barbaral@tekig1.UUCP (Barbara Lee) (02/21/84)
I'm interested in food dehydrators. What do you like to dry in them? Do you prefer drying as opposed to freezing or canning? I had some banana slices dried in a dehydrator which were delicious. Do the dehydrators dry the food fairly evenly? Any recommendations for particular brands?
tw@hp-pcd.UUCP (02/28/84)
I have a Harvest Maid dehydrator which I like very much. I've had good luck drying all kinds of fruits, but I especially like dried pears. Tw Cook - HP Portable Comper Division, Corvallis, OR - hp-pcd!tw
berry@zehntel.UUCP (02/28/84)
#R:tekig1:-154900:zinfandel:4300049:000:1017 zinfandel!berry Feb 24 10:44:00 1984 Dried Tomatos are very good to cook with, keep well and give you something to do with all those tomatos from your garden. (What? you planted ALL the seeds in that packet!!!) Here is a recipe from the Sante Fe Grill in Berkeley, courtesy that wonderful show 'The Great Chefs of San Francisco'. I don't remember what it's called though. Take dried tomatos (preferably sun-dried) and marinate them in olive oil until soft. Take feta cheese in amounts about equal to how much one person can eat, in the shape of short cylinder (about the shape of a tuna-fish can.) Place tomato on the top and bottom, and wrap in a fresh grape leaf (I have a grape vine in my back yard, hee hee!). Grill over hot coals until the leaf is blackened and the cheese is soft. Place on plate, unwrap, leaving cheese on leaf, and serve with toasted San Francisco Sourdough bread. (Well, any sturdy French-style bread will do, I guess, if you HAVE to.) Berry Kercheval Zehntel Inc. (ihnp4!zehntel!zinfandel!berry) (415)932-6900
rcd@opus.UUCP (03/09/84)
Suggestion on type of dehydrator: Get one that has a fan as well as a
heating element. (They're a little noisy but not too bad.) The point is
that you need to have the air circulating; otherwise things won't dry
evenly and you'll have to be rearranging and removing food every hour or
two. With ours, we load it up at night and everything is evenly dried by
morning.
Fruits dry very well, and you don't have to put up with the sulfuring crap
of many commercial dried fruits. Try apples - pare, slice, dunk in a
bowl of water with a little lemon juice before drying to keep them from
turning brown. Try pineapple; it's great! One of the best uses for dried
foods is for hiking; they save a fair amount of space and weight.
{ucbvax,hao,allegra}!nbires!rcd