Recipes #7: Dehydrating: Mushrooms and Potatoes

May 28/09

Before I start the blog I just have to say that we FINALLY are getting a good downpour! We were supposed to have two good days of rain but my little region got just drizzles here and there. Nothing worth mentioning. Just now it went “WHOOSH”. I can hear my garden “glug glug glugging” :)

Ok.. back to the dehydrating.
The following are attempts #2 and #3 for the dehydrating. They are currently in the process so I won’t know the end results until later today. I want to write about it now so I don’t forget what I have done!

Mushrooms
1. Our local store had an “in-store” special on some organic mushrooms. They were half the price of the regular ones and so I purchased two packages to dehydrate.
2. I scrubbed the dirt off them and then sliced them basically into 4 slices (more if they were bigger) and then laid them out on the trays. Note: one package filled one tray.
3. I dehydrated them for 3 hours at 90 degrees F and then…
4. I turned the machine up to 115F and left them for—- (time yet to be determined).
Note: I think the website that I found said to up the temp to 110 but I thought since I was going to do potatoes which said 115 that I would compromise and cross my fingers.
End Result: ??

Potato Chips
1. Scrubbed the potatoes clean
2. Used an electric meat slicer to cut the potatoes paper-thin. (Note: starting the potatoes wasn’t working using the machines pushbar so I just held the potato for the first few strokes to get a square cut that would work with the push bar.)
(Note 2: one small potato makes a LOT of paper-thin chips. I am guessing that one medium potato would almost fill one tray.)
3. Laid the pieces out on the trays and sprayed them with a mist of olive oil.
4. On one tray, I sprinkled sea salt over top. (somewhere I read that adding salt before dehydrating isn’t a good idea but the potato chip recipes all called for seasons to be added pre-dehydrating)
5. Tray 2: gentle sprinkle of garlic salt. (I’m now guessing that the garlic is going to overpower everything in the dehydrator and I’m going to have garlic flavoured mushrooms!)
6. Set the dehydrator to 115F and left them for…. (time yet to be determined).
End result: ??

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a) http://www.execulink.com/~yohan