by: Susan Gast / Author, Blogger at Beesville Books, Bored Boomers, and a Food Dehydrating Fanatic!
Conditioning fruits and vegetables after dehydrating is an often overlooked step in the preservation process. Letting our dehydrated foods cool down to room temperature before vacuum-sealing and storing it is what conditioning is all about.
Once the dried fruits and vegetables have reached room temperature, place it in freezer-type Ziploc bags, zip 'em up, and leave them on your kitchen countertop for a couple of hours, or overnight.
This helps to disperse any residual moisture evenly among the items in the bag, and that all pieces are at the same level of dryness.
Later, if you feel that the foods are a bit damp, pop it back on the dehydrator and let them condition again briefly. Look, it's better to be safe than sorry, right?
Use the Ziploc freezer-type bags. Sandwich-style bags are not strong enough and can easily get punctured by sharp dried foods!
Feel free to reuse the freezer bags because they're not cheapβI do throw them away when I see any sticky residue left behind. NOTE: I will NEVER reuse a plastic bag that has had MEAT in it.
I use
some bags specifically for fruit and I use my black felt-tipped pen to
mark the bags as 'fruit only', and have some bags just for vegetables. It's a plan and it works for me.
To be totally honest, conditioning fruits and vegetables after dehydrating is my fourth step and is a step that many seasoned dehydrating folk just don't do. But I won't tell if you won't.
If you feel like your dehydrated food is totally dry enough after the first go-around on the dehydrator, skip this step.
For instance, you may like your dehydrated banana chips to be a little on the chewy side.
But dehydrated mushrooms are a different story. Please read on.
Mushrooms
are well known for needing a second go-around on the dehydrator! You might think they are dry, but they can easily fool you. This veggie needs to be very dry prior to vacuum-sealing. This is the one veggie I would NOT skip doing the conditioning step.
When dehydrating mushrooms, take note of their special dehydrating temperatures. Don't be afraid to give them more time.
NOTE: Some foods will remain sticky, such as dehydrated plums (prunes) and that's OK. But not for mushrooms!
If your fruits or veggies are still sticking together a bit too
much in the Ziploc bag, put it back on the
dehydrator for an hour or so as mentioned earler.
Let the food cool off again.
Then put the dried food back in the bag(s) again for a couple of hours. The food should now be ready for vacuum sealing!
Here are some key points:
So while not mandatory, conditioning can optimize the final quality and storage life for many dehydrated foods. But the extra time and countertop storage space required means it is skipped by some.
Here are a few reasons why conditioning can be beneficial for tougher, denser dehydrated foods:
So for dense foods like meats, fruits, and some vegetables, the extra conditioning step helps achieve the ideal texture and flavor. Conditioning these foods makes them less chewy and easier to rehydrate.
Thanks go to Claude 2.0 for helping me with the above elaboration on the benefits of conditioning food prior to vacuum-sealing and packing it away. :-)
Don't forget to get your free "Six Simple Steps" eBook where I share how to dehydrate food safely!
If you like the content, please give me some love by clicking on the π©· in the lower right hand corner (on just about all my pages). This signals to me that you find it enjoyable and useful. Thank you so much!