dehydrators

Hi Nola,

I know Mrs Moon has written articles on this in the 4x4 Australia mag in the past. Her camp cooking book may have recipes in it also. I believe the book is avail from this site.Just Do It!

gday nola.
have a look here it might help you
http://www.ezidri.co.uk/back by popular demand
:-)

Hi nola,

I work in a fruit&veg retailer and my boss has recently purchased one of these himself. Although we are still experimenting with it, we have found that bananas derhydrate well. With bananas, what we do is cut them down the middle ala banana split style and then half the splits again at 90 degrees to the initial cut... Essentially you quarter them. Why didn't I say that in the first place? Oh well I think you get the drift. You then peel the skin and lay the the flesh on the dehydrator trays. Bananas slices should take about 18 hours at about 130 degrees farenhiet, but I think you just have to keep an eye on them and find the amount of dehydration that suits your likings. If you over cook them they are too hard too eat and not too enjoyable. When done just right, the taste and texture is a bit like hard caramel. I like them!

Next is tomatoes ala sun dried style. With these we cut them in half and prepare a marinade of olive oil, dried oregano (which you can dry yourself if you want), salt and pepper. Mix the tomato halves in the marinade and then there ready to go in the machine. When done store them in olive oil. Tomatoes don't take as long as bananas but I suggest you experiment with the time and temp settings until you get the result you like.

Other things that we are going to dry are apple slices, Pineapple slices, stone fruit especially apricots, mushrooms (which can be rehydrated), mango slices (without the skin) Pawpaw pieces etc etc... Really the imagination is the limit here!

Why not make your own beef jerky and muesli!!

It is important to use only ripe fruit to dehydrate especially tomatoes and bananas because unripe fruit does not produce the same flavours.

I think most of the foods you dehydrate would turn out to be snack foods for activities away from camp sites like hiking and fishing etc etc...

Have fun!

With regards, Jim.