic long-term food storage items that are available at the LDS home storage centers, you could adapt some of these recipes to use more of them, but otherwise it isn't chock full of these types of recipes.

What I like:  Includes recipes to use home canned or home dried foods.

Taste Test Tuesday: Fruit Leather

Today is a very simple recipe for making yummy and colorful fruit leather.  The ingredients:  apple sauce plus flavored gelatin or flavored drink mix if you want to flavor and color the fruit leather.  Plain applesauce without the gelatin or drink mix works just fine too.  Making a variety of colors, you can make a variety of designs.

Simply mix the gelatin or drink mix into the applesauce, mixing more or less in to get the color you want.  Yellow doesn't need drink mix or gelatin, I just added lemonade mix to it to flavor it.  I found that orange and blue needed more mix to reach colors that actually were orange or blue and not yellow or green.
 
If you don't have fruit leather trays for your dehydrator or even if you do and you want a very easy clean up, you can use plastic wrap.  Put the plastic wrap on the tray, getting it as flat as you can.  To make removal easier, spray it with cooking spray before putting the applesauce on it.  Spread a thin but even layer of applesauce onto the plastic wrap.  And dehydrate away at the fruit setting of about 135 degrees.  When they are dried, let them cool and then simply roll them up with the plastic wrap and store in an airtight container.  I use kitchen scissors to cut the rolled up fruit leather into about 1 to 2 inch wide strips for those that aren't specific designs.

Enjoy making very easy fruit leather!

 

Taste Test Tuesday: Strawberry Fruit Topping

Today's recipe:  Strawberry Fruit Topping.  I made this fruit topping to top homemade no bake cheesecake (that uses dry milk).  I had some dried strawberries that I had dehydrated using a dehydrator, I thought I'd try making a fruit sauce out of them and this is the result...mmmm.  It was absolutely delicious on the cheesecake, but also great for ice cream.

Enjoy!

Taste Test Tuesday: Dehydrating Frozen Veggies

Today I will share an easy way to dehydrate veggies by using frozen veggies.  Normally when dehydrating foods, you have some prep work like chopping & blanching, but when you buy frozen veggies from the store, this work is already done for you (or at least should have been done), so all you have to do is spread it out on the trays and dehydrate.

If there are large clumps or areas of ice go ahead and break them up and remove as much ice as you can.  Some veggies might be too big for your trays, like broccoli or cauliflower heads, simply chop them up more if you need to--which may require some thawing time.

Some veggies are more aromatic than others, like peppers or onions, so just be aware if you are sensitive to smells.

Enjoy!

Taste Test Tuesday: Turkey Jerky

Today's recipe uses a name specific spice mix, but there are other ways to make turkey jerky with other spice mixes and such.  This is simply how I have made and liked it.  So here is the recipe and then will follow pictures from making it.

Be sure to start with the leanest meat possible, I got the 90% lean ground turkey.  After mixing the ground meat with the spice and cure mix, I used a jerky gun to make uniform strips and found it very helpful.  Dehydrate at 160 degrees.  If your dehydrator doesn't show or allow you to control the temperature, I wouldn't use it to dry meats.

After the first hour or 2, I wiped up what moisture and fat I could with paper towel, I found it helpful to simply lay the paper towel over the strips and press a little and let the paper towel absorb the fat.  Some of the time the paper towel did stick a little, and I had to peel it off, but nothing big.  You can see the paper towel absorbs quite a bit.  After absorbing one side this way, I flipped the strips over and then did the same to the other side.  I kept the dehydrator running and pulled out one tray at a time when I did this--that is one nice thing about a side mount fan dehydrator over the top mount or even bottom mount.

Have fun and enjoy!  Home dried jerkies don't last as long if not kept frozen, so be sure to use it up before it goes bad.

Wednesday Why: Dehydrators

Wednesday Why:  Dehydrators

What are the benefits of having a dehydrator?  There are different ways to dehydrate food, you can sun-dry, use the oven or even a microwave (though I haven’t tried that yet), use a sun oven, and of course dehydrators.  Some of the pros of using a dehydrator can include being able to control the temperature, keeping the bugs away, not as much energy as an oven.  The cons--well some dehydrators can be loud, they do take up space on the counter and depending on the type, the initial cost can be high.  By dehydrating food, you can store more in less space--yeah!

What should be considered when choosing a dehydrator?  When deciding whether to buy a dehydrator or not and which type/size, you will want to think about how often you will be using it and how much at once will need to be dried, what kind of foods you want to dry and cost.  If you don’t garden, you may not be using it as much.  But then again you may if you buy produce in bulk or on sale regularly.  Do you plan to make fruit leathers, jerky, dry herbs, or simply dry fruits and veggies?  Some dehydrators are better than others.  Dehydrators come in different sizes and some are able to expand if you want to have adjustable sizes.  Some dehydrators are limited into the size of the food that can be dried, whereas others have trays that can be removed to allow for larger food like when making yogurt or raising bread.  Another thing to consider are the features:  temperature dials, digital controls, timers, etc.  I personally don’t think a timer is as important as a temperature dial, since I don’t plan on having the dehydrator start/stop when I can’t be there to do so.  Whether you prefer dial or digital temperature control is up to you.  Also some dehydrators claim to be faster, and perhaps they are, but personally that isn’t a factor to me as you don’t want your food to case-harden (where the outside hardens and doesn’t allow the inside to dry) which can happen if you are drying at too high a temperature (because of trying to make the drying go faster).

Accessories:  I highly suggest getting mesh screens for your trays--some are labeled as mesh screens (like for a L’Equip) others have fancy names like “clean-a-screen” (Nesco models).  They make clean up so much easier!!!  You can easily make your own mesh screens--craft stores sell the plastic mesh stuff (ahh those not so forgotten tissue box holders made from mesh screen and yarn--yep it’s basically the same stuff, I’ve used both the commercial ones and the craft store ones they perform around the same).  Also most dehydrators come with a limited amount of fruit leather trays, if you plan to make a lot of fruit leather, I would buy the accessory fruit trays to up the amount of leathers you can make at once.

The final decision:  If you have friends or family who have dehydrators, I highly suggest asking them if you can try them to see if you like them before buying.  Otherwise, if you are unable to try for yourself, do your research, think about size, capacity, features (best to have temperature control), quality (look at warranty), what you plan on using it for & accessories as well as the cost.  What of these will be most important to you?  If cost is most important, you will most likely be looking at bottom or top mounted because they are the cheaper dehydrators generally.  If quality is your most important aspect, look for those with the longest warranties and the best reviews.  If capacity is the biggest deciding factor, rear-mounted and expandable dehydrators are your best option (with rear-mounted allowing for large doings like making yogurt and raising bread).  If you plan on doing meats at all, you will want a dehydrator with temperature control.

Types of Dehydrators:  There are dehydrators with the motor/fan on the bottom, top or in the back.  There are pros and cons to each.  

Bottom mounted fans:  juices can and will drip down, so be sure you are willing and able to clean up the mess--as bottom mounted fans will have to be cleaned with a cloth rather than running under water or in a dishwasher.  Many bottom mounted fans do allow for expansion by buying extra trays.  So that is one positive of many of the bottom mounted fan dehydrators.  

Some examples include:  L’Equip food dehydrators.  I haven’t personally used these, but have researched them and read reviews--overall they seem to be a good choice for bottom mounted fans.  Based on what I have read, it has one of the longest manufacturer’s warranties available (12 years on some models).  These run around $100 to $150, depending on model and accessories.

As far as bottom mounted fan dehydrators go, I’ve only used a generic (Durabrand) one from Walmart years ago (for about $15 or $20).  It does fine with fruits, veggies and fruit leathers, but I wasn’t brave enough to try meats because it doesn’t have a temperature control and meats should be done at a higher temperature.  It has lasted over 10 years with periodic use, so even generic ones can and will work.  Cleaning the base that housed the fan, wasn’t too bad--I usually left a damp cloth on the juices for a bit to help loosen them up, and they usually cleaned up rather easily.  See pics of before cleaning and after:

This was from when I dried frozen strawberries, quite a mess, but it cleaned up nicely too.  The fan sits a little above so no liquid got into it.

Top mounted fans:  the juices that drip down will go onto a bottom tray thing that can be washed submersed in water if need be.  Many top mounted fan dehydrators can be expanded by buying more trays.

Some examples include:  Nesco food dehydrators.  There are a variety of models, but most of the ones I’ve come across have good reviews.  I personally have used one, it does great with fruits, veggies, leathers, and meats.  There is no on/off switch though--to turn on you plug it in, to turn off you unplug--not a big deal for me, but if you prefer on/off buttons/switches this isn’t the one for you.  The trays clean easily.  These dehyrdators usually run around $30 to $100, depending on model and accessories.  Price-wise, the Nesco brand gives a lot for your money.

Rear mounted fans:   These hype that they are better than any other type of mounted fan, and perhaps they are.  My personal experience was that when compared with the top mounted Nesco, it didn’t seem to be all that big of a difference.  BUT, the biggest benefit to these types of dehydrators is that usually you can remove any number of trays to do things like making  yogurt or raising bread loaves--a big plus if you plan to use a dehydrator to do these things.  Also, depending on the size (number of trays) you have more drying space than the often smaller bottom or top mounted fan dehydrators.  A negative is these types are big, they take up quite a bit of counter space compared to other dehydrators.

Some examples include:  The number one favorite:  Excalibur!  Great reviews, again one of the longest warranties available (10 years) and a dehydrator’s favorite for years.  Prices for these run around $150-400, depending on model.

I haven’t used the Excailbur, but would like to someday:).  I did try a rear mounted fan dehydrator from Cabela's, that has a similar design in that it has 10 trays, rear mounted fan, dial temperature control.  I like the clear hinged door on Cabela’s dehydrator--I could see the food and monitor its drying.  The cons of this Cabela’s dehydrator over Excalibur (at least in my point of view) are:  this model did not come with mesh screens or fruit leather trays; I had to cut some craft mesh screens to size (not a problem at all to do so); and have yet to figure out or try making fruit leather screens (maybe plastic wrap?) whereas the Excalibur does have these available if not when you buy it, at least as accessories.  The model I tried was a sale deal model so that may be why it didn’t come with accessories.  Another model sold currently is around $200 and that one does have accessories available.

Note:  prices are based on price of unit, they do not include any shipping and handling.  Most prices came from Amazon, except for Cabela’s.

Taste Test Tuesday: Raisins

I know today isn't Tuesday, but since I didn't post then, I will now.  Making your own raisins is really easy.  I used frozen grapes (both green and red) and though it took a long time, they did eventually dehydrate into what were then known as raisins.  Then being the operative word--as they are good and disappear fast.

So here is the recipe card with a picture of the dried grapes on the dehydrator tray.

Enjoy!

Taste Test Tuesday: Drying Ground Beef

Today's recipe is more of a tutorial on how to dehydrate cooked ground beef.  When doing so, buy the leanest ground beef you can find.  Fat in meats will make it go bad sooner and not dehydrate very well.  After browning the meat, rinse it multiple times to remove as much fat as possible.  Allow to dry a little while preparing the dehydrator with screens.  Dehydrate at 160*F for multiple hours (probably at least 4-6 but can be up to 12 or so).  After allowing it to cool from dehydrating, seal in airtight containers and store on shelf for up to 1 month or in the freezer for longer.

Works great for camping!  It is lightweight and it doesn't require refrigeration.  Great mixed with some potatoes and cheese.

Taste Test Tuesday: Fruit Leather

Fruit Leather, mmm.  I had some nectarines that needed to be used so I decided to make them into fruit leather.

I wasn't sure how set they would get on their own, so I threw in some apple knowing it has a good amount of pectin in it.  I also threw in some frozen strawberries because it sounded good and my blended nectarine/apple mix was rather watery and I needed to thicken it a little.

I dehydrated the fruit sauce over night and in the morning had fruit leather, yum!  The picture on the recipe card is the finished leather, the picture below is a before picture.