Dehydrating, Dehydrated, Drying and Freezing Asparagus

I have shared for the past two days about how the food bank in our area sometimes has more produce than they can give out. 


Being on the board for the food bank, they sometimes ask me to distribute the excess to people I know around town. 

I filled my car and distributed cases of asparagus for hours and hours. 


I saved a few cases for myself and processed them in different ways. 

I share a video on several of the posts about how I freeze, dehydrate and cook asparagus. 

Wash the stocks in a group and cut the bottoms off. At this point, I cut the bottom 1/2 of the bases into 1 inch slices. 

I bag them to freeze or dehydrate the bottom half for stir-fry or to grind once dehydrated to use in cream soups.

The top half, I cut into 1 inch slices and bag to freeze for eating or putting in soups.

Once I have some frozen, I dehydrate the top 1/2 on different trays than the bottom half as they are more tender and are great in omelets or to use in rice. 
 
The bottom halves are tough and stringy when dried or frozen so are better for different things.

You can freeze full length asparagus but I find it does better in shorter pieces as they sometimes break when frozen anyway.

They were on the dehydrator for about 24 hours and both Princess Five and I just ate them dried and kept picking up a piece as we walked past. I was surprised at how good it is dehydrated. Even the bottom of the stalks are good dried. That was a surprise to me. 

I highly recommend dehydrated asparagus. I can honestly say I never thought I would say that! It is YUMMY!