So I wanted to post a quick update on my last ‘Adventures in Prepping’ post where I dehydrated a bunch of mixed veggies (quite successfully, I might add).
I was going to use them in some soup last night but we ended up having something else instead so I decided to just do a test run with everything I’ve dehydrated so far by just boiling a bit of it up today and see what happens.
So far, I’ve only dehydrated fresh potatoes, carrots, broccoli, onion and a couple of bags of frozen Italian mixed veg so it wasn’t too complicated.
I did soak the potatoes ahead of time because I had planned to fry them up in some olive oil with some salt and pepper and garlic for a snack (yumm!) and then changed my mind and just threw them into the mix.
They were pretty thinly sliced to begin with and when I tested them they were kind of chewy but maybe I didn’t soak them long enough.
Either way, in they went with a handful of the other stuff and I boiled them for about fifteen minutes.
Now, I have to mention here that I forgot to blanch the mixed Italian vegetables before I dehydrated them so they did lose some color.
As everything boiled, it popped right back to life, though…
The color pretty much returned to the non-blanched things.
By the time I turned it off, the carrots and broccoli especially looked great!
And the potatoes were falling apart by then and not chewy at all.
But how did they taste? I guess that kinda matters, although in a SHTF situation I probably won’t be nearly as picky as I am now. 😄
Honestly?
It all came out better than I thought it would! Overall, I’d say everything was about 85-90% as tasty as they would have been before dehydrating/rehydrating. So I’m going to get my bootie in gear and start dyhydrating everything I can now that I know I definitely won’t starve later on when I go to eat it.
Well, unless I can’t keep my food stash safe from thieves, which I’m actually not too worried about. I’ll talk about that a bit more in an upcoming post…
Empty Nest Homesteading 
How did you dehydrate everything?
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I just used my basic little ole dehydrator that I have been using for herbs and flowers. The frozen veggies I spread out still frozen (I had to pull out bigger pieces or put them on the top tray) and the others I diced up or sliced up and popped them in at 125 degrees for eight to ten hours.
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*sigh* I miss my dehydrator! It was one of the things we had to leave behind when we moved, and we didn’t even have it for long (it had belong to one of our neighbours; when she passed away and it was gifted to us, and we passed it on to someone else, so it’s still being used!). Right now, we just don’t have anyplace accessible to store it between uses. I do use the oven to dehydrate things, but it’s not as efficient.
Do the potatoes not go grey on you without blanching them?
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I blanche the potatoes and use citric acid bath on them so they come out really nice. I’m testing out my convection oven right now on mixed veg so it’s funny you said that about the oven. I was wishing earlier I had a better dehydrator and thought, wait a minute, I have an oven with a fan! It only goes down to 170F though so I propped open the door to see if that helps. I don’t think it will be as efficient as a better dehydrator unit though. I wish you still had one, too!
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Oh, a convection oven would make a huge difference!
Nice to know about the citric acid. Thanks.
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I’m fixing to dehydrate a bunch of stuff as well. Thanks for sharing your experience with rehydrating them! I’ve been quiet curious about that part of it lol
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Glad it helped! 🙂
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