Hello! Here are nine dehydrated limes in their primary dried state:
And here are the same nine after having gone through the Cuisinart to break them down into a grit; next to my statue of Spock as the Buddha of Enlightenment:
And finally, we have nine dehydrated limes after having been pulverized into dust thanks to this absolute gorilla of a coffee grinder put out by some company.
Hang on.
OK put out by the Kitchenaid Company. It's actually a coffee bean grinder, but we always use it for spices. You can take the blade and bowl assembly off and wash it, which is the difference between a grinder that you cannot wash (EW) and that gets all seized up with guck in a year, and one that will last you.
And now.......
Ta daaaaaa! Nine limes becomes 1/4 cup of cream-colored powder!
It will keep for years, but I'll use it all before then.
Now. Is all this washing and drying and mincing and dehydration and grinding twice and so forth really fiddly?
No. No it is not.
Only the part where you use the Kitchenaide coffee grinder is fiddly because your material builds up a static charge inside the metal bowl as it whizzes around, and you have to coax it out into the container that you plan to use with a small paint brush and a funnel. THAT will make you scream and throw things. I am a large knives and cast iron pans kinda cook, not a paintbrush and a funnel racecar driver. Geeze.
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Before and after dehydration shot. It is pretty awesome.
So are those shoes.
In a little pile there on the red silicone mat you see what seven wands of celery, nine green onions and four tomatoes look like after having been minced and dehydrated. That little pile weighs three grams. No shit.
I didn't do this just for fun - I'm making a batch of our House Spice!!!!
Now you know that celery, green onions and tomatoes go into the house spice, but that's all you know so ha.
But you wish you had some.
This is the mighty dehydrator that I own, so....yeah, there it is.
As you can see I am culturing yogurt in there. Hello yogurt!
93f and all is well.
Oh hell yes. I make my own yogurt and sour cream and bread and sourdough starter and poolish and all that happy culinary microbial crap, and I can do that because this dehydrator makes a perfect warming chamber. I have a digital thermometer that tells me low = 90f on this thing, which is just the exact temperature you want for making bacteria happy. Or encouraging the growth of something unspeakable; so I clean with bleach. A lot. Bleach and a bamboo skewer, in fact.
This dehydrator was made by hippies working out of a metal building, in about 1973? 1977? or so.* It's a sturdy, melamine-covered wood box with a heating fan which is operated by a simple rheostat ^^^.
The lines inside are ledges for racks to rest on, and there's ten of those. It couldn't be simpler or more effective and it was built for the ages. I bought it used. I've had it for fifteen years or more. It's been dropped, it's fallen, it's been left on for nine days straight, it's suffered is what I'm trying to say here, and the only casualty has been a broken rack.
HOLY SHIT WOW I NEED A DEHYDRATOR NOW fuckin' A Nations you sold me. I must have a food dehydrator for my very own. I WANT IT NOW.
OK a few things here.
1. No you probably do not. I mean it. They take up a lot of room. I had to buy this thing it's own little cabinet to sit on because it won't fit in my apartment kitchen, being an 18x18x18 cube. It's a useful size, though, and meant to be used by a family of four (although don't ask me how they came up with that number.) Us three, and later two, people do just fine.
2. You have to cook A Lot and be a curious cook who is willing to experiment to justify what is these days a pretty significant expense. This exact design, made with updated technology and materials, costs $500.00 straight from the factory. Now I will insert a
a link that probably won't work for most of you. That is the one I would suggest you buy.
3. Get an idea of how you might use it beforehand. My mom and my grandmother used to dehydrate stuff every year. I grew up with the practice, so I had an idea going in of what kind of food you want to spend time on. There's A Lot of prep and planning involved.
4. If you do not particularly like to work in the kitchen AND you do not need to be thrifty, don't get a dehydrator.
I see dehydrators - usually shitty ones too small for the job, almost always the plastic ones heated by light bulbs - at literally nine out of ten garage sales I attend. The reason given for getting rid of them is some variation on 'I just don't have the time to spend on dried strawberries' (or what have you.) So yes: food dehydration is like a cult. I know what I mean.
5. The flavor of dehydrated food is not for everybody. It can taste overcooked, or too strong, or just...weird. There is a learning curve, and you will spoil things in the beginning. Dehydrated foods are meant to be used as ingredients in other things, once RE-hydrated. Not as the main player in a recipe. Now somebody is going to pop up with 'Oh yeah well what about Lagoon of Devils Antelope in a Broken Toaster?' and we will have to agree to disagree.
The only things actually improved in flavor by (partial) dehydration are fruit jams and tomato sauce. And this is very specific - you are reducing the amount of water and thereby concentrating the flavors and the aromas - But Not By Boiling. Boiling is the thief of flavor. But to dehydrate by even as much as 1/4 of the volume, just one shallow pan of must in the machine for six hours at about 160f- 190f, does AMAZING things for Blackberry Jam, Fruit Pie Filling, and particularly tomato sauce.
Oh Holy Shit you need to try putting up a tomato sauce using this method. I worked it out over 12 years, down to the variety of tomato to grow! and it was SO EFFIN' DELICIOUS.
Well crap. If you guys would like that recipe just let me know. I can even tell you how to make it without a food dehydrator and it will turn out the same!
a. First Haiku
Omg you cute
platy-folks deserve
secret recipes
b. Second Haiku
gorilla doggie
gorilla doggie, doggie
gorilla doggie
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*Those hippies found religion and had a bunch of kids, and then either sold out to, or became, the Excalibur brand, which is in operation to this day, and to whom I would trust my LIFE. With. Of.
The punch line? In the old Whole Earth Magazine archives there are several plans for do it yourself food dehydrators. Guess where the hippies got their plans from? Yup that's right. Shit, I think Jethro Kloss had designs for one - maybe Euell Gibbons and Adele Davis; I forget. I mean come on it was 1968 the last time I read Adele Davis cut me a break ALREADY.
