Food Dehydrators

I am continuing to enjoy dehydrating food.  Two new but simple things were broccoli, which makes for a tasty crunchy snack, and celery, which I made into powder.  It was very good sprinkled on a hard boiled egg.  Because celery is almost entirely water, the cuts shrunk down to almost nothing and what you see in the jar is almost an entire bunch as one would get at the supermarket.

I never tried it, I wonder how celeriac, aka celery root, would dehydrate?

Freddy, I don't know if anyone mentioned it, be sure to drink plenty of liquid with those dehydrated snacks. They will rehydrate to be digested, and if you don't give it what's required it'll steal it from your body.

I never tried it, I wonder how celeriac, aka celery root, would dehydrate?

Freddy, I don't know if anyone mentioned it, be sure to drink plenty of liquid with those dehydrated snacks. They will rehydrate to be digested, and if you don't give it what's required it'll steal it from your body.

I never thought of that, Brian.  Thanks for the tip.  Usually, I just pop a couple of the broccoli florets into my mouth for a quick crunchy treat and never think to have some water or other liquid with it.

This was my second attempt at dehydrating a potato for potato chips.  The first attempt was a complete bust.  This time I used a red potato, instead of a russet and I used a new mandolin which allowed me to make my slices much thinner than my old one.  While these turned out good, they have a consistency more like a baked chip than a fried one.  Like the zucchini chips I have made, I like them as a mid-morning or early afternoon snack and find just two or three of them quite satisfying.  I always tend to overeat store bought chips and so have rarely kept them in my home.

Our chips didn't turn out very good using a mandolin and Russet potatoes. Small bland crunchy but kind of raw taste.
   Those have a good look.

Our chips didn't turn out very good using a mandolin and Russet potatoes. Small bland crunchy but kind of raw taste.
   Those have a good look.

I agree about the russets. The red potato came out much better. In both cases, I blanched the sliced potatoes and blotted them with paper towels before dehydrating them. Also, I think the thinner slices helped. The russet slices, though only slightly thicker, came out like concrete. They were more like a weapon than a food source and went straight into the trash.

We will try the red potatoes and blanching them next try for making dehydrated potato chips. Good tips.

One of the things I experimented with was drying canned pineapple.  I like dehydrated pineapple but commercially it, and many other dehydrated fruits, have sulfur dioxide added to prevent discoloration.  As an asthmatic, an abundance of that additive is definitely not good for me.  While I didn't have a fresh pineapple, I had read that canned pineapple would work.  I had a tin of Dole pineapple rings in juice so I bloted off the excess juice and cut the rings into wedges then dehydrated.  It worked beautifully.  These pineapple pieces are quite chewy and make a great snack.  I have also mixed them with some raw cashews, raw pistachios (I tend to prefer raw unsalted nuts to roasted and salted.), and some M&Ms.  Instant trail mix.

I bought this dehydrator as a lightning deal on Amazon and paid only $67.00 for it.  While my other dehydrator, seen in the first photo in this thread, works just fine, this one has a few advantages for me.  One, it is even a bit smaller than my first one though it holds almost as much.
Two, the heating fan is in the back, not the bottom, for more even heating so the racks do not have to be rotated every hour or two.  Three, the racks are metal, instead of plastic, making them easier to clean.  Four, my first one wasn't particularly noisy but this one is almost completely quiet and doesn't disturb background music that I might have playing.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with the first one I purchased and I don't plan on getting rid of it but I like this one more.

Those pineapples look great. Here's some we did from fresh pineapples because they started carrying them at the local Walmart for a reasonable price.
   I got a vacuum sealer and here's some of the pineapples we sealed.
  Also some banana chips, sweet and tasty if you like that kind of thing. Well I guess it put the banana chips on the top but that's the last picture I added