Dehydrating Broccoli

I shared with you a few days ago that the local food bank had an overages of broccoli. They had a full pallet of these cases of cut and washed broccoli. 


I also shared with you how I blanch and freeze broccoli and other vegetables for later use. With that, I want to share today how I dehydrate broccoli. 

Dehydrated broccoli isn't great for just eating or putting butter on and eating after it has been reconstituted. It never regains it's original texture and is better used for flavor rather than texture. 


Our favorite ways to use it are in omelets and in rice dishes. It is great in soups as well to add some flavor. I have blended some dehydrated broccoli up and used it to thicken a cream of broccoli soup and then added some of the dehydrated florets into the soup.
To dehydrate the broccoli, wash it and then cut off any moldy or dried out sections. 

I usually cut off the bottoms of the stem and then to dehydrate it, you want to cut off as much of the stalk as you can.

You can see in the pictures that I cut off any of the stems that you can't break easily with your fingers. If they are very thick, when you cook it after reconstituting it, it sometimes tastes like a soft twig. 

I highly recommend not drying the stem unless you are going to use it as a flour for thickening as it is very stringy and thick.

I blanch and freeze the stalks and use them later in stir-fry as it has a similar texture to water chestnuts. It is a much better use of the stalks and keeps the dehydrated broccoli more usable not having the "sticks" in it. 

The broccoli will get much smaller when dehydrated but it will crumble quite easily when dehydrated so if you want the look of the "floret" in your recipe, you need to be gentle when putting it into bags and Tupperware for storage.
 
Here is my blog about how I like to store dehydrated foods. 

I am so grateful to the food bank and my Heavenly Father for the constant blessings I receive from both.