Sooooooo…… I got a really nice dehydrator for Christmas; however, I am just now getting around to using it for the first time. OK, OK….I know Christmas was over 7 months ago! It takes me so long to play with my birthday and Christmas toys! I took it out of the box almost immediately. I read all the instructions and planned all the deliciousness that I could make with it. Now that I have finally gotten started actually using it, I have become a dehydrating fool! Not only that, but my husband has jumped on the dehydrating band wagon. I think he is now addicted to dehydrated strawberries. He loves them so much that he now will dehydrate them all on his own when he is about to run out of them. I have to admit that these are really good! I can understand the obsession!
Dehydrating is not difficult, but you do have to have the proper equipment. Of course, owning a dehydrator is ideal, but if you don’t have one you can use your oven. The time-consuming part of dehydrating strawberries is slicing or chopping them. I found an awesome sale on strawberries at both Aldi and Kroger at 95 cents a pound. I bought 3 pounds for my first time around, but in hindsight, I should have bought 4 pounds because 3 pounds didn’t quite fill up my jar. The first thing to do is wash your strawberries and let them drain in a colander. Next. cut off the leafy stem and cut out the core. If you have a strawberry coring device, you can use that. it certainly will make life easier, but if not, a knife will do.
Once the strawberries are hulled, you can slice the strawberries and place them on the dehydrator rack. Using a paper towel, pat the strawberries dry on both sides. You can pat them on one side and then turn them on the other side to pat them dry.
When all the strawberry slices are laid out on the racks and patted dry, place the racks into the dehydrator. Set the dehydrator at 135 degrees for 14 hours. Place the dehydrated strawberries in a glass canning jar to keep them fresh. Now, you could use moister absorbers to keep the moisture out, but dehydrated strawberries don’t last that long at my house. Alternatively, you could vacuum out the air with a FoodSaver if you have one. That would definitely keep them fresh for a longer term. You could probably even pressure can them, but I still do not know enough about canning to guide anyone to do that. Maybe one day.
You can rehydrate these strawberries by placing them in a bowl of water for a while. There may be some discoloration after you do this. The strawberries will not be as brightly red as they were when they were fresh, but they still taste as if they were picked straight from the berry patch.
I’m going to try apples next! This is so much FUN!
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