Try experimenting with very small batches. Dehydrate just enough for a single serving for one and then rehydrate at home for taste-testing. There's no reason at all to stay home as long as you're willing to do the cooking and dehydrating!

Rather than dehydrate soups from scratch, I'd use the liquid to cook gluten free grains (quinoa? rice?) and add those to the solid parts of the soup for dehydrating. This makes a more filling meal than just soup. These grains have to be cooked and dehydrated anyway unless you really like the tasteless commercial instant rice. They taste a lot better when cooked in broth!

Cooked meat should be cut into tiny, tiny pieces for quicker dehydrating and rehydrating. Large chunks take longer to dry and may end up at jerky consistency.

Some veggies are a problem. I once dehydrated a favorite chicken casserole dish with peas. Unfortunately, after boiling for 20 minutes (with the rest of the dish turned to a gluey mush), the peas were still the consistency of buckshot! (I didn't follow my own directions in the first paragraph above!) I now use freeze-dried veggies from Just Tomatoes, adding them to the already-dehydrated meal when packaging at home. These have no additives so should be fine for your family.

Sarbar's excellent website has lots of ideas and recipes that can be adapted for your needs.


Edited by OregonMouse (03/30/10 12:29 AM)
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May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view--E. Abbey