Beet chips

[sciencegal]

I wanted to try my hand at dehydrating so I started with beets. I used the four largest of my red ace beets:
[img]https://www.imagecyte.com/garden/images/acebeetsaug_1.jpg[/img]
and ended up with this:
[img]https://www.imagecyte.com/garden/images/beetsdried.jpg[/img]

Not much left of them, but they have a crispy, sweet beet flavor.

[jal_ut]

Nice. I wonder how you dried them?

[sciencegal]

I used a Ronco dehydrator that a friend loaned me. It doesn't have any temperature settings so I don't know how warm it was. It has 7 big round trays that sit on top of each other, with the heating element on the bottom.

[jal_ut]

OK on the dehydrator. We have a similar one, don't know the brand name off hand. They sure do a good job.

[DoubleDogFarm]

About how thick of a slice and how long drying?

Ertic

[sciencegal]

First, I trimmed the tops then boiled them whole (with the roots) for about 30 minutes, just until they were tender. I cooled them in cold water, trimmed off the ends and peeled them.

I used a mandolin to slice which is advised so the slices are uniform in size. I used the thin blade but I don't know how thin that is, probably about an 1/8 inch.

It took about 36 hours to get them crisp and dark red in the Ronco dehydrator.

Some recipes said to just dehydrate them raw without cooking, but most dehydrating instructions say that anything that needs blanching before freezing also needs blanching before dehydrating.

I plan to try summer squash and green beans soon.

[rainbowgardener]

OT a little, but the only mandolin I knew about was a musical instrument, so I looked it up. How do you like your mandolin slicer? The cusinart variety listed on Amazon got a whole bunch of terrible customer reviews:

https://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-89502-Mandolin-Slicer/dp/B000Q4IAAC/ref=pd_sxp_f_r

at the bottom of the page...

[greenstubbs]

OT a little, but the only mandolin I knew about was a musical instrument

My thought's exactly.

[sciencegal]

I bought [url=https://www.amazon.com/Swissmar-Borner-V-1001-V-Slicer-Mandoline/dp/B0000632QE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1344348018&sr=8-2&keywords=mandoline+food+slicer]the Swissmar-Borner V-1001[/url] from Amazon. I'm happy with it.

should have been spelled mandoline