Playing With My Dehydrator Again

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This month navel oranges were on for a really good price for a change. I had some extras picked up and decided to test what it would be like to dehydrate the wedges.

I’ve dehydrated orange slices with the skin on and used them with some success.

When I mentioned what I had in mind to my sister she reminded me that I should also dehydrate the skins. I gave the oranges a good cleaning with some baking soda and warm water. Then peeled them, keeping the peel separate.

Laid out the wedges on trays

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Then the peels on trays. I put the peels on the top of the dehydrator placing the oranges closer to the heat source. My assumption was the thick orange slices would take longer to dry.

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I set it for sixteen hours which would leave it running overnight. When I got up this morning there was still 2.5 hours to go but they felt dry enough.

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I wasn’t really impressed with the oranges. Usually when I dehydrate a sweet fruit, the result is a kind of concentrated sweet. The orange slices had very little flavour.

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The skins dried out nicely. They will go into my grinder and end up powdered. I am thinking the dried wedges will join the powder.

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One cool thing about dehydrating, when something doesn’t turn out well, just powder it.

Anything I’ve dehydrated can be ground and the powder either added to food or used as part of the seasoning.

I asked my sister what her favourite way to use the orange skin powder is. Her response was to add some salt and sprinkle it onto meat. I’ve ground some of the orange and lemon slices I have here and done that with some success.

She also said that sprinkling it onto broccoli was very tasty as well.

I’m betting it would also go well in something like cooked oats or added to muffin mix. I love experimenting with them.

I’ll save the skins when I eat the oranges I bought and dry them out. I love that I can put them to use and not toss them into my compost bucket to go out with the trash. Bet they would mix well with dried onion and garlic.

The possibilities, I just need to experiment.

NOTE: Header image background from Pixabay.com. All other images are mine.

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Shadowspub is a writer from Ontario, Canada. She writes on a variety of subjects as she pursues her passion for learning. She also writes on other platforms and enjoys creating books you use like journals, notebooks, coloring books etc.
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14 comments
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Anything I’ve dehydrated can be ground and the powder either added to food or used as part of the seasoning.

Interesting, well this is the first time I'm reading about this. Now I wonder, what kinda food is best with this?

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I dehydrated a lot of fruits and vegetables last fall when the harvest could be bought pretty inexpensively. I use then in a lot of dishes and when I want to I grind some up into powders to use in making foods.

You can dehydrate just about anything that doesn't have fats. Fat doesn't preserve well so if you dehydrate something that has fat in it, you should only plan to use it for a relatively short period of time.

Many backpackers will dehydrate meals to take with them. In most cases they just need to add some water to rehydrate the food.

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What if it’s mixed with cornflakes and milk, it can also be baked with pancakes, it’s just a suggestion, lol.

I love the idea of not wasting nutrients that can be added to food for healthy purposes. As least the prices of these things are increasing, it is thoughtful not to wast any part that can be beneficial to our health

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I agree.. although you'd never find cornflakes or any commercial cereal in my home. I will eat steel cut oats though.

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Any medical advice pertaining to that?

Because I am planning to stork my room with cornflakes considering the amount of workload I would be facing when I resume school, I might not be opportune to cook when I feel hungry

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Not medical advice. I'm not a medical practitioner. I have made it a practice to avoid processed foods for several years now. I don't like the additives put in to prolong shelf life and retain flavour that is often lost in the processing. Commercial cereals are processed and often loaded with salt and sugar. Thus, I don't buy them.

If you can get rolled oats then oatmeal can be a great and quick meal. Add some fruit and spices and it can be quite tasty. If you don't want to cook there are lots of recipes for what is called overnight oatmeal which is basically mixing together oatmeal with liquids and other ingredients to sit overnight. The oatmeal absorbs the moisture and is read to eat the next morning. Oatmeal is filling and nutritious.

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Love it. *Adds dehydrator to the list of gadgets she wants to buy 😉

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It's really amazing the things you can do with it. Saves me a lot of money and storage space for what I'm preserving. I made a soup after Christmas, added some dehydrated veggies to it, you'd not have known they were dehydrated.

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Awesome. It's great to get inspired by food. Thanks for adding to my inspo ideas!

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I'm so surprised that they didn't concentrate that amazing navel orange flavor!!!!!!! really really shocked!
where the heck did the flavor go?!?!?! LOLOL

and yes - Lynn is right on that one - sprinkled on meats -mmmmmmmmmm

chicken, fish even too! yummy

and muffins! yesssssssssss

but oats - nah, i'll pass hehehehe i only like my oats to be sort of maple butter cream. hahahaha

the fruity kind has never sat well with me! hahaha but as Joe says, yuck for some, yum for others LOL

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hmmm you know orange maple cream has a bit of a nice ring when it wont have the acid flavour of orange juice. Might be interesting.

Yeah i was surprised, it's the first time I've done a fruit that hasn't concentrated the sweetness.

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