I'm sure we could be talked into it.

Don't blanch as a rule. I prefer to process fresh into the dehydrator. Some foods, like peaches or bananas, often require application of "Fruit Fresh", or some other ascorbic acid to preserve color. Some foods, like potatoes, must be blanched to stop the enzymatic process (usually starchy root veggies are the ones). Often I just dice the potatoes and nuke them for 4 minutes or so and the enzymes are deactivated and the starches set.

By the way, I had some complications with getting all my sausage made up this weekend. Too late I discovered I didn't have the right nozzle for the smaller casings, so I ended up processing 12 lbs of breakfast sausage into half links and half bulk. I froze the links on teflon cookie sheets then bagged them up. That was Saturday. Yesterday I went on a quest to find the righ nozzle for my sausage stuffer to do my snack sticks. Finally found what I needed at Bass Pro Shops and beat feet back home and processed up 10 lbs of sticks. Unlike the breakfast sausage, which is fresh, I had to put the sticks in the refrigerator to cure for a day before smoking and dehydrating them. Of course, today the weather is nasty out, so I am hoping by the time I get home it will subside enough I can run a few pans of hickory in the smoker enough to get the sticks started, then load them into the dehydrator or leave them overnight in the smoker and pull them Tuesday morning. They should lose about 1/3 of their weight or more due to moisture loss. I ended up using lean ground beef (2/3) and ground pork (1/3), which seems to make an ideal dry sausage blend, much the same as my old butcher's recipe for elk snack sticks.

I'll let you know how they turn out. Now that I have the right nozzle, I can plan on cranking out more sticks. They are a real crowd pleaser.

As for the veggies, we will just have to take advantage of that next time there's deals in town.

One thing I can let y'all know, working ground meat by hand that is ice cold will give your hands an ice cream headache enough to make you howl. Until I can get me one of them big Hobart mixers, this is the only way I know to properly mix ground meat into sausage. It is miserable pain, especially with arthritis, but it is still worth it. When I was done, I had to have the wife help pry my fingers open under luke warm tap water.

And yes, Sue, for you, I would deliver.

Any of you food dehydrators ever tried drying cooked beans? Is it even possible?

I'm thinking that for camping/backpacking I could pre-cook some beans, maybe some chile w/beans and then dry it to be reconstituted later. Whattaya think?

JohnE

Yes, you can dry cooked beans. They will rehydrate again in about 10 minutes in boiling water. I've dried refrieds in my dehydrator before to make a rough mealy powder that rehydrates suitably enough to add to soups or stews (it does not rehydrate back into refrieds quite so good.

If you don't cook them to the point where they break down, they should rehydrate into a nice chili bean stew addition (what Yankees call Chili).

Rough day today, but I managed to git my snack sticks in the smoker and hit it with three pans of hickory. I'll leave them in the smoker overnight since it is freezing out and see how they look in the am. Most likely I will have to leave them till tomorrow night to get them dried out all the way.

They are smelling good!!!

Ben make sure that the wind is blowin West so we can a whiff of your sausages

Mike

6:00 am this morning I checked the smoker. I realized that I used alder instead of hickory chips, but to good effect. I unplugged the big chief and let them cool in the early morning breeze (temps at @ 27 degrees F). Had the wife pull the racks and put the links in a big ziploc. Brought a couple links in to work, they were summarily consumed by the crowd and unanimously pronounced edible (actually the exclamations indicate a much higher endorsement).

Looks like I have a winner here. Chewier than slim jims, and about twice as big in diameter. I might have overseasoned them just a tad; they are a bit saltier than I care for, but that didn't slow the crowd down any.

Looks like I will have to crank out a few more batches if I want enough to put up for myself. I may have to charge folks for the next batch. Get them hooked on the first load, then I can extort my cut from now on. No mercy, heh heh heh.

Still no word from Sue, I will only be able to hold onto these for a while.

Tomato leather? What is it, how is it made and what do you do with it? Is it like fruit leather? Sounds like interesting stuff.

I've never seen tomato leather, but I reckon it is just like any other fruit leather. Make a puree, spread it on a tray with a lining that won't let the juices leak or the puree fall through, and dehydrate it just like any other.