You are probably wondering what does dehydrated food look like? In the jars in the picture is about 15 pounds of fruits and vegetables.
I have been using the Solar Dehydrator for a few weeks now and dehydrated a bunch of different fruits and vegetables. The list includes carrots, delicious apples, Granny Smith apples, onions, celery, bananas and my latest adventure, Red Hot Chili Peppers.
What once was a grocery bag full of peppers is now contained in 2 jars. I cut the stems off the peppers and sliced them in half so the seeds would stay inside while they were drying and put them in.
The temperature for the past couple of days has been cool and dropped below freezing at night so I have been mostly running the backup heat. The dehydrator works on convection air flow so the cooler it is the less the air flows through. The temperature inside did hold at about 100F.
After about 24 hours I brought the screens in to see if they were dry. The ones near the front of the dehydrator were mostly done as that’s where the warm air enters the food area. The is where I forgot to use my Common Sense Superpower. The process involved picking up the pepper half, holding it over a Tupperware container to catch the seeds and snapping it in half. If it was rubbery in any way I would shake out what seeds I could and put it back on the screen. If it snapped in half I would shake out the seeds and put the pepper in a jar.
I worked through all of the peppers and put the screens back in the dehydrator, poured the seeds in another jar and put the lids on.
Most of the peppers still needed some dry time so I left them for the day.
That afternoon I went back at it and most of the peppers were dry so I went through the same steps. Then I washed my hands. It appeared that I had scuffed a few spots on my hands working on some washing machines during the day. They were easy to find after some water was mixed with the pepper dust. After washing a few times and putting on some lotion the burning subsided. But I varied aware to be careful where I touched for a while. Rubbing my eyes was bad news.
After they were dried and bottled I noticed a bunch of seeds in the main bottle so I pulled out a cookie sheet and a stainless steel strainer and poured the dried peppers in. This time I was ready and my hands were not going anywhere near the peppers. I picked up a meat tenderizer (pretty much a steel hammer with teeth) and pushed on the peppers to break them down a little.
Everything was going well until a microscopic cloud of invisible Red Hot Chili Pepper Dust floated my way. It wasn’t something you noticed it just drifted past your lips, over your tongue and grabbed the back of your throat and held on. A few glasses of water and some sneezes and it was all good.
I did consider leaving some of the dust on the cookie sheet for the next time the kids made pizza. Does that make me a bad parent?
If you have any comments please post them below.
Play Safe
Ken
