Test - I am dehydrating frozen green beans

[barfife]

I have one of the 9 drawer Excalibur Dehyrators with the 26 hours times and heat control and my uses it all the time.

One of the most frequent uses is when we see Frozen Vegetables on sale.
Couple of weeks ago they had the store name brand on sale for 2/$1 16 ounce bags. We bought $30 worth. 4-5 bags of frozen corn will fill up one quart canning jar after dehyration. Lay them out on the drawer, set the timer go to work and they are done when we come home. Throw in a O2 absorber and you shelf life is indefinite. We canned corn, peas, broccoli, green beans, mixed vegetable, and corn/pea mix. Now have a whole buch on the shelf for soups and stews as needed. She tells me one cup is about equal to one pound.

We also bought a case of oranges from the local school fundraiser. Peeled them to get all the white off, sliced and dehydrated. We thought it would not hurt to have a little citrus stored up. Going to do some lemons and limes also, help prevent scurvy . The side benifit is dehyrdating the peelings, putting them in the coffee grinder and now you have orange zest. My wife uses that stuff all the time for cooking and baking. A 2 ounce Jar runs about $5 in the grocery store, now she has enough to last a long time.

We have several cases of dehyrated veggies and fruits in mason jars with Oxygen absorbers in them...you know...just in case :)

I am just starting to dehydrate and can. Could you please give a short descriptive course on dehydrating frozen vegatables? Example. how it might differ from fresh greenbeans.

I just saw an ad for whole chickens for $.69/lb. Sounds like I am about to learn to can chicken this week!
Thanks

[1Admin]

Well like I've said a couple times previously, maybe it's our humidity, but we put up a pile of apple slices just a month ago and ran them per the instructions and then some in the Excalibur.

Opening a few containers recently just for snacking material they are ALREADY leathery.

Not even comparable to the commercially dehydrated stuff IMO in texture and feel.

But we put up a lot of them in all the various ways people think will keep them long term. I have my doubts but like I said, maybe it's our humidity levels. However being put up right away after being dried in the Excalibur and having the AC on in the house (lowering humidity levels) during that time period, one would assume that would be sufficient.

We'll check them in six months, keep a couple batches to check at year 1, 2 and so on.

I KNOW what commercially dehydrated apple slices look like when you get them in the 50 lb. boxes and re pack them. We packed thousands of lbs. of them in 98 and 99 when we had the commercial cannery. The thin home dried apple slices that came out of the Excalibur are not the same IMO.

[Bear4570]

I am just starting to dehydrate and can. Could you please give a short descriptive course on dehydrating frozen vegatables? Example. how it might differ from fresh greenbeans.
Thanks

All my wife does is to lay one of the paper sheets on the trays and spreads out the frozen veggies, usually 1 pound or bag to a tray. Nothing to it really. The only thing with the fresh vegetables is you have to make sure you cut them small enough, even with some of the frozen vegetables (like califlower you have to run them under water and break them up, then cut them smaller. Usually my wife sets the temp at 125 for about 12 hours, and up to 14 hours for bigger veggies. She got all her tips from a woman on You-Tube who dehydrates darn near anything you can think of...I think her name is Tammy and shes got about a dozen videos available for most anything you can think of.

[eeyore]

I dehydrated a bunch of frozen mixed vegetables on sale a couple of years ago. Add onion (dehydrated), used if for soup mixes, all i had to do was add a few bullion cubes (real meat) and water and it made some pretty good soup.