Ferguson September - The ultimate dehydrator cookbook: [the complete guide to drying food, plus 398 recipes, including making jerkey, fruit leathers, and just-add-water meals]

Copyright 2014 by Tammy Gangloff, Steven Gangloff and September Ferguson Published by
STACKPOLE BOOKS
5067 Ritter Road
Mechanicsburg, PA 17055
www.stackpolebooks.com All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Stackpole Books, 5067 Ritter Road, Mechanicsburg PA 17055. Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First edition Cover design by Caroline M. Stover
Photography by kc kratt photography: www.kckratt.comLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gangloff, Tammy.
The ultimate dehydrator cookbook : the complete guide to drying food, plus 398 recipes, including making jerky, fruit leather & just-add-water meals / Tammy Gangloff, Steven Gangloff & September Ferguson.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-8117-1338-2
eISBN 978-0-8117-6086-7
1. Dried foods. 2.

FoodDrying. I. Gangloff, Steven. II. Ferguson,September. III.

Title.
TX609.G35 2014
641.4'4dc23 2014014848 To James Gangloff, my beloved husband and loving father of my children. You believed I was wonderful. You believed everything I did was amazing, no matter how small. You showed me my wings and said I could fly, and I did and you smiled. And when my wings were broken, you held me in your arms until they healed and I could soar again. I am because of you.

I love you. And to James, my beloved son and brother of my children. Such a giving and loving heart only an angel could possess. The light came and took you home. The angels sang. I wept.

I was given a beautiful gift; that gift was to hold you in my arms. I was blessed. I love you. Acknowledgments S pecial thanks to Scott Gangloff for being a supporter and dedicated taste tester, and to Steve and Sue Ferguson for their love and support. Special thanks to Nancy Levensailor for her support. Also, to our photographer and to Stackpole Books and our editors for their time and efforts in making this incredible opportunity into a brilliant reality.

Introduction W ith food dehydration you will embark on an incredible journey where you will learn to create delicious snacks and meals that will wow those around you. And because they are prepared using dehydrated ingredients, they will be faster and cheaper to make, as well as healthier. Follow me and I will show you the amazing benefits of dehydrating food. After that, there will be no stopping you. WHY DRY? Imagine placing your food into a state of suspended animation, perfectly preserved until it is needed. Picture effortlessly and quickly preserving your entire garden, using no unnatural additives or salt, and then storing those items five to ten times longer than possible with freezing or canning.

Imagine lifting 50 pounds of potatoes with one finger, and five bushels of apples with another. This sounds unbelievable and yet, I have been doing this for years, and have only just begun to scratch the surface of the benefits of dehydrating food. When I first started dehydrating, I was met with a lot of eye rolling and giggling. My children would look at me and say, Im not going to eat that. What they didnt know at the time, however, is that we all eat dehydrated foods every day without ever realizing it. Did you know that most restaurants use dehydrated foods? Have you noticed that over the past few years there are more and more packaged prepared dried items on the shelves of local stores compared to canned items? Why, you might ask, has industry made this shift toward dried food? The foremost reason is its cost effectiveness.

When you dry food, you remove nearly all the water it contains, significantly reducing itboth in weight and size (volume). This allows you to store more food in a smaller space. Not to mention, less weight per item reduces transportation costs. Dehydrated foods do not require refrigeration, and the cost to produce a plastic bag to store dried foods is appreciably less than that of an aluminum can for canned foods. Additionally, the long shelf life of dried foods means less money sent down the drain due to spoilage. From factory to store, dehydrating foods saves money.

Indeed, the food industry has utilized the benefits of dehydration for some time, but most people are not aware of just how many benefits can be reaped from home dehydration! All of the cost reductions seen by food companies can also be enjoyed by you! . You might be thinking, I dont have time to do this. Certainly, we all wish we had more free time. More time to spend with our families, more time to spend gardening or enjoying a good book, and more time to spend helping others or volunteering in our church or community. What if I were to tell you that using dehydrated foods could cut the time you spend in the kitchen in half, or more? Home dehydration allows you to create a stock of healthy ingredients that you will have on hand at all times. This means no more quick trips to the store to pick up those few ingredients missing to complete a new recipe or to replenish spoiled produce.

Everything you need will be at your fingertips, stored properly to last a long time, and ready for cooking. With dehydration, even out of season produce will be ready whenever you are! No more food prepwashing, peeling, and choppingfor each and every meal; it has already been done! Just grab a handful of this, a pinch of that, and turn on the heat! If you pre-package your meals, preparing a delicious dinner can be as easy as opening a package, placing it in a slow cooker, adding liquid, and turning it on. All that is left to do is think about what you want to do with all of that extra time! If you are a gardening enthusiast you are certainly familiar with this scenario: you have worked hard to nourish a large and beautiful garden youre proud of, but you soon find that this bounty of food has become too much to eat right away. Perhaps you try to can your excess produce, but you quickly come to realize the size of that sweat-inducing, labor-intensive task. What can you do to save your harvest from literally rotting on the vine? Dehydrating is a fast, easy, and simple way to solve this problem. In fact, you can preserve your entire garden and still have time and energy to tackle your neighbors! Because dehydrated foods have a long shelf life, its a fast and affordable way to stock up and build a pantry that can sustain you and your family should you need it, whether because of the loss of a job, unexpected misfortune, hyperinflation, bad weather conditions, family and friends in need, or simply as a bridge when finances temporarily run short.

I had a dear friend quip back at me one day saying, If theres an emergency, I have a huge freezer packed full of food. I replied, Not if the electricity goes out. If your food is in the pantry and you lose electricity, your food is still safe. The great benefit of home-dehydrated products is you can cut the tethers binding you to environmental and mechanical mishaps. This is just a glimpse at the possibilities home dehydration offers. Read on and Ill share with you the countless incredible and exciting things you can do with your dehydrator! MY STORY The passion I have for dehydrating came to me by way of another passion: cake decorating.

I loved to design and bake fabulous cakes with intricate detailing. If someone needed a cake for a special occasion I would jump at the opportunity, and always strived to deliver a WOW. I handmade all of my decorative pieces from fondant and gum paste. Depending on the size, most of these pieces would require at least a week to dry. Because of this, I couldnt accommodate requests on short notice. Searching for a better way, I decided to try using my oven instead of air-drying the pieces.