Have an inexpensive dehydrator... thinking $9.99 at Rite Aid?? A while ago, decided to make chili. I'm NOT into seriously spicy stuff but stopped at Produce Junction for stuff. BIG big of jalapenos for next to nothing... and knew I was only gonna use one maybe 2 in whole pot. Rather than just let them reduce to slime in fridge drawer, hauled out dehydrator. Wearing latex gloves (ya only have to make that mistake ONCE), sliced off stem, split in half and just dried till crispy... a few days, maybe?? Then into "coffee" grinder only used for spices. After a fit of coughing, ended up with a nice batch of ground jalapeno powder. I like to sub it for cayenne when I make a batch of Emeril's "BAM"... found online and great seasoning mix for just about anything except dessert!

One time had a messa plum tomatoes. Halved and scooped out most of seeds. Liberally sprinkled with salt, black pepper and sugar and dried until "leathery"... like savory raisins.

I dehydrate a fair number of things. I do make beef jerky, but don't really use a recipe. Like John, I try to leave it a bit leathery (though sometimes, I forget the thing is on and end up with crispier slices) and store it in the garage fridge. My husband loves it for snacks.

Every year I dehydrate a lot of local strawberries and other fruits for use in our Winter hot cereals (and just to munch on). And, I dehydrate mushrooms...mushroom powder being the "secret ingredient" in my Cream o' 'Shroom soup. Also, dehydrated tomatoes and peppers are great, minced or powdered, in vinaigrette dressings.

Jerky is a much anticipated Christmas food gift around our house. I use ground bison and extrude it with a jerky maker. There is very little fat in bison meat, which is important when making jerky, or dehydrating any kind of meat.

An important food safety note for making jerky... Meat and poultry jerky should be heated to 160-degrees F to destroy microorganisms. You can do this with a couple different methods. If the meat is marinated, heat the meat in the marinade prior to drying (bring to a near boil). The second method is to heat the DRIED jerky in a 275-degree oven for 10-minutes after the dehydration process. Always store it in an airtight container, preferable in the refrigerator, or in the freezer if you want to keep it longer. Dehydration doesn't prevent the fat in the meat from going rancid.

I also cut COOKED lean meat into 1/4-inch cubes and dehydrate it. I store it in the freezer.

I do a lot of dehydrating. It gets placed in canning jars and the lids vacuum-sealed with a FoodSaver and shelved in our food storage room. I just finished my last apples yesterday and have seemingly a "ton" of them in storage. Most of them were picked free - as well as a number of jars of free pears. I use dried apples as an out-of-hand snack item, pie/cobblers, added to quick breads and granola, and I also make it into applesauce.

I'll be starting sweet potatoes for sweet potato powder tomorrow. I cook and mash the sweet potatoes, spread a thin layer onto fruit leather sheets and dry it enough to peel off the sheets. Place the sweet potato back on the tray and dry until crispy. The crispy sheets of sweet potatoes are placed in a blender and pulverized into a powder. To make mashed sweet potatoes, just add hot water and stir.

When I find commercially frozen veggies and fruit on clearance, or greatly reduced, and I don't have room for them in my freezer I'll dehydrate them. I don't have a free-standing freezer, just my refrigerator freezer, so dehydrating these foods works very well for me.

I no longer do home canning because it's not cost effective, so dehydration is my major source for preservation.

Dehydration is a good way to preserve those fresh fruits and veggies that often "die" of loneliness in the refrigerator and are wasted, and to take advantage of food bargains. I paid 98-cents for a discounted package of fresh bay leaves and dehydrated them. It was enough to fill a pint jar. On sale and over-ripe fruit is quickly made into fruit roll-ups. These are used as snacks or you can make a fruit sauce with them.

It's amazing how many tomatoes you can stuff into a quart jar when you dehydrate them!!!

I purchase large quantities of nuts when they are reduced after the holidays. Nuts are easier to digest, have more available nutrients, and will keep longer in a cool temperature storage (basement) if you soak them overnight in lightly-salted water (they sprout slightly) and dehydrate them until crispy. The dehydrated nuts are also stored in canning jars with the lids vacuum-sealed on them.

-Grainlady

Here's a recipe for beef jerky that I worked up and find to be tasty:

Guinness Beef Jerky Marinade

(This amount of marinade is sufficient for about 5 to 6 pounds of beef, which I find fill my the Nesco dehydrator's eight trays fairly full)

6 lbs lean beef, sliced thinly--see Note 1
2 bottles (12-14 oz each) Guinness Stout
2 tablespoons kosher salt
2 tablespoons garlic powder
2-4 tablespoons hot stuff (see Note 2)
optional: liquid smoke, 1 to 2 tbsp

In a large bowl pour stout and add salt, whisking to dissolve salt and decarbonate the stout. Add the garlic powder and hot stuff and mix well. Put the beef strips in the marinade by handfuls, swirling around to make sure all surfaces have come in contact with the marinade. Place the beef in a nonreactive container (a stainless stockpot works fine), pour the remaining marinade over the beef and refrigerate for at least an hour (more is better, mixing the beef strips every so often in the pot).

Place the strips flat on the trays and dry. I prefer crisp to leathery, but do it however you want.

Note 1: I like to use round roast because it's very lean; eye of round is very easy to slice across the grain, and that yields a less stringy product. Don't use a fatty cut because it won't dry as thoroughly and won't have the storage properties of a leaner cut.

Note 2: I have used chipotle powder with good results; 4 tablespoons in this recipe makes a quite hot product, and 2 tbsp makes a pleasantly zingy one. If you want something quite mild, use sweet paprika which would make a product not at all hot but with pleasant flavor. Don't use a hot sauce that's vinegar based (like Tabasco or Sriracha)--the vinegar taste will be concentrated in the finished product.

The finished product can be stored in plastic ziplock bags in the freezer, and can be moved to the fridge when you open one. I find that a quart ziplock bag holds one tray's worth of dried jerky. Note that this recipe does not contain any curing agents like nitrates or nitrites, so I can't vouch for what would happen if you left this jerky at room temperature for several days. Storing it this way, though, I've never had any of it go bad. That's partly because it tastes so good, it never lasts that long once I open a bag.

I dehydrate lots of things, I made zucchini candy for the kids this summer with lots of zucchini, and I sliced and dehydrated some for soup, just plain zucchini. I also sliced some thin and salted it, someone mentioned it was "like potato chips". Nope, nothing like potato chips, LOL.

I've dehydrated lots of hot peppers, a mix of serranos, jalapenos, habaneros and cayennes, Elery grinds them up and puts them in lots of his stuff, I let him.

I dried some tomatoes for tomato powder, but 40 hours in the dehydrator left me with just rubbery tomatoes, so I gave that up.

I've dehydrated a zillion onions, maybe more, that's just an approximate and I've done two bushels of apples so Elery could give some to his stepmother and his sister for apple stack cakes, I seldom use them.

We did some green beans two years ago that we haven't used yet, they are sitting next to the mushrooms we did last year.

so, I dehydrate a lot of things, but don't use much of it, it seems.

No jerky this year, I sold my half of this year's beef and so won't have beef in the freezer.

Annie

There is this Chinese fluffy shredded dried pork or fish stuff, called ''Pork Sung'' or ''Fish Sung''. rou song. I'd like to figure out how to make that. It is apparently considerably more involved than making jerky.

Back to the chicken boullion. If you took cooked chicken, veggies and spices, chopped it up in the food processor, dehydrated it, then sent it through the food processor again until it was a fine powder. Would you have a usable boullion powder that can be reconstituted for a good stock, without the excessive sodium and MSG of commercial boullion cubes?

Annie -
You may have better luck making tomato puree and drying it on fruit leather sheets to make powdered tomatoes. When it's dry enough to remove from the sheets, place on the trays to dry until crispy.

How to:

Core and cut up ripe tomatoes without peeling. Simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to keep from sticking. Cool slightly and force cooked pulp through a food mill, colander, or strainer. In a shallow pan over low heat or in an electric skillet set at 260-degrees F, cook juice down to a thick puree.

Spread the puree 1/8-inch thick and dry at highest heat setting for 12-14 hours. To use: For tomato puree or paste, add 1/2-3/4 c. powder to each cup boiling water. Stir well until dissolved and season to taste. For tomato juice, add 1 T. tomato powder to each cup boiling water. Season with salt and serve hot or cold. Add 1 T. powder to each cup liquid in soups, stews, or sauces.

(Source: Making & Using Dried Foods - by Phyllis Hobson)

You can also make tomato leather (as well as other veggie leathers), and cut it into portions to add to soup or other liquids. It works nearly as well as powdered.

-Grainlady