Dehydration of Veggies Part 2

Friends have asked that I do more posts on my dehydrating. I usually just do fruits and veggies that we use for snacks but thought I would branch out and do something new. My family is glad I did.

I tried drying some veggies that I hadn't done before. I dried the little finger carrots. When I freeze carrots, I find them chewy when I put them in soup. So, I thought I would dehydrate them. They got very small and hard and took about 36 hours to dry. They aren't good to snack on dried as they are VERY hard.

I dried spinach. I have dried kale and parsley and a few other greens but nothing as delicate as spinach. I wanted to see how it would rehydrate for the soups and to use it in omelets. We really enjoyed it in the omelets and I am blogging about the soup I made and how each veggie came out tomorrow.


I have dried broccoli in the past and used it in omelets but I had never dried it and used it in soups so this time I left them in florets to see how they rehydrated in soup. Here is how they looked dried.



I have dried large tomatoes but never the little ones, they are usually eaten before they could make it to the dehydrator. They were the favorite dried veggie snack. They were so good dehydrated. They had a burst of flavor and a good texture.


I dehydrated some string beans a few weeks ago and REALLY enjoyed them dehydrated, they had a good flavor and I wished I had salted them before dehydrating them so they would be like a potato chip. They are on the left in this picture. Some of my kids liked them dehydrated, some didn't. I left them long when I rehydrated them in a cabbage soup but they were long and difficult to eat, however, the flavor was good. So, I learned when using string beans dehydrated, break them into small pieces to rehydrate.

In the past, I have dried mushrooms in slices but never the whole thing so I dried whole mushrooms. I also dried crinkle cut carrots. They lost their color for some reason as you can see above, they turned yellow.

I also dried celery as you can see in the top photo. From now on, I am going to dry the top leaves of the stock and all the little greens in the center for soups. I have frozen them in the past for turkey soup but sometimes they go dark in the freezer. From now on, I think dehydrated is the way to go. Buy on sale, dehydrate, use in soup!

Because of how good the beans were, I thought sweet peas would be even better dehydrated. I was really surprised by the outcome. I wet the peas and salted them before dehydrating them. They were horrible dried. They were kind of leathery and I didn't like the texture. None of us liked them dried. That made me worried about using them in anything. However, I will share tomorrow but our favorite veggie in the soup was the peas! I never would have guessed that outcome. So, not a good dried snack but VERY good rehydrated. It was just the opposite of the beans.

I am enjoying learning this part. I have dried most other veggies but haven't done soup veggies, usually just stir fry veggies.

Happy dehydrating! Tomorrows post..... Coconut Curry Cream of Dried Vegetable Soup!