Choosing Your Food Dehydrator

Choosing Your Food Dehydrator

Drying food to preserve it is child’s play in some climates, if you live in a land awash with eternal sunshine then a food dehydrator is probably at the bottom of your Christmas wish list, who needs one when your harvest can be dried and preserved as nature intended, laying out your precious harvest under the sun is the most natural dehydration method in the world. Fact is, we’re not all lucky enough to live where the sun happily shines upon us - day in day out, so for the rest of us (plus those who like to be in complete control of such matters), a food dehydrator can be a God-send.

An electric food dehydrator is now a very popular addition to many a kitchens gadget collection, not only is dehydration a fantastic way to preserve food, it’s also becoming increasingly popular for campers and hikers who can carry a plentiful supply of meals in their backpacks . . . you know the sort of thing, just add boiling water, give it a stir, hang on for a minute or two and you’re ready to enjoy a steaming bowl of something hot, nutritious and delicious.

So how do you go about choosing a food dehydrator? How do you weigh up the pro’s and con’s? As with everything technical there are plenty of different models of food dehydrator to choose from – how do you know which is the best food dehydrator for you?

Food Dehydrator Facts

The art of food dehydration is not rocket science, people have been doing it naturally for generations using nothing more than a wooden pallet and a whole heap of sunshine. All a food dehydrator really needs to do is to successfully maintain a constant air flow and constant temperature . . . and that’s it! The main factors to consider when choosing a food dehydrator are;

Heat and air flow – an essential part of the process

Access – accessibility is always important

Versatility

Materials & Quality – you want to make sure that your food dehydrator is good quality, that way it will dehydrate your harvest for many years to come

When you start looking for a food dehydrator you’ll soon notice that they are available in two basic designs;

      1.Stackable trays

      2. Shelf trays

Each type of food dehydrator has benefits and disadvantages, okay, I notice that you’re getting even more confused but don’t be, just keep reading.

Choosing a Food Dehydrator

Food Dehydrator – Heat And Air Flow – the food dehydrator you choose must have even heat and air flow. It can be so frustrating if half of your food is much drier than the other half, and if the heat and air flow is not even then it could mean that the food which is stored closest to the heat and air flow will dry out much faster than the rest. You really need the heat and air flow to be nice and even throughout your food dehydrator. Shelf tray dehydrators usually have heat and air flow which is nice and even due to the basic nature of the design, uneven heat and air flow is a more common problem in the cheaper, economy end stackable food dehydrators.

Food Dehydrator – Access – you really do need to think about how easy it is to access the trays in your food dehydrator. You’ve gotten’ have good access when you’re preparing your food for dehydration, as well as keeping an eye on it whilst food dehydration is in progress. Shelf food dehydrators are fantastic for ease of access, you can simply pull out whichever tray you wish to check on – stackable dehydrators, however, are not so easy. If you want to check up on a tray which is in the center or bottom of the stack then you’ve got to lift out all of the other trays to get to it.

Food Dehydrator – Versatility – if you think that you might want to dehydrate tall things then think about a shelf tray dehydrator – you can simply leave out a few of the trays so you have as much clearance as you need. This can be great for people who want to use their food dehydrator for crafts, dried flowers etc.

Food Dehydrator – Materials & Quality – you really want your food dehydrator to last, so it’s important that you check out the quality of the materials and workmanship in your food dehydrator. A well-built, quality food dehydrator will more than pay for itself after providing you with dried foods over many years.

Pressure Cooking Benefits

Cooking is a vital conception of just about every household. An important utensil used to educate matter quickly is the pressure cooker. It is a very simple appliance that is similiar to your other pots, except that it has a unique lid to it. This lid traps decent exclusive patch the matter cooks. As the presure exclusive builds, it allows for a higher temperature to be reached and thus cooks your matter quicker.

The organisation to measure the pressure exclusive the cooker is pounds per square inch (PSI). An important conception of your pressure cooker used to withstand such high forces is the gasket. It fits around the edge of the lid or the rim on the pot. In visit to secure a tight accolade around the gasket, it is important that it is kept decent and free of matter particles.

On newer pressure cookers, there are usually at least 3 valves that allow the pressure cooker to release whatever decent and pressure when it builds up too high.

There are many benefits, both nutritional and sensible, to ingest a pressure cooker. Here are a few:

Nutritional: When preparation with a pressure cooker, because the matter cooks faster, inferior water and nutrients drain from the matter during the process. Therefore the matter you take from them is more nutritional in value.

Timesaving: Preparing your meals with a pressure cooker typically takes 70% inferior time. This will allow you to educate other dishes in the instance it would take you to educate the meal without a pressure cooker.

Energy Efficiency: Because the matter is grilled in inferior time, this means inferior energy is spent to keep the range or cooker on.

Cleaner Kitchen: Because everything is sealed within the cooker patch existence cooked, you don't have to worry about cleaning up any mess made on the stove. Just decent the belly and no fuss!

Cooler Kitchen: Again, since every your matter is grilled exclusive covered pots, inferior modify emits from the cooker patch existence cooked. This will help keep whatever of the modify out of the kitchen.

So now you undergo why a pressure cooker is such a beatific appliance. Now here are whatever tips to ingest when looking to buy one for yourself.

There are many brands and varieties on the mart today. Typical sizes range from 4 to 8 quarts. Usually a 6 quart belly will serve every your needs well, but if you are aiming to take a aggregation of people, the dispense for an 8 quart pot. Pressure cookers are usually made from either stainless poise or aluminum. Stainless poise is preferred as it is a much higher quality, will last longer, is easier to clean, and will also result in better cooking. Stainless poise pressure cookers also are healthy to brown the right of foods before existence cooked, so there is no need to go finished an player cooked travel in the process.

Be trusty to feature the safety manual prototypal before determining to ingest a pressure cooker for a prototypal time. With pressure cooking, it has rattling become easier to educate whatever of your selection dishes.

SavoieNeal

15 Basic Cooking Tips To Make Your Life Easier!

There are some basic cooking tips that anyone could learn and use to help out in the kitchen. With todays' busy lifestyles becoming more prevalent, learning and using these basic cooking tips will save you time and headache.

The following fifteen is just a tiny handful of the many basic cooking tips that you could integrate into your everyday life to save time and money.

• Bacon: Reduce shrinkage by running cold water over it before frying. 

• Beans: Stop gas attacks by adding a tablespoon of bicarbonate of soda in a big pot of beans while they are soaking.

• Boiled Eggs: Add some vinegar or a little salt to the boiling water when boiling eggs. This basic cooking tips will keep the egg in the shell if it cracks.

• Ripening Fruits and Vegetables: Put your unripe fruit and vegetables in a brown paper bag and place the bag in a dark cupboard for few day. Using this basic cooking tips is an excellent way to save money on fruits and vegetables that has to be ripened. 

• Salads: Cut your iceberg lettuce into wedges instead of tearing salad greens to save some time making a salad.

• Spaghetti Sauce: Add a small pinch of bicarbonate of soda to your spaghetti sauce to lower the acid taste from the tomatoes.

• Corn: Place the corn directly into boiling water, and do not add salt. Do not boil corn for more than three minutes. Overcooking reduces the taste level.

• Frozen Vegetables: When they are stuck together, simply run boiling water over them. 

• Grating Cheese: Freeze for twenty five minutes before grating. It will shred so much easier. 

• Pancakes: Use a small amount of sugar in the batter and they will brown more quickly.

• Pie Pastry: Substitute one teaspoon of vinegar for one teaspoon of the cold water called for in the recipe and the pastry will be much flakier.

• Quick Sauces: Use condensed cream soups such as cream of mushroom, cream of chicken, cream of tomato, cream of celery, to make fast and easy sauces.

• Quick Tenderizer: Use vinegar as a meat tenderizer. Add a tablespoon to water when boiling meat or ribs for stews. This basic cooking tips will help tenderizer even the toughest meat. 

• Wilted vegetables: Soak wilted veggies in two cups water, one tablespoon vinegar to help bring them back to life. 

• Wooden Skewers: Soak all your wooden skewers in cold water for twenty minutes to prevent them from burning.

Inspiration could be considered to be one of the key ingredients to writing. Only if one is inspired, can one get to writing on any subject especially like cooking.

Use some of these basic cooking tips to make your life in the kitchen more enjoyable.

Thanh is a recognized authority on the subject of cooking. His website http://pleasantkitchen.com/ is a wealth of information on everything you will need to know about cooking tips.

A Look Into Eating Raw Foods

A diet is considered a raw food diet if it consists of at least 75% raw, uncooked fruits, vegetables, sprouts, etc. Raw and living foods are believed to contain essential food enzymes (living foods contain a higher enzyme content than cooked foods). The cooking process (i.e., heating foods above 116°F) is thought to destroy food enzymes.

People who follow the raw diet use particular techniques to prepare foods. These include sprouting seeds, grains and beans; soaking nuts and dried fruits; and juicing fruits and vegetables. The only cooking that is allowed is via a food dehydrator. This piece of equipment blows hot air through the food but never reaches a temperature higher than 116°F.

Do you have to follow the regimen that strictly? Of course not. But it’s certainly worth it to incorporate some of these techniques and ideas into your diet. If you tend to snack at work, try taking in carrots or apple slices. Many of the bigger grocery stores now offer packaged vegetables or fruits that make it easier to pack them and take them to work. We’re a nation of convenience, and much of the resistance to healthier eating is that it does generally take a little more effort and time to buy and slice fruits and vegetables. Food retailers have been catching on, slowly, and it’s much easier now to get bags of sliced carrots, celery, apples, nuts and raisins.

Of course these aren’t necessarily organic foods, and organic is the better way to go, but we think anything raw is infinitely better than cooked, processed food. If you have the time, do buy organic and slice them yourself. But if you’re in a hurry, and nowhere near a natural food store, then don’t beat yourself up or sabotage your efforts because you can’t do this 100% all the time. That’s not realistic. Anything from the fruit and vegetable aisle is going to be better for you than a potato chip, or worse yet, a french fry!