I don’t use my dehydrator as much as I could but after my recent success of drying onion and making onion powder I decided to experiment a little further.
The labels on the commercial stock powder in the pantry reveal that the two main vegetable ingredients are onion and celery so I am planning to have a go at making my own stock powder. There is celery growing in the garden in abundance so I decided to try drying some.
Here are the four trays filled with the stalks and leaves ready for drying.
And the final result…………
Here is a tiny Vegemite jar which is about 3/4 filled with 37g (a little over 1 ounce) of powdered dried celery. This is the yield from a full (albeit small) bunch of celery from our garden. Along with some of the onion powder, this is the beginning of my home-made stock powder.
The space-saving advantages of dehydrating are amazing. I am sure some things lend themselves to this process better than others and I am keen to discover other ways I can use the dehydrator. One of the next things on my list is ginger.
Do you have a dehydrator? What have you dried in it?
organised castle 
We bought a dehydrator a few years afo and it sit’s in a cupboard unused. We dried tomatoes and put them into jars of oil but they all went rancid and were so disappointed that we never used it again.
I wonder though if I should have a go at drying herbs like you have or is it easier and cheaper to dry in the microwave?
I don’t think you could successfully dry things in the microwave although you possibly could on a very low setting in the oven.
I would encourage you to have another try with the dehydrator but I can understand your disappointment over the tomatoes. I think you would need to pressure can them to get seal to stop them spoiling.
There are many things that I would not necessarily bother with dehydrating but the onion and herbs have been successful. I have also semi-dried figs and pineapple pieces and stored them in the refrigerator. It is probably only a couple of weeks until they are eaten but it is a way of keeping them longer than just fresh ones which is useful when you have a glut of produce.
Hope this helps.
we have a dehydrator setting on our oven so fortunately we don’t have to own a separate machine. I love dried asian pears, dried regular pears, dried apples, and dried canteloupe. Great snacks for when I’m sailing.
I have never heard of a dehydrator setting on the oven but that is a really neat idea. 🙂