One of my Christmas gifts from my kids was a food dehydrator. A little while ago, I was talking with a friend and she was using her dehydrator to dry herbs for her secret spice blend. That sounded intriguing and like a lot of fun.
Since it's winter and a few months away from growing herbs, I tossed around a few ideas for the dehydrator's first test and settled on citrus fruit. The dried lime and lemon garnishes sitting on restaurant bars always catch my eye and I thought, "Why not?" So I did.
This was a learning curve. The fruit was in the dehydrator for 18 hours because I cut it too thick. The recipe called for 8. What's an extra 10 hours?
Now there's a cool looking jar filled with dried citrus. What to do with it? Some will go to a friend who makes all kinds of creative cocktails and I'll figure out ways to utilize it in cooking.
My sister-in-law was over the other day and she saw the fruit drying. She looked at the dehydrator, she looked at me, and said, "Leave it to you to make dried fruit instead of beef jerky!" (I have a good beef jerky recipe). That will be the next project.
That looks like something you can enjoy using all year long. I love the fruit and beef jerky sounds like a great idea.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to playing around with this!
DeleteI have a jar of freeze dried raspberries. I crush them in a mortar and pestle with a little sugar, and sprinkle between the layers of a cake. I can think of fun ways to use these.
ReplyDeleteRaspberries add such a delightful taste to desserts.
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