Putting Food By - Janet Greene [172]
Fruits harder to sun-dry. Avocados, blackberries, bananas, breadfruit, dewberries, Loganberries, mameys (tropical apricots), and grapes.
Vegetables easier to sun-dry. Mature shell beans and peas, lentils and soybeans in the green state, chili (hot) peppers, sweet corn, sweet potatoes, cassava root, onion flakes, and soup mixture (shredded vegetables, and leaves and herbs for seasoning).
Vegetables harder to sun-dry. Asparagus, beets, broccoli, carrots, celery, greens (spinach, collards, beet and turnip tops, etc.), green/string/snap beans (“leather britches” to old-timers), green (immature) peas, okra, green/sweet peppers, pimientos, pumpkin, squash. And tomatoes—but we’ll tell how to do them indoors too.
Drying Produce in Open-Air/Sun
Wash, peel, core, etc., and pre-treat according to individual instructions. Because vegetables must have more of their water removed than fruits do for safe drying, cut vegetables smaller than you cut fruits so they won’t take too long to dry (being low-acid, vegetables are more likely to spoil during drying).
Spread prepared food on drying trays one layer deep (½ inch, or depending on size of the pieces); put over it a protective covering as described above; place trays in direct sun on a platform, trestles, or sloping roof—or on any sort of arrangement that allows air to circulate underneath them.
If you use clean sheets or the like to hold the food, a table, bench, or shed roof is a good place, but you lose the benefit of air circulating under the food.
Stir the food gently several times each day to let it dry evenly.
Before the dew rises after sundown, bring the trays indoors or stack them in a sheltered spot outdoors. If the night air is likely to remain very dry, the outdoor stack need not be covered; otherwise wait a little until the warmth of the sun has left the food, then drape a protecting sheet over the stack. Return the food to the direct sun the next morning.
At the end of the second day, start testing the food for dryness after it has cooled.
Stack-drying Produce in Shade
This variation of sun-drying relies on extremely dry air having considerable movement. This method gives a more even drying with less darkening than if the food was done entirely in direct sun; apricots, particularly, retain more of their natural color when shade-dried.
Prepare the food, cutting it in small pieces; put the trays in direct sun for one day or more—until the food is ⅔ dry. Then stack the trays out of the sun but where they’ll have the benefit of a full cross-draft, spacing them at least 6 inches apart with chocks of wood or bricks, etc. After several days, the dried food is conditioned and packaged for storing.
Indoor Drying
Almost every food that sun-dries well can make a better product if it is dried more quickly, either in a dehydrator or indoor dryer with separate heat source and blown air, or a well-managed oven. For some foods, especially the low-acid vegetables, processing indoors is recommended even though outdoor drying conditions are reliable during the harvest months.
Depending on the water content and size of the prepared food, and whether the dryer is loaded heavily or skimpily, good drying is possible within 12 hours in an indoor dryer.
On a smaller scale, the conventional oven of a stove can be made to perform as a dryer.
Herbs dry best hung in large paper bags (from the supermarket), tied by their stems, and the whole thing slung from a beam in a well-ventilated room.
Microwaving note: do your herbs laid out between two sheets of paper towels, at a high setting for 2 minutes, let sit 1 minute—then check. Repeat until leaves, when cool, may be brushed off any stems. Strip off leaves beforehand with thick-strained herbs like basil, sage, etc.
Jerky meats, fresh or lightly salted, dry well in an oven (which is an indoor dryer of sorts)—often better than they do on trays in a regular drying box.
Salt fish is best done in open air, since a breeze outdoors on a sunny day is