Golden Melon Blessing - Dehydrating Melons Quickly

I was blessed the other day to attend a board meeting for our local food bank as I have been on that board for about 13 years now. While I was there, I notified them that I have several dehydrators again. We had a deal that if they have an overage of items, they will let me know and I will dehydrate it and give the workers some of the dry fruit. 

This only happens when they receive MUCH more than they can give out. Sometimes they get three pallets as tall as me of one type of fruit and there is no way they can distribute that much. I haven't done anything in the past year as my dehydrators were broken but before that, I would distribute the food to anyone I could find as it is better for people to get it than for the pigs to get it or for it to go into the garbage so I have tried to help that way.

They had cases and cases and pallets full of tomatoes, melons and peppers that day. 

I don't use many dehydrated peppers so I cut and froze those but melons are something we like dehydrated so I got three cases and got two and 1/2 of them cut up and on the dehydrators that night. I spent about 4 hours cutting melons and was frustrated that I was so busy that I left them on the dehydrator longer than I should have and one of them burned the fruit. 

It was my own fault but I have forgotten how much work it is to dehydrate lots of fruit. I usually do it for an hour or so a night during harvest season as I could fill up my dehydrator and be done but since I have four or five working dehydrators at the moment, it gets a bit old standing all night and my back begins to hurt.

With that, I have a fast way that I cut up the melon to dehydrate it so I thought I would share that with you. I did a video of it and you can see that, but, I wanted to write it out for those few people who have slow internet or can't watch video. The video I posted comparing dehydrators took over four hours to upload. My internet is so slow that I can only do short videos and have no editing software working at the moment so these short hand held videos are what I can do. 

Basically, cut the melon in half. Then scoop out the seeds. I forgot at first and scooped out after I sliced it but this require you to pick up the spoon several times rather than just once. So, cut, scoop out seeds, then cut into manageable quarters.

Once you have them, take a knife and cut through the fruit but not the rind. Do this on a cutting board as to not chance cutting through into your hand. Cut thin slices all the way from the top to point to the bottom point. Once you have them cut that way, put it back on the cutting board and use a sharper knife to cut along the bottom of the fruit above the rind releasing the slices of fruit you already sliced thin. 

Pick up the entire thing and use the knife to slide them onto the dehydrator trays and in this way, you never need to touch the melon. 

Melon needs to dry for a longer amount of time than an apple as there is more water content. It is thicker as well so I takes a good day and a half to dehydrate. Make sure you rotate the trays and flip the melons half way through drying so they can dehydrate without being sticky.

I always put my dried fruit in Tupperware but if it is older Tupperware, I put it in Ziploc bags first to keep them from taking on the Tupperware smell. Here is a link to why I use Tupperware.

You can easily cut these into smaller pieces by cutting the thin slices in half before slicing them off the rind but I think it is easier to break them in half after and with them long, it is much easier and takes less time to flip 15 long strips than 50 little squares. Sometimes I will break them in half or quarters before bagging them but my kids like them long like the bananas that I dry so it is fine for us to have them longer. Some will break when you are turning them over anyway so you will get pieces of all sizes. 

With my 32 trays full on the dehydrators, I cut up 13 melons and it took a day and a half to dry just to give you an idea. If you are doing sweet melons, they are sticky so make sure you have the teflon or flexible plastic trays to keep it from sticking. You can lose lots of your fruit when it sticks as you have to scrape it off. 

This is the fastest and best way I have found to dehydrate, melons, watermelons, bananas etc. The Tupperware like will also get you to the dehydrating banana video I did in 2010. 

I will try to post how I make my own plastic trays tomorrow.