The Dehydrated Vegetable: Not as Weird as You Might Think
Michalis 'BIG Mike' Kotzakolios

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Defined Tag: Dehydrated Vegetable.

When I first heard of a dehydrated vegetable, the idea struck me as weird and slightly nasty. It shouldn't have, I suppose; I'm a big fan of dehydrated foods, and I'll dehydrate fruit or mushrooms faster than you can say 'excess water retention.' But the idea of a dehydrated vegetable struck me as odd.

It needn't have. A dehydrated vegetable, I discovered, is actually quite tasty, although they don’t resemble their fresh counterparts. Their storage life, however, was nothing short of amazing. They beat even canned vegetables all hollow for longevity without losing taste.

I started my dehydrated vegetable experiment with carrots, since they're a nice simple vegetable to work with. I could have sliced them into paper-thin flakes, which would have looked very nice in food, I think, but decided instead to shred them, using a normal kitchen grater, and dehydrate the shredded carrot, instead, since that takes less time, and I never have much time. It worked beautifully. I don't normally think of a carrot as a particularly juicy vegetable, but the amount of moisture it lost was amazing.

I used an inexpensive Mr. Coffee dehydrator, the kind with the fan to ensure that heat is distributed evenly and there are no hot spots. After 36 hours, the carrots were completely dehydrated, nice and brittle. I stored them in airtight canning jars and kept the jars in a cool, dark part of the pantry. Some of the flakes I used immediately to see how my experiment had worked; the results were quite satisfactory. Especially when added to sauces, casseroles, and pasta dishes, the dehydrated carrots did as well as fresh. The only place I wasn't impressed with them was in stew; I like to be able to bite into my carrots when I'm eating stew, not strain shreds through my teeth.

Another dehydrated vegetable had much the same results, except for broccoli. The flowers dehydrated well enough, but the stems came out woody and unpalatable, even after thoroughly rehydrating them. The other vegetables, however, dehydrated and stored beautifully.

And yes, their shelf life is amazing. This was seven years ago, back when we still thought Y2K would be a problem, and we still have dehydrated vegetables in our pantry that can be cooked up and taste exactly as they would have back in 1999. In fact, if you'll excuse me, there are some vegetables calling my name.

BIG Mike is a well known author, developer and Adsense expert as well as the owner of Niche Maniacs - a unique Adsense Marketing System designed to build long-term passive income streams from Adsense, Amazon, YPN, Chitika and other PPC services.

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