Dehydrated Snacks: Perfect for Summer

Dehydrated Snacks: Perfect for Summer

It’s the season for beautiful heirloom tomatoes, zucchini, sweet onions, and kale. Do you have some basil growing on your patio? How about making fruit snacks or fruit leathers? Why not turn some of your lovely produce into great dehydrated snacks? If you dehydrate at 118 degrees or lower, the food is considered raw because the enzymes and photons are not destroyed.

When you dehydrate foods, you don’t kill the life in the food. It’s a similar process to baking but at a much lower temperature. Dehydrators provide a gentle heat giving food crispness and high flavor while preserving nutritional value. You can even make crackers and breads that are live and nutritious. You can also make foods in bulk and store them for later. If stored correctly, they can last for months to years depending on the food.

Here are some tips for making the best dehydrated foods:

1. Marinating many veggies gives them delicious flavor. From kale chips to potato chips, you can marinate your foods for delicious snacks.
2. Slice your veggies thin. For example, if you slice a tomato thinly, you can add Italian seasoning and a basil leaf and you have little “mini pizzas.”
3. Get dehydrator sheets. Investing in Parallax sheets is important because if you don’t, cracker batter and marinades drip right through the trays. In fact, you simply can’t do crackers and breads without them.
4. Dehydration times vary greatly depending on the item and the moisture in the air. But you don’t need to get a dehydrator with a timer. You can’t over dehydrate.You won’t burn anything. It’s not like baking. The important thing is to dehydrate long enough so that your foods are crisp.
5. Set your temperature at 118 degrees or below to preserve the nutrients.
6. Rotate your trays. Even the best dehydrators won’t dehydrate perfectly even. So move the bottom trays to the top. Also, when you are about halfway through the dehydrating process, you can remove the Parallax sheets if you want to speed up the dehydration time.

RECIPE

The Best Onion Rings Ever

• 3-5 onions (yellow, white, Walla Walla sweets)
• 1/4 cup apple cider or coconut vinegar
• 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 2 teaspoons garlic, minced or pressed, optional
• 1/2 teaspoon Celtic sea salt
• Pinch of cayenne pepper

Cut onions into thin slices and set aside. Add lemon juice, vinegar, and olive oil to a blender and process until smooth. Then stir in the sea salt, minced garlic, if using, and cayenne. Pour marinade into a bowl and add the onion slices to the emulsion; marinate for about 30 minutes. Shake off excess marinade so that the onion rings are not dripping. Place onions rings on dehydrator sheets and dehydrate for about 7 to 8 hours at 105 to 115 F or until crisp. If you want a coating on the onion rings, you can sprinkle nutritional yeast over top.

From The Juice Lady’s Turbo Diet

The Turbo Diet has a lot of great dehydrated recipes.

DEHYDRATOR SALE

The best dehydrators I’ve used are the Excalibur. I recommend the 5-tray for a very nice size for most households. Make sure you get 5 parallax sheets to go with the trays or the number of sheets to match the number of trays.

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