Any dehydrator mavens here?

[homestead jenna]

Question about dehydrating small stuff:

I bought a Ronco dehydrator (yeah, I know) at the Big Lots earlier this year. I had one when my kids were little and had reasonable success with - although it was used primarily for meat jerkies (son) and fruit leathers (daughter) and those really nice pineapple "candy" chunks you can make (moi). Can we say "impulse purchase"?

I put some green beans in this afternoon at 2 -- to try it out. I never did vegetables before so I followed the "directions" in the ever-so-reliable Ronco booklet (snap and blanch for an indeterminate amount of time - I used 2 minutes which seems to have been fine for color and texture preservation). Since it was only one tray and not many of them they were done very quickly - I can live with figuring out times (my last one I never used the bottom tray). What was a pain was that as they dried they fell through the slots in the trays. I don't r-e-a-l-l-y want to invest in a fruit tray for this dehydrator...is there some way I could cut some muslin or something and use that on the tray for stuff like this, do you think? Do you have to snap your beans...can you leave them whole?

I was gonna do some cranberries I have in a bag left from the holidays...but can see the same thing maybe happening with them...drying out and falling through to the bottom. Ditto onions, celery slices, etc.

Any help is greatly appreciated, my dears.

Also - you gotta hand it to dehydration for the space-saving preservation winner. A couple o' cups of beans became about a 1/4 cup volume when dried.

tia,

 

[Acre of Blessings]

I had one that I bought form a yard sale last year for $0.75 and gave it to our Preacher's son so he could have 2 for making deer jerky.

He gives us a bag each time he makes some. The kids love it.

 

[2dream]

Try using some of the craft plastic mesh that comes in big squares.
Once again I can't remember the name of the stuff. But they use it for making tissue boxes with yarn. I know its used for lots of other things but the tissue boxes is what I mostly associate it with. Anyway, this particular dehydrator problem came up some where before. I can't remember if they ever posted how the plastic mesh worked but the holes are small enough to keep things from falling through but still allow the air to circulate. My dehydrator came with a couple of those plastic things and it looks like the same stuff.

I plan on trying to dry green beans this year. I read in one of my Fox Fire books about dried green beans called leather britches. They just took a needle and thread and strung the beans together and hung them up to dry. According to the book you don't do anything but hang them up. The pictures showed the dried greenbeans just hanging up outside on the side of the house. I did not have enough beans planted last year to experiment with but I am planting more this coming year to give that a try.

 

[enjoy the ride]

Did you slice the green beans first? If you did, would they be less likely to fall through if you french cut them rather than sliced?
I had a similar thing happen with celery and the next time sliced the longer which helped.
Really watery vegies do seem to shrink a whole lot.

 

[roosmom]

Homestead Jenna, What is wrong with a Ronco ? My IL's gave me one for christmas this year. Actually I think they recycled it! There was no booklet with it AND my FIL had to make the box it was wrapped in. That is ok, I am really enjoying it.
I wanted to tell you that if you do not want to buy the special trays for the dehydrator, I cut a circle in a pc of freezer paper (wax paper would work also) and cut out the inner circle too for the applesauce leathers (whatever you want to call it) U experimented with!

 

[dacjohns]

I think the plastic mesh stuff is called plastic canvas.

 

[homestead jenna]

Homestead Jenna, What is wrong with a Ronco ? My IL's gave me one for christmas this year. Actually I think they recycled it! There was no booklet with it AND my FIL had to make the box it was wrapped in. That is ok, I am really enjoying it.
I wanted to tell you that if you do not want to buy the special trays for the dehydrator, I cut a circle in a pc of freezer paper (wax paper would work also) and cut out the inner circle too for the applesauce leathers (whatever you want to call it) U experimented with!

I was just thinking of "Ron" of Ronco. That guy was on speed or something. If you want a copy of the booklet I'll make you one. Great tip on freezer paper!

Thanks, everyone!