Dear Food Experts,

We know who you are : )

Please give a Dehydration 101 for dehydrating soup. Starting after you've made the soup and can eat it.

Now what do you do?

Put in blender and then in trays and how long does it take?

There are several gals who are experts on this. I never made it past Soup Dehydration 1 and 2.

I do not make the entire soup and then try to dehydrate it, because there are different ingredients that will dehydrate at totally different rates. If I tried this, it would be a mess.

Instead, I just figure out what the ingredients need to be and then add those DRY ingredients into a ziploc bag. The two missing ingredients would be the water (of course) and the fat or oil (because it does not dehydrate!). I would carry the ziploc bag to camp, and then heat and rehydrate with water (of course) and a squirt of olive oil from a separate plastic bottle. Sometimes you will have ingredients that have completely different rehydration rates, so they have to be treated differently.

But, that is just me. I would love to hear from the experts.

--B.G.--

We like our soups thick, like a typical split pea. We do carrot, corn chowder, lentil , etc. But definitely thick.

If it is a chunky style, it goes into the blender just to get things uniform in size. But not "homogenized".

We have teflon sheets to go on top of our dryer trays, and we just pour it on, spread it uniformly, and dry it. Typically we give it around 8 hours. When it's dry enough to 'snap' we call it done. (obviously depends on your dryer)

Then we pop it off, and usually put it in a blender for a buzz or two, to break up the big flakes. (less likely to puncture a ziplock.)

The it gets bagged by serving size. That's it.

Edit: Oh, sorry, I'm not a gal, but I got kitchen cred.

Edited by greg23 on 05/04/2010 07:51:14 MDT.

George,
A couple of visuals -

Carrot Soup


Dried

The above soups rehydrate immediately with hot water.

For a little more visual and textural appeal, add 1/4 of 'Just Tomatoes' freeze dried Mixed Vegies to the package.

Edited by greg23 on 05/04/2010 08:16:20 MDT.

George, how about posting the recipe for the carrot soup?

Tad,
For the Moosewood Carrot Soup recipe, Look Here.

(Powdered Buttermilk gets added to the dehydrated mix.)

Edit: I'm not George, but I got kitchen cred. ;-)

Edited by greg23 on 05/04/2010 08:28:00 MDT.

Greg, sorry about the George- not paying to much attention I guess- thanks for the recipe, looks good!

Greg, the carrot soup is fantastic, I made if for dinner tonight and ate 3 bowls.
My kids said it looked like throw up- until I made them taste it- they ate all of it!

How long do you leave it in the dryer?

Thanks for the recipe link. Looks good. I'd also like to know how long to dehydrate?

Guys, all food dehydrators are different since they have different wattages of heating elements. Further, they are all going to run differently based on the amount of wet food you put in. Just put it in and let 'er rip. The first time you dry something, check on it every hour or two, and that will give you a feel for its progress.

When I dry a #10 can of wet sliced pears, it takes a minimum of 8 hours. However, sometimes it will take 10-12 hours. Part of that is from the wetness of the stuff.

I did a can of tomato paste, and it took only two hours.
--B.G.--

Dryer Time?

Depends on your soup, on your dryer, on the humidity, and if you have to go looking for your dog...

We dry it until it "snaps", versus acts like a leather.

Ummmm... 6 to 8 hours ????.....ummmm.....


Tad, yea, it lacks visual appeal. As mentioned, the Just Tomatoes 'Vegie Mix' really help in this department- color, texture, and little explosions of flavors.

Glad it was a hit.

Bob, thank you for explaining the difference with dryers- I think I had that part figured out. I just wanted to know an approx (thanks Greg) time to see if I could leave it on over night or not. I didn't want to have to "check on it every hour or two" during the night as you suggest, when I could do it tomorrow during work (I try for at least 7 hours sleep if possible).

Greg, again, good tasting soup! How much powdered buttermilk do you add? and do you use a 1:1 ratio with water to rehydrate?

Tad,
We use SACO and the mix is 4 Tablespoons of powder to 1 Cup of water. The recipe calls for a Cup of Buttermilk (or Yogurt.) So we add 4 T and call it good.

Greg, how much soup mix do you have? I see you add 1 cup water (with 4 Tbls SACO), but I'd like to know the approx amount of dried soup mix.
Thanks

Greg, how many cups of soup does the FINAL product make?

Edited by hotrod on 05/05/2010 20:00:18 MDT.

@Tad - I'm not getting your question. ¿ How much Dry does it make?

@Roddie - ...ummmm... don't really know... recipe says 4 to 5 servings, so 48 - 60 ounces? depending ....


Edit: Not trying to be cute here. It's mayhem when we're putting meals together, and some details just don't stick.

Edited by greg23 on 05/05/2010 20:37:47 MDT.

Greg- I'm not trying to be difficult, just don't want to waste good soup on trial and error.

I dried some of the soup (before adding the cream) so right now I have about 2/3 cup granular soup mix (used your blender idea).
To make 1 serving how much of the soup mix do I add to my freezer bag? How much buttermilk powder? and how much water?

OK, I think I'm tracking :-)

It never seems to reconstitute to the original volume.

We dry 2 cups of 'liquid' soup to make 1 serving. We measure out 2 cups of 'liquid' per dryer sheet to keep it simple. The results from each sheet gets zapped and bagged.

When camping that goes into a 3 Cup cozy, to which we add enough hot water to hit the 2 Cup mark, which results in a thinner soup than we had 'in the kitchen'. So, less water at camp for thicker soup.

Sorry it's so imprecise.

Now, Buttermilk. I've been corrected by the Chef. We started using buttermilk powder, but have moved on to non-fat yogurt in the liquid soup. It seems to dry just fine.

So now that I have led you astray..... You are trying to get a little 'tange' in there. The recipe calls for 1 Cup per batch, which is 4 to 6 servings, so 1/2 to 1 Tablespoon of Buttermilk powder per 'dry' serving? A WAG, but the best I can do.