THE FOOD DEHYDRATOR

Welcome to our food blog. 

(Disclaimer: We started this blog just to record what we have done. I am sure we are doing certain things the wrong way.  Anything we do on the blog, you can try at home.  We are not claiming to be experts.  Please follow proper health and safety practices when preparing food.  Enjoy. -Arthur)

Food is yummy.  We love it.  Sometimes a little too much.

We have been doing food projects for a long time now and have been recording it all. Our memory cards and smart phones are full.  We are finally offloading it all and putting it online

BACKGROUND

Since we moved to New York five years ago we have been inspired by many things food related.  Lately, our access to fresh organic food and great restaurants has been off the chart.  Often times we feel as though we have dove head first into food valley.  Our ever expanding waistline is proof of our insatiable appetite for food and how it is made.

Here and there things have connected our food projects with our love of eating out.  First this incredible set of books that a friend introduced us to (Modernist Cuisine).  It is pretty much food porn.   We have totally fallen in love with the mind of a chef tv show.  We watched every episode, twice.  Also every dinner party we go to we have had to bring our A game.  It seems like everyone around here is a culinary genius.  Much different than our back yard BBQs back home (even though we have a soft spot for BBQ).  We have had to step things up quite a bit to keep up with the Joneses.  We are always trying to one up each other.  Truthfully, more so than anything else we have been influenced by our friends (you will see them in some of our photos) who's mantra has always been "NO PROCESSED FOOD!"  Food is so much better when you make it yourself. 

The title of the blog really comes from the range of food we consume.  From the low brow flat top grease burger to the high end saffron infused black truffle ragu, the blog should be titled "FROM Cheetos to Caviar!"  We envision the blog to be part review, part how to and part experimentation.  We hope to have guest bloggers and encourage suggestions.

Combining all of this with the bountiful Hudson Valley makes for great adventures in culinary arts..... With out further adieu....for your reading pleasure I give you our first post. 

THE FOOD DEHYDRATOR (part one)

So we got a food dehydrator a while back and we have been using it non-stop. After thinking about all of the obvious choices with fruit etc we decided to experiment a bit. So we decided to make our own onion and garlic powder (inspired by chef Rene Redzepi's cucumber powder). Very simple and it makes a world of difference! You can actually taste the garlic and onion!!  Really....it is AMAZING how much better this is than store bought crap.

So this is what we did.  First, we gathered our supplies.  Onions. CHECK! Garlic CHECK! Food processor. CHECK!  Food dehydrator. CHECK!  Next we halved and peeled the onions.  Then with the "chopper" blade on the processor, we sliced them up.  After they were sliced things got a bit blurry (tears).  We placed a layer of sliced onions on each layer of the dehydrator.  Our machine is the cheapo model.  There is no low or high setting.  It is just on or off.  So we switched it on then waited....and waited....and waited.  There was a lot of crying.  The whole house filled with onion vapor. We left it overnight (about nine hours).

The onions were done when you could take a piece out and it would snap or crush with very little effort.  If they are still bendy turn it back on and come back in an hour.  Once it was completely dry we put it back in the food processor, switched to a normal blade and buzzed it all up.   We did the same with the garlic.  We bought pre-pealed garlic just to make life easier.  I actually hand chopped it then dehydrated it.   Again totally great! 

Just a few tips: 

1. leave the house when the onion is drying.  It is bad enough cutting the onions. When you shove them in the dehydrator the whole house feels like a tear gas grenade went off.  IT BURNS!

 2. Course chop everything. Our Dehydrator has big holes in it and everything finely chopped would fall to the bottom.  The bigger the better.

3. After everything is dry and you chop it up add a pinch of salt to extend the shelf life of the final product.  It goes bad quickly without the salt (four to five weeks)

 4. Buy a coffee grinder that you will only use as a spice grinder.  This makes a big difference grinding things to a powder. Grinding it finer you can put it in a shaker which makes it more accessible when cooking.  It sucks when the chunks clog it up when you are trying to add it to something on the fly.  

5. Make sure to label your containers.  After dehydrating they look almost identical from the outside of the container.  Only opening by opening it will you be able to tell which one is which.  I actually gave up and combined the two to make a super seasoning.  It is rare that I would ever use one and not the other.