Dried Cherries

I recently procured about 12 pounds of sweet cherries from a woman a work. She is in charge of all of the IPM (integrated pest management) and pesticide application in the teaching and research greenhouses on campus. Throughout the summer, she regularly gets crates of produce leftover from various research projects and brings them in to work for everyone to share! The latest item was sweet cherries. I originally took a 3 pound bag home, but I noticed that there were still some hanging around going into the holiday weekend. Cherries don't have the longest shelf-life, so I "rescued" a couple more bags. 

My boyfriend and I ate our fill of cherries for several days, so I'm putting the rest in the dehydrator so we can use them later in baked goods and in salads.

My friend and colleague Cathy gave me this great tip for pitting cherries. Use a paperclip! The trick is that you have to get just the right sized paperclip. I think there are about 3 standard sizes and I ended up using the smaller end of the largest size paper clip.  I enjoy picking Cathy's brain about cooking, canning, and gardening because I always learn something new!

I looked in the instruction manual for the dehydrator and was surprised to see that cherries had the longest drying time of any fruit listed (18 to 26 hours). My homemade beef jerky only took like 6 hours! The long drying time is actually kind of nice though because I have been able to start the cherries in the evening and leave the dehydrator running all night and all day during work.

More Beef Jerky

I made another batch of beef jerky using my new food dehydrator. This time I used bottom round instead of top round. Bottom round was on sale at the grocery store, so I thought I'd try it out. There is a lot more fat in the bottom round than the top round, so hopefully the jerky won't be too gristle-filled.

This is what 4 pounds of beef looks like.

I mixed my own marinade this time (I ran out of the packaged stuff that came with the dehydrator). I used Memphis steak seasoning, garlic salt, pepper, chili powder, and soy sauce.

The slices of beef were a bit thicker this time, so they will take longer to dry. My dehydrator is pretty efficient though and I expect it to take less than 12 hours.

Homemade Beef Jerky

After making dried pineapple, the next thing I wanted to do with my new dehydrator was to make beef jerky. I remember making beef jerky as a kid with our infomercial food dehydrator. It took several days to dry, but was delicious.

Top round sliced and ready for jerky

I bought 3 pounds of top round for $5 a pound. The butcher sliced the meat for me into thin strips (no charge). I marinated the meat using the jerky spice mix that came with my dehydrator plus some Worcestershire sauce and temari (fancy soy sauce), but I skipped the jerky cure packets (containing salt and sodium nitrite). We never used a cure when I was a kid and it doesn't sound like an absolutely necessary step. I suppose if you were making ground meat jerky (with more germs and critters in the meat) and were intending to store the finished product unrefrigerated I might want to use a cure. We always refrigerated our jerky, so spoilage wasn't much of an issue.

Marinating jerky meat

After marinating for 12+ hours, I put the meat slices onto my dehydrator trays. I started the dehydrator before leaving for work and the jerky was done by the time I got home. In all honesty, I probably should have stopped the dehydrator a couple of hours earlier, but the jerky was fine.

Raw marinated beef in the dehydrator

My 3 pound top round dried down to only 19.4 ounces! That's a 60% reduction in weight.

For my next batch of jerky, I think I'll try my own spice and marinade mix. The pre-made spice mix was very noticeable on some pieces of jerky, but almost flavorless on other pieces. I should also try a different cut of meat to see if there is much of a difference.

Finished jerky

Dehydrated Pineapple Battle: Canned versus Fresh (Part 2)

The fresh and canned pineapple I started to dehydrate a couple days ago didn't take long to dry. The fresh pineapple was done faster, but that's probably because I cut the pieces thinner than the canned stuff.

In terms of flavor, both the canned and fresh are very good. If I have to cast a definitive vote, I guess it would be for the fresh pineapple simply because the canned pineapple is almost too cloyingly sweet.

Dried fresh pineapple

Dried canned pineapple

It was pretty staggering how much the pineapple shrank in the dehydrator and how much water weight was lost. The fresh pineapple cost me $3 and dried down to only 5.6 ounces. The canned pineapple cost me $1.25 and dried down to 2.6 ounces. So in terms of value, the dried fresh pineapple cost 53.6 cents per ounce, while the dried canned pineapple cost 48.1 cents per ounce. Surprisingly, the canned pineapple was a better value. However, I bought the canned pineapple on sale. At regular price (about $1.50) the canned pineapple wouldn't have been the better value (at 57.7 cents per ounce).

P.S. I didn't weigh the dried mango, but it hardly amounted to anything! Making dried mango must be fairly expensive (but yummy).

Dehydrated Pineapple Battle: Canned versus Fresh (Part 1)

The first thing I wanted to make with my new food dehydrator was dried pineapple. I remember making this as a kid and it was very tasty. I was wondering if canned or fresh pineapple would be superior when dried (in terms of both value and flavor), so I'm putting them to the test.

The average 20 oz can of pineapple costs about $1 to $1.50 depending on the brand. The average fresh pineapple costs $3 to $4 depending on the season. After they are dehydrated I will do a taste test as well as compare the cost per dried ounce to see which is a better value. I'm also drying a mango just to see how it works out.

Mango, canned pineapple, fresh pineapple

One can of pineapple contains 10 rings

One fresh pineapple sliced into thin strips

Fresh and canned pineapple in my food dehydrator