Peetah Piepah picked a peck of processed peppah's........ So far today it is too rainy to go to the garden so we are continuing our drying programme. We are finishing off the Cayenne's. This drying machine makes life so much easier. We are quite thankful for it. There is something Starsy Warsy-looking about this innit. The tops are removed, the dried peppers are rolled between the hands and most of the seeds are shaken out, then blitzed and bottled. This is what the finished product looks like: This spices up our lives. Voilá!....Bob's yer uncle....Klaar is Kees....that is that....there y'go, etc.
I have a dehydrator like that as well, and it works fabulous! I have never done peppers, but I do my herbs in it and my daughter enjoys pineapple done in it. I have also done leeks, apples, and mango. I may have to try peppers next season.
Good thinking! I love my dehydrator, too. Mostly I use it for garlic though. I have a cool little slicer that I drop the cloves in and twist it to slice them into nice little even slices and I put parchment paper on the trays as the sugar in the garlic makes it stick to the trays and I dry it for about 4 hours... tada, all that garlic that would dry out by Feb is good for all of Winter, Spring and Summer.
Great NETTY--You make good use of yours! A dehydrator is good for where I live as we do not get enough sun or dry heat to do the process the old fashioned way. You use it a lot as well, CAROLYN--I had never thought of garlic. I mean, I use it fresh and in oils, but never thought of drying it. When I saw your foto above, I first thought that it was a lemon merangue pie. hahaha. Oh dear, what am I like. Tell me a little more about your lil slicer.
I got my slicer from a company called Pampered Chef. Not sure if you have one there, but Zyliss makes a small slicer, but I didn't like it as well. It wasn't a spin barrel slicer it was a slide slicer like a mandoline, but way smaller and way more hassle than it should be to use. so here are the three parts of it. the outer barrel that has the blades in the bottom and it is what you hold as you twist the top. . the inner barrel is divided . .the top part or the part you put pressure on and twist You clean the paper off the clove and drop several cloves into the barrel; on each side of the divider Slide the top on and press gently and twist at the same time to cut the garlic cloves into slices. As I twist I keep dropping them onto the parchment paper I have on the trays and keep stacking them up until I run out of trays or garlic. This year I have dried several pounds of garlic. I have used about a pint of it and have three more in the cupboard. One of which I will share with a friend who gave me her "left over" garlic when she was done planting it in her garden, when I ran out and still had lots of space left in the row. I was at an Indian grocery store a few hours from home a couple weeks ago ( I wish I could read the labels) and found it really cheap so I bought a bunch to bring home and dehydrate and some to plant. What I just sliced was one clove from the tray I am going to plant... somewhere in the garden. I ran out of room in the garlic row, but I think I can fit another row in where the hot peppers were this Summer and were still bearing when I planted the garlic a few weeks ago and have since been frozen out. I just need to find the time.
Thanks for the explanation and foto's. That looks like a neat little slicer. It looks as if one can do large amounts quickly, after taking the skins off. It was clever of you to discover this.
I bought a Pampered Chef garlic slicer this year. It works great. Filled my dehydrator very quickly. I now have garlic powder and dried garlic for cooking. I like any gadget that makes my life easier. Sjoerd, I dried cayenne's also and made hot sauce. It was so easy. then I smoked two pork butts so I had something to use the hot sauce on. Sure smelled good around here the last couple of weeks.
Nice job on the pepper and garlic. We've got a dryer too. Sadly we use it too rarely, but now I feel the urge to dehydrate something. I think I'll go for apples.
Good idea, Droopy. Did you see the thread that I just posted asking folks to write down their apple slice-drying techniques? If you have a good technique in mind, please contribute.
