Blanch veggies or not, before dehydrating?

Hi all,

For those who dehydrate your own veggies, do you blanch everything first? Or just certain types? I'm thinking about peppers/onions/broccoli/carrots, maybe even spinach.

Thanks,

Pete

Onions, carrots, peas and peppers, no. Try diced, dried, poblano chiles for a flavor spike. Dried poblanos are called chile anchos. I have never tried spinach so can't help there. I do a quick blanch with stuff like green beans, sugar snap peas, cabbage, broccoli stems and kohlrabi. Broccoli florets tend to turn to a paste on re-hydrating if blanched.

Generally though I find the most important thing when dehydrating is to cut the veggies into small pieces. I will buy packages of frozen mixed vegetables, diced carrots and small green peas and put them directly into the dryer. The results for mixed veggies are better if there are no green beans in the mix. Green beans can be pretty stiff long after the other stuff has re-hydrated. I give them an all day soak when I take them along. During the American Civil War, dried green beans were called "iron britches" and it was claimed that you could use them to nail a barn together.

Haha, great information, thanks so much.

I dehydrate frozen vegetables which are already blanched before freezing. With fresh veggies, you do need to blanch.

In addition to green beans, peas and corn also remain rock-like after hydrating. I therefore buy most veggies freeze-dried in bulk and add them to my meals. Chopped spinach, though, dehydrates and then rehydrates really well, and will give a nutritional and flavorful boost to most meals.

Lots of info on dehydrating on "Sarbar's" website. (Note--site appears to be down at the time of posting this.)

I go one step further and mostly dehydrate only fully cooked vegetables so I don't have to cook them in camp ... makes meal prep a little faster and saves stove fuel ... or I can eat them without firing up the stove if that's what I feel like that day.

Bags of frozen vegtables are already blanched. If fresh carrots peas green beans,corn etc, yes blanche first! I generally catch a sale on bagged frozen veggis they are blanched already before freezing. Fresh peppers dont need blanching or do onions or garlic.

Hi,
Just go through below link for the dehydration of the veggies.

http://farmgal.tripod.com/Dehydrate.html

Pepper and onions No Blanch. Broccoli , carrots etc yes if fresh. If you buy bags of froxen veggies on sale etc. They are already sliced and blanched . This is a big time saver. Fresh spinach I wonder how well it would dehydrate. It would most likley crumble up like oregan being a leaf.