When people think of preserving food, words like “canning” and “freezing” often come to mind immediately. But there is another method of food preservation that has been garnering more local attention and excitement recently—food dehydration.
To Jacqueline Huddleston, dehydration is nothing new. She has been doing it for more than 10 years.
“A lot of people are doing it and there are many in town who have been doing it for longer than I have,” said Huddleston. “But every generation rediscovers old ways of doing things and food dehydration is like that.”
Several months ago Huddleston gave a workshop on food dehydration as part of a series put on by Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative. Participants were pleasantly surprised, she said, by the variety and how creative a person can be with a food dehydrator.
“We made a backpacker’s spaghetti dinner from scratch and dehydrated it. We then broke it into pieces and stored it in bags.” To demonstrate the rehydrating process, they rehydrated the meal, by adding water and cooking it for 15 minutes. “It was like a freshly made meal—people couldn’t believe how flavourful it was.”
There are several advantages to dehydrating food, and the first one has to do with preserving flavour and nutrient content in a way that is often lost in the processes of canning or freezing.
Pam Brown (also known as Brownie) is a member of the cooperative and has become involved with its food dehydration group.
“There are layers of taste to foods that are made way more intense when you dehydrate them,” she said. “It’s a great way to preserve fruit that’s in season.”
Another big advantage, Huddleston explained, is that it takes significantly less room to store foods that have been dehydrated than it takes to store foods that are canned or frozen. Dehydrated foods are lightweight too, making them ideal for camping or hiking trips. Many people who preserve foods have gardens and are faced with the huge job of preserving those foods at harvest time. Once the foods have been preserved, the challenge is finding space to store them all. “You can pack four to five times the amount of dehydrated food into the same space that you can put non-dehydrated food.”
Yet another advantage is that people can keep dehydrated foods (as long as they have been properly prepared and stored) for a very long period of time.
“I have known people to use dried apples 10 years after they were dried and stored and they were just as good as ever,” said Huddleston.
Like any type of food preparation, it’s critical that people do things right, to avoid health issues that can arise from improperly prepared foods. Huddleston recommended dehydrating newbies visit the Powell River Public Library to check out its well-stocked shelves on books about food dehydration. She also suggested people visit this website for tips on keeping things clean.
Creativity is an important part of making food dehydration fun and interesting, too. Many people who have tried dehydrating tend to stick to making fruit chips, said Huddleston, but there’s a lot more people can do if ther’re willing to experiment a bit.
One of her favourite dried foods to make is interesting fruit leathers. “Normally you want to use the best quality food for dehydration, but fruit leathers are a good way to use up some of the fruit you have that is a little bit blemished, because you puree it before you dry it.” She has come up with some mouthwatering combinations, like chocolate chip raspberry and apple ginger cranberry, that never seem to be around for very long. “You’re only limited by your imagination,” she said. “You can really make anything.”
Powell River Literacy Council and the Food Security Project are partnering for the month of September to celebrate and raise awareness about the connections between food and literacy, as part of the campaign Literacy: It Means More Than You Think. For more information, interested readers can visit the literacy council's Facebook page.
To learn more about dehydrating food at home:
Watch out for future workshops put on by the Food Security Project.
Join Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative.
Visit the library to check out its selection of books about dehydrating.
Get a copy of Food Drying at Home The Natural Way by Bee Beyer, Huddleston’s recommendation.
Check out this website for tips and tricks on dehydrating and more.
