Dehydrating 101, Strawberries

In which I tell all about my first experience using my dehydrator.

Well I got the thing months ago, as a Christmas present from my dad, who knows I'm into food. I had never really considered buying one, but of course it seemed like a good idea if someone was gonna give it to me. When it came in the mail, I was a little taken aback. It's huge!!! It's a big white spaceship, adequate size for a raccoon to travel to the moon, and it is certainly too big for my kitchen table, counter, or cabinets. Because of that, and the fact that I didn't know what to do with it, it's been waiting patiently in the basement until now. This week I promised myself I would buy a large quantity of something at the farmers' market and dry it, so here goes.

Here is what is left of 3 baskets of strawberries, which I got for a mere 8 bucks and a guess that I was Brazilian. That's right, the farmer dude asked if I was Brazilian after I asked "how much?" in Spanish. I guess there are a lot of white people in Brazil, but that's definitely a first for me. Anyway, it seemed like Christopher and I ate strawberries with abandon last night, but there were still a lot left.

The first step was sorting, as the manual advised to only use the freshest, ripest fruit with no bruises or blemishes. Of course these are all fresh and ripe, but I picked out most of the ones that were bruised and set them aside. I was a little torn, though, because I think the bruised ones are the most ripe, and the tougher, more pristine ones are that way because they are a little under-ripe. Oh well, they're all beautiful.


I ended up with about a basket and a half of bruised berries, marked for immediate consumption. This will be a very difficult task, of course, for which Christopher and I should be pitied.
The ones left on the dish towel are the best and brightest fruits, destined to be robbed of their natural moisture and turned into chewy remnants of their former selves. The goal of this, I think, is to eat locally grown strawberries more often than once a year. Also it allowed me to save a buck (literally) on buying a bunch at once. I think there are other benefits to dehydrating things, but I'll probably discover those over time.

Next was slicing them all up, after rinsing and removing the stems, and placing them on one of the drying trays. I didn't think it was necessary to bring a second tray into the operation for a handful more of fruit slices, so the two that didn't fit went back into the "eat me" pile.
When I turned on the intergalactic vehicle, it commenced a loud whirring sound, and the hot air was blowing out from all sides. I took it off the table so it wouldn't partially dehydrate the other strawberries, our peaches, and the potted plant.
See? it's a spaceship. More so, and more raccoon-sized, with all four trays stacked in it.

The thing makes me nervous, and I don't think you're supposed to leave it unattended, so I've been home all day, checking on the progress periodically.

To be continued....

8:55 PM

I took the last strawberries off the rack about ten minutes ago, having put them on at 1:17PM. I swore I'd leave the house as soon as I flipped the switch, but now I don't know where to go. This has been an all-day event; drying strawberries, and meanwhile killing time blogging. I ate three meals and a couple snacks, all at home. I don't eat three meals at home often, so that's nice. They were all healthy and delicious, and pre-paid.

Oh! The verdict!
I'm sorry, they told me to put them in the freezer afterwards, and I forgot to photograph again, please hold.


Here they are. It would have been more dramatic, yes, if I had photographed all the dried ones on the rack, to contrast with how they looked on the rack at first. No deal, though, because you have to start taking off individuals as they dry, leaving the ones with any juice left.

As you can kind of tell, the container I just had in the freezer has a bit of condensation lining it. This means that some of them weren't properly dried, and that's supposed to be bad. I kinda knew that, there were a bunch at the end that I gave up on, which was wrong. They were mostly the tips, the pieces that were cone-shaped. I tried to rip them open, ruining their cute shape, so I could expose more flesh and get them to dry faster. Then I took them out again not too much longer and threw them in with the rest. I don't think they were dry. Oh well, maybe they won't ruin the whole lot of them.

A fuzzy picture of the reward:
Remember the super ripe berries that I left on the table? Well I had some for breakfast, and had a couple randomly throughout the day, but by the end of the day they were much different. It was a rare hot day here, and the dehydrator, though I moved it slightly from the table, made the whole cottage even warmer than the outside. This is with all the windows open, and most of the day with both doors open. The strawberries went from slightly bruised to bruises, and one went from bruised to moldy. What a difference a day makes!

Remember how I joked about the chore of trying to eat them all?!
Christopher took half to share at band practice, we each topped off dinner with one or two, and I invented a new breakfast sandwich. We still have about ten wet berries left.

What will I dehydrate next??
Nothing until it cools down a little. We'll see.

Coming soon!
"How to eat my dried strawberries"