It’s easy, fun, and economical to dry your own garden vegetables for general home use as well as for lightweight camping or backpacking. Dried foods occupy one-fifth to one-twentieth of the storage space and weight of canned or packaged foods. Properly prepared, dried vegetables last for up to a year and retain nutritional value; drying your own foods in season is money saving, too. Most vegetables dry well, and because they’re relatively scarce among supermarket convenience foods, vegetables which you’ve dried yourself can add variety to your pantry shelves when it comes to making stocks, stews, soups, and many other dishes.

Best Methods for Drying Vegetables

There are a number of ways to dry vegetables: sun drying, oven drying and using a food dehydrator. Sun drying is a method best used in the Southwest where it is consistently warm for long periods. Oven drying is a popular method but tends to produce lower quality foods because of the difficulty of maintaining a temperature below 140 degrees, unless your oven was specifically designed to do so or is a newer model. Consumer dehydrators work best, as they produce a uniform drying temperature and are easily available from stores, catalogs, and Internet shopping sites.

How to Prepare Vegetables for Drying  

With a few exceptions, vegetables need to be blanched prior to drying to inactivate enzymes that cause the food to deteriorate during drying and storage. Steam blanching is preferred over water blanching because it preserves more vitamins. Since blanching time varies with altitude, thickness of vegetable slices, and quantity blanched at one time, check the instructional insert that came with your dehydrator, or see the drying chart in “Roughing It Easy,” Pages 210-211, for this information.

How to Tell When Vegetables Are Fully Dried   

Vegetables should be only partially cooked — slightly tender to cut but not quite done enough to eat — before being placed in the dehydrator. (If vegetables are not peeled, the skins will be tough when rehydrated, so to peel or not to peel will depend on your preference.) When dried, they should contain 5 percent or less moisture (they will feel tough or crisp). Remove vegetables from the dehydrator after the specified time and let them cool before determining dryness.

Best Ways to Store Dried Vegetables   

Vacuum packing is the preferred storage option, but freezer bags placed inside metal containers will also work well. Stored at 60 degrees, most dried vegetables have a shelf life of about six months, but, if possible, they should be stored in the refrigerator or freezer to maintain the best quality.