The Complete Idiot's Guide to Dehydrating Foods

My husband and I purchased a dehydrator - a big one - about 2 years ago. After many failed attempts of making our own yummy dehydrated bananas, beans, and apples, the only thing we've successfully dried is some herbs from our garden. After spending more money on dried bananas and apples from the store I said "this year we were going to conquer the dehydrator." Its Sept. and before the year ends, I have to figure this out.I love this book because its very basic. It explains the basics of dehydrating foods and it has little tips and tricks throughout the book. It also has recipes which are most helpful.It tells you how to dry herbs and spices and then fruits and jerky and moves into other foods.If you're new to dehydrating I can highly recommend this book. I search Amazon quite a while and read many reviews before choosing this book and I'm very happy with my selection. There is another book that got a lot of reviews but I wasn't sure if the reviews were genuine or if they were written as part of the a strategy to get your book on Amazon's best seller list. This book seemed to have genuine reviews and I can say that I'm very happy with my selection.

It gives you a lot of information that one might not know if you never dehydrated anything before. In the next rewrite I hope they put out more info about canning and storage. It does pretty good, but I have no knowledge to start with in that area, so I really need beginners information - like how do you create a seal on a canning jar, or if you get the food saver, which one s best. I'm totally overwhelmed with all the options and accessories that go with every gadget, Now, on the the main reason that I bought this book - the recipes. They are great. Pages and pages full of interesting things that I'd bet most of us have never tried (unless you have a dehydrator. I'm looking for ultra healthy foods or good ones that I can turn into ultra healthy. So I was happy to open the book and the first thing I learn is how to make buckwheat flour. This will be a well-used book.

Some what new to dehydrating food for storage so I thought this book would help. I learned the science behind dehydrating food and the importance of drying foods properly. A good resource, learned of many foods I did not know I could dehydrate. One thing you have to keep in mind is your dehydrator or method used to dry your foods may vary in the time it takes to be safely done. They thought of that too, and tell you how to check for the best results!

Good quality

I checked this book out at the library. I found I was making quite a few recipes. There is a bacon treat recipe that my dogs love. They wont eat the store bought anymore. I found it is cheaper to make the bacon treats then buy them. I also found that the family likes the orange and pineapple leathers. I love the vegetable soup and salsa recipes. This book is worth purchasing for my family.

I loved how thorough this book is. Easy step-by-step instructions and plenty of recipes!

Great book, the best I have found for drying foods.I love have some recipes have variation and how to best store them.I just received a dehydrator as present and plan on using this book for recipes.The first recipe will be dry Onion which will be very affordable comparing to buying powder onion.

My husband treats this book like the Bible of cooking. He loves it and the recipes have been delicious, so far. He makes turkey and chicken jerky for our dogs and I love it too. He also makes beef jerky in several flavors and everyone wants to buy some from us. Today he dehydrated some bananas that were just about past their prime. The dehydrated bananas are great!

I am new to dehydrating so I thought this book would be useful. Started with apples (seemed the easiest fruit to start with), searched for appropriate recipe, and there it was - "...1 qt. water, citric acid or ascorbic acid..", "...130°F to 140°F...", "dehydrate for 7 to 15 hours...". Hmmm, how much is "1 qt."? Googled, Ok, about 1 litre of water. Next, 130°F-140°F, googled again, 54-60°C. So far so good, even though I haven't really started yet. Next, where can I buy citric acid or ascorbic acid? Googled - nowhere in where I live. Went through some other recipes and found out that lemon juice was used in some so I used lemon juice, more than the recipe suggested as it seemed a bit too little (only 1/2 tsp for a litre of water!). Ok, now I am good to go. Soaked sliced apples in water with lemon juice for 10min, drained, arranged slices in my brand new dehydrator and... How long?... 7 to 15 hours?... Really? What kind of help is that? Anyway, kept it in dehydrator for about 8 hours, they were nice but nothing special. Next day I just sliced the apples, arranged them in dehydrator, left for 7 hours at 60°C; no soaking, draining and all this nonsense. They were nice, crispy and very tasty. So my conclusion is - experiment with different kind of food and ditch this book as it is absolutely useless when it comes to recipes. Unless you are American in which case you may find the book useful. It is also possible that I am more "idiot" than this book is aimed at.

We have a HUGE family - Dehydrating and preserving food is my husbands hobby so if the SHTF we have supplies so earlier this year we bought a 9 tray dehydrator - the famous American one - but other than fruits we really had not used it enough until we bought this several months ago and it’s been a right help. There are a lot of foods you can dehydrate - who knew yoghurt was one. It’s really nice!!! Chewy! Anyway don’t just dry fruit and herbs - get this and be more adventurous - eggs ! Meat ! Fruit pulps! Today we are drying some red peppers we have grown and some tomatoes we got discounted to 5p. HINT : if you have a conservatory put your dehydrator in their and use on warm days - it really speeds drying times up. !

Whilst I think this is a very interesting book, I have not yet had my questions answered concerning the actual act of hydrating. I suspect that it is a challenging task to describe how big the chunks should be and how long you should dry the products for, but if at least I had discovered just how dry is dry, it might have helped. I am having to work on experimentation in order to discover this crucial information, because sometimes I think the item is dry, but it goes sour in a week, in which case why have I bothered to work so hard? Otherwise I think it is about right and when I go to nibble it, it is so hard that I am in danger of breaking my teeth on it, as it becomes so hard.All I wanted the book for was some practical guidelines, and I do not feel that I have got them so far. In which case, why did I buy the book, because that is basically all I felt I needed to know!So far as dehydrating is concerned, although I have yet to perfect the art, I have to say the results are delicious - especially for someone trying to keep the weight down, as each piece takes so long to eat! Whether successful or not, everything I have tried has been very tasty too. I don't feel that I needed a book to discover that, though.

As a total novice when it comes to using a dehydrator (though I've been drying mushrooms on the radiator for years), I found the book extremely useful, especially as regards timings and temperatures (though I feel the latter err on the low side just a tad, but that's common in other, similar, books too).I don't know why all the griping about American units of measurement. Apart from cups there's nothing specifically American about them - we used the same Imperial system until relatively recently in our history. And US measuring cups are widely available. That said, it's high time American cookery writers bought themselves some scales. Cups might have been fine for the pioneers, settling the West (scales would have been shaken to uselessness in the back of a wagon), but the world has moved on - time US cooks caught up.Some recipes are - um - eccentric, to say the least. Dehydrated cheese? Why?All things considered, a worthwhile buy. and worth its 5 stars.Tip - some timings might seem too long. They're not.

Great book for total beginners but also had a lot of advice and great recipes that experts can use.Easy to flip through so that if you already know how to work your dehydrator and the basics you can just jump to the section you want.Definitely a book I've referred to often