Canning and freezing are still popular ways to save excess produce, but some gardeners are turning to dehydration.
Beate Epp, who plants a big garden every year near Dundurn, Sask., says she still uses her freezer but also bought a dehydrator because she and her husband are vegetarians and prefer raw food.
She said she switched to what she calls “living” food because raw food fills the stomach faster and is easier to digest. She also said the food’s enzymes can then be used to fight disease in the human body.
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“I don’t preserve any more because it’s cooked to the point that there’s no nutrition any more.”
Epp uses her dehydrator to dry vegetables and make tomato bread, flatbread and crackers. She can also add rye or another cereal, flax, sunflower seeds and spices to customize the recipe.
She makes spaghetti out of vegetables such as eggplant and zucchini and dries the strands. She makes a curried kale or spinach dish that she stores in a zip-lock bag after dehydrating.
While she has used her oven to dry food, Epp found a dehydrator can process more food at once with uniform results using an equivalent amount of electricity.
She doesn’t dry raw potatoes because they have a funny starchy taste that doesn’t disappear. Instead, she keeps them in a cold cellar with her onions.
Heather Whittick, a community dietitian for the Saskatoon Health Region, said Epp may be in the forefront of a lot of prairie cooks.
“People are doing meat jerky in their ovens or drying fruit, but not much else.”
Dehydration was more popular in the past, especially before electricity. The Traditional Ukrainian Cookery book published in 1959 carries recipes for drying herbs, mushrooms and fruit.
Whittick said dehydration inhibits the growth of bacteria and mould.
Nutritionally, dried food may lose some thiamine. As well, commercial dried fruit may be treated with sulfites to preserve vitamins A and C, which Whittick said can cause headaches because of allergies.
She advised home preservers to blanch vegetables before drying to prevent browning or loss of colour.
