Dehydrate ALL THE THINGS!

As readers of this Blog will know, I’m not the most patient of souls when it comes to wanting to do new things and play with my toys. Which is why on a recent trip to the local market I ended up with a bag full of stuff I could suck out all the moisture of as an excuse to play with my Dehydrator and make myself up another grinder, or, something.

First things first, a big bag of Scotch Bonnet Chillies 😉

I’d just enough to fill one of the Dehydrator trays. I de-seeded them (using gloves!) first and then split them in half like the last time.

Next came some Bell Peppers…

I sliced these as thinly as I could to try and make the dehydrating process a bit quicker on them. They seem to contain quite a lot of water. This worked well for the most part. I’m not the most professional person in the world when it comes to chopping things up, but it worked out OK for the most part.

I chopped up Green, Red and Yellow Peppers and gave them a tray each.

I had one tray left so decided to dehydrate some onions, one red and one white.

Also, after this I noticed that I had “holes” in a lot of things and places so I filled those up with some slices of garlic.

After the last time dehydrating and the time involved I just went ahead and set the time to a full 12 hours from the get go. I’ll keep one eye on everything as the time goes on but it’s pretty realistic guess at how long this is going to take I think.

I placed the dehydrator on top of the fridge, hey, it fits and it keeps it out of the way! Surface space is at a premium in our kitchen thanks to all the other gadgets we have! 😉

Hopefully this will make for an interesting Grinder when done! 😀

12(ish) Hours Later

So, how did everything fare I hear you ask?

First up, the main attraction – The Scotch Bonnets

As you can see, all dry, wrinkly and quite a bit smaller!

The Bell Peppers  shrank even more then the Chillies once they’d been dehydrated. I was quite surprised how well this worked to be honest, a couple of pieces hadn’t quite dehydrated and bent rather than snapping so I just put them to one side, I didn’t lose much. You can also see some of the slices of Garlic I included at the last minute in this picture, again, worked well apart from one slice which inexplicably remained mostly bendy.

The Onions also shrank right down, again this worked better than I thought it would, although these did also shrink the most as well.

So, how much did I get out of it in the end?

Not that much :-/

I didn’t include all the Chillies in this mix to be fair, just three of them went into this, but still.

I was however right, it does make for a nice grinder – I through in a few pinches of rock salt and a couple of black pepper corns and job done!