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Post by steev on Feb 23, 2016 20:19:18 GMT -5
Sweet, chewy dried bananas do make for a difficult wait. I really don't like the goobered-up commercial banana chips.
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Post by Walk on Feb 24, 2016 9:42:18 GMT -5
No need to slice bananas for drying. Stick your finger into the end of a peeled banana and push. It will cleave into 3 sections which dehydrate nicely. My husband Bob taught me this one. He said that I must have had a deprived childhood since I didn't do this as a youngster ;>). , I find the cut surface dries more readily than the natural split lines, which seem to have a bit of resistance to drying out. Maybe I'm just impatient. T I am the queen of impatient ;>). You're right about the splits being a bit slower to dry, but they are also less prone to sticking to the screens. Once drying has commenced a ways, you can speed up the process by squeezing the banana sticks to exude a bit of moisture. I do this type of maneuver with several fruits to break up the outer "skin" that forms. For tomatoes I even run over them with a rolling mincer (several small cutting wheels mounted about 1/4" apart). The score lines can help take a few hours off the dry time. |
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Post by templeton on Feb 25, 2016 7:28:29 GMT -5
Nice idea, I never thought of piercing to release the moisture - Mangos slices can actually inflate like a balloon.
T
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Post by 12540dumont on Feb 28, 2016 15:46:31 GMT -5
A few words about blanching:
Vegetables with a long cooking time, beans, carrots, potatoes, peas, etc. should be blanched to stop the enzyme action that causes flavor loss. Vegetables with a short cooking time, zukes, peppers, onions, mushrooms, maters don't require blanching. Blanching reduces the number of micro-organisms that cause spoilage in the products, stops destructive chemical changes, preserves the color, stops the ripening process and generally makes the produce dry faster. The drying is quicken because the outer skin becomes more porous. Don't over blanch.
I love to blanch Swiss chard, then whir it in the food processor with Temari Sauce and sesame. When dehydrated, makes a lovely crunchy for snacking or putting on top of salad. I do the same with kale and spinach.
Although recipes say to blanch corn, instead I bbq it for a couple of minutes. This gives it a great smokey flavor. We had it last night in Mole Stew! Yummy.
What I love best about dehydrating is that 18 pounds of corn turns into 2 1/2 pounds of dehydrated corn or about 4 pints. So much easier to store.
Mill Creek onions are my favorite to dehydrate. I slice about 50 pounds of tomatoes a year...every kind we grow. And of course the persimmons that Steev brings us. I like Piccolo Peas for drying. I never do squash. I like Christmas Limas for dehydrating.
When we do apples, or peaches, I use one c. lemon, lime or pineapple juice and dip for 10 minutes. No blanching required. But it helps the apples not turn brown.
I was visiting a cousin who does syrup blanching for pears and figs. (4 cups sugar and 4 cups water in a big pan.) Bring to a boil, add fruit, simmer 8 minutes. Remove from stove, let stand 20 minutes, drain and save syrup for the next batch. Oh man oh man were those pears yummy.
Joseph's Little Yellow Hotties, Dar's Chapeau du Frade Cat, Aji's, and Ferdzy's Silk Road peppers all made great pepper flakes.
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Post by reed on Mar 3, 2016 9:31:10 GMT -5
kyredneck when you pick beans for leather britches are the picked pretty much just at a green pod stage or can you let them fill out a little?
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Post by kyredneck on Mar 11, 2016 21:10:05 GMT -5
kyredneck when you pick beans for leather britches are the picked pretty much just at a green pod stage or can you let them fill out a little? Lol, "filled out a little" is green pod stage to me.  According to Bill Best and others full beans, while pods still green before started turning color is ideal for shuck beans. Soup beans in a pod.
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Post by reed on Mar 11, 2016 22:39:45 GMT -5
Good to know, I have heard to the contrary and didn't see the point of drying and preserving empty pods.
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Post by kyredneck on Mar 15, 2016 7:25:21 GMT -5
reed
Bill Best: "Leather Britches-Leather britches, also called shucky beans, shuck beans, and in some areas, fodder beans, are made from full green beans which have been strung, broken into pieces, and then dried....." www.heirlooms.org/bean-terminology.html
"Over time, Best has learned things about beans most modern grocery store shoppers and summer gardeners can’t imagine: that green beans, full grown, have tender green pods while the beans inside are at maturity.
The green bean of the modern grocery store, and of the modern garden catalog, is a bean that must be picked young to be tender, with immature seeds inside, “so it’s no longer a protein source,” says Best. That means you can no longer eat a typical mountain meal of green beans, cornbread, onions and tomatoes and get your full complement of protein, with its commensurate “stick to your ribs” quality, says Best.
The newfangled bean has an advantage, of course: no strings. Heirloom beans have coarse strings, usually one down each side, which must be removed before eating or preserving. When asked if people don’t mind stringing fresh beans, Best says, “People are becoming aware that there’s a price to pay for quality and sometimes that price is time.”...." www.ediblecommunities.com/louisville/march-april-2012/savor-saver.htm
Vegetables of Interest: "Leather Britches Beans or 'shucky beans' refers to an antique technique of preserving beans that was closely associated with the American South and particularly the Appalachian region. Prior to the widespread use of freezing or canning beans were preserved by stringing them on a length of thin twine and then air-drying them over several weeks. Beans were picked at a stage when the seeds were well developed but the outer hull remained green. Leather Britches beans were re-hydrated and cooked very slowly in an excess of water containing a wedge of bacon or ham...." vegetablesofinterest.typepad.com/vegetablesofinterest/2007/09/leather-britche.html
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Post by reed on Mar 15, 2016 9:05:41 GMT -5
"Over time, Best has learned things about beans most modern grocery store shoppers and summer gardeners can’t imagine: that green beans, full grown, have tender green pods while the beans inside are at maturity.
That surely is true with pretty much any bean. Those Ohio Pole that I raved about last year had tender pods even when almost to the point of starting to turn yellow. The pods were very thick and have an almost mushroom like texture. Never had anything like them before. I'm gonna try several kinds for leather britches this year and they will be at the top of the list. NT 1/2 and my brown greasy will also be there. I may start a whole new focus with beans. I like the idea of drying much more than freezing or canning. |
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Post by kyredneck on Oct 17, 2016 20:16:31 GMT -5
I grew 23 varieties of Appalachian beans this year in search of the best one for shuck beans. Well, I should say WE - me, my wife & two daughters because I crushed my heel on June 16 th, had to have surgery and am still convalescing on crutches.
My youngest, Leslie, and your's truly.
My wonderful wife, Tina.
Our oldest Daughter Jill.
Anyway, we've a lot of trial cooking and tasting before we have final results but so far the smaller greasy grit types are very flavorful shuck beans. I took a large pot to a church potluck yesterday, there were three other pots of green beans, and all the shuck beans were gone before it was over.
To avoid loose beans rolling around in the dryers we never broke the pods, only removed the strings.
I've more I want to show and tell but duty is calling me away right now.
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Post by kyredneck on Oct 17, 2016 21:39:22 GMT -5
"Over time, Best has learned things about beans most modern grocery store shoppers and summer gardeners can’t imagine: that green beans, full grown, have tender green pods while the beans inside are at maturity.
That surely is true with pretty much any bean. Those Ohio Pole that I raved about last year had tender pods even when almost to the point of starting to turn yellow. The pods were very thick and have an almost mushroom like texture. Never had anything like them before. I'm gonna try several kinds for leather britches this year and they will be at the top of the list. NT 1/2 and my brown greasy will also be there. I may start a whole new focus with beans. I like the idea of drying much more than freezing or canning. reed fyi I grew your Little Brown Greasy and it is one superb bean. Excellent flavor, performs well here, love the uniformity of the pods. Haven't tried the shuck beans yet though. I'm sure they'll be delicious too. Assuming I'll be back in the saddle by spring I intend to grow your Little White Greasy next year. |
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Post by reed on Oct 18, 2016 4:25:46 GMT -5
kyredneck, sorry to hear about your bad luck. Looks like you and your helpers had a pretty good season despite. My beans did awful this year, we didn't even can more than a few pints, never had a failure that bad with beans before, they grew and bloomed ok but didn't set pods. I didn't grow any greasys, experimented with some others instead. Maybe that was the problem, should have stuck with the tried and true. Did try one little batch of Ohio pole as shucky and as suspected they were tasty. You say the greasys were good that way, that's good to know.
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Post by kyredneck on Oct 18, 2016 10:24:47 GMT -5
reed "...never had a failure that bad with beans before, they grew and bloomed ok but didn't set pods.
I didn't grow any greasys, experimented with some others instead. Maybe that was the problem, should have stuck with the tried and true"
True story (not a fairy tale ), note the photo of Jill tilling above and the bean trellis (vines already produced and gone) behind her. I had a large sheet of black plastic covering the ground she's tilling in order to keep it weed free for fall planting and the bean vines were doing exactly the same thing as yours did, blooming but not setting pods, and the thought occurred to me the heat off the plastic could be the culprit and I was right. We rolled the plastic back away from the vines and they immediately started setting pods. This is sort of an anomaly to me because Bill Best grows his vines from under black plastic (I think, from photos I've seen), so I don't understand everything I know about this.
You think it was heat that caused your vines not to produce?
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Post by reed on Oct 18, 2016 19:42:34 GMT -5
Very interesting. I don't use plastic but I do wonder about the heat. This was the hottest year I ever remember. There were no super hot days, I think it only got to 95 maybe a day or two but it was consistently in the 88 to 93 or so range almost every single day, late April through mid Oct. It was 88 today. Other people in the area report the same problem with pole beans.
Not even Lima beans set pods, until last few weeks, they (the Limas) are hanging full right now so I might get some from them if frost holds off long enough. I thought they liked it hot. Only common beans that produced much at all was an accidental cross between Ideal Market and I think KY Wonder. Got a full quart of dry beans from them.
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According to Bill Best and others full beans, while pods still green before started turning color is ideal for shuck beans. Soup beans in a pod. 
