Moorland Prepper wrote: ↑Thu Jan 21, 2021 9:56 am
I keep wondering about buying a food dehydrater but can't see the point! We have tinned food and space is not a problem.
By using one we would cut down on rotating stock, but there would be more work dehydrating food.
Just wondered if you good people here could tell me if I'm missing something rather obvious.
Heavy snow here in the moorlands. I'd put the snow shovel away on Monday and had to get it out this morning
Hi MP,
I'm a bit of an obsessive dehydrating advocate. I have one of these
https://www.sousvidetools.com/sousvidet ... dehydrator
Does it absolutely cost in? Not really.
Will you save money? Probably not.
Does it save space? Absolutely.
Does it help with stock rotation? Probably, if you adapt to using dehydrated scoff.
Will you slash waste? Absolutely.
Does it replace tinned rations? No. But it's a cost effective augmentation. Better textures.
Is it extra work: Not really. chop and maybe blanche alongside regular cooking, load it up and forget it for a day.
For me, the number one benefit is that none of my fresh food goes to waste. Previously I'd buy a bunch of bananas a few bags of fruit and maybe a bag of peppers and maybe a kilo or so of tomatoes and some mushrooms and half would be on the turn before getting used. Apart from root veg, which lasts ok, my fresh food reserves would maybe only be good for two weeks, then I'd need to fall back to tinned fruit, if shops were not accessible. Reasonable, but not ideal.
Now the extra that I buy all gets dried and stored while at it's prime. I still buy fresh, but about half the time I'm using from my dried stores. I allow my dried reserves to increase naturally such that I soon end up with a several months worth of reserves. I'm as likely to reach for a handful of dried peppers as I am to chop up a fresh one.
Alongside adding to my long term reserves like that, I get seasonal stuff and yellow label veg super cheap and dry it down into jars. A sack of carrots for £2 will fit in a jar and last for years. I like the reassurance of having a years worth of carrots, onions, swedes, mushrooms quietly set aside.
If you have ample cool space, you might reasonably hold and rotate a few sacks of carrots, spuds, onions etc and if SHTF, you'd probably have a good reserve for the first few months. Then what? I don't have such storage space. I don't want to waste freezer space on fruit and veg and dried stuff fills that gap, stored at ambient temp for years if need be.
Comparing with tinned rations for a while, we need to recognise that it's not quite like for like. Tinned tomatoes and tubes of puree, tins of carrots and mushrooms have a big place in my stash, but having a tub of dried ingredients gives back texture and another level of flexibility. A handful of dehydrated carrots or onions etc is a handy substitute to chopping up fresh ones.
Of course, many items can already be bought dehydrated and flaked or shrunk down. Cost effectiveness varies compared to drying your own. An example I'm currently experimenting on is dried spuds. I have many sachets purchased for long term storage. But I'm hoping home made will be better value.
One side benefit is that I have tubs and tubs of dried apples oranges and pineapple chunks which I eat instead of unhealthy sweets. Delish and moreish.
Ultimately, it's about what kind of reserves we aspire to. We can stash cases of pot noodles, cases of tinned ready meals, cases of pasta and sacks of rice and there's nothing wrong with that. Home dried stores are just an adjunct to that.
