Raise your hand if you’ve never had to eat zucchini for breakfast, lunch, and dinner after planting too many.
Anyone who regularly cultivates a garden has » production layoffs “. Sometimes it’s a good harvest for a type of vegetable, other times it seems to ripen all at once… The result is always the same: a large quantity of vegetables to eat quickly or to offer to loved ones.
However, there is an excellent tool that allows avoid waste and use the vegetables while preserving them for the long term: the dryer.
Drying is a natural preservation process, in which no chemicals or mechanical processes are used, simply removing the water contained in the vegetables, avoiding putrefaction. Without the aquai, microbes do not proliferate.
How to dry garden vegetables. To properly dry a vegetable, it must be given the right conditions so that it dehydrates quickly, but without cooking it too hot. The best method is to use a dryer, because to dry naturally, for example in the sun, you would need a constantly adapted climate.
Choose the dryer. To choose the dryer, you need to assess how much and what is going to be dried. I had a great time with the Taurus dryer Biosec Domus , suitable for those who have a medium-sized family garden. I really appreciate the size of the Biosec: with its five trays, it has enough surface area to dry a good quantity of vegetables, without being too bulky (it’s about the size of a microwave). The drying process is not always very fast (this of course depends on what is being dried) but it is respectful of flavors and fragrances, it is also energy efficient. Another advantage offered by this dryer is a horizontal air flow, which allows even drying of all trays.
The advantage of drying . The advantage of drying garden produce is that you can store the vegetables and eat them even after months. On the one hand, we limit waste, on the other hand, we avoid buying vegetables out of season, which, being grown in distant countries or in heated greenhouses, are not cheap, but above all, they do not are not environmentally friendly at all.
What you can do in the kitchen . Besides storage, the ability to dehydrate fruits and vegetables opens up many possibilities in the kitchen. I started with a classic: a homemade vegetable broth (you know, those nuts they sell at the supermarket are full of chemicals), then I tried Apple Persimmon crisps, an addictive healthy snack . You can dry almost anything that comes from the garden and the orchard and there are very interesting and original recipes (I recommend a look at the essiccare.com site where you can find some ideas). Finally, the dryer is an almost essential tool for aromatic herbs, it allows them to best preserve their scents.