In recent years, dehydrated techniques have come a long way. In the older techniques, close to 30% of moisture is still left after dehydration. So, even the storage is very poor in that case. Storage life gradually increased when the moisture level of the dehydrated product is reduced to 2%-3%.
After practicing and experimenting many dehydration techniques on vegetables, few techniques which give out the best dehydrated products out which produce minimum moisture content, high storage life, unchanged flavor etc. are taken into consideration for the dehydration process.
Flavor
Dehydrated vegetables won't taste the same as they do when they are fresh. This taste isn't bad but it is slightly different from the real taste of the vegetables. Dehydrated vegetables won't have a strong flavor as fresh food have. It is made tasty after adding salt, pepper, butter etc. which sometimes gives a better taste than the canned vegetables.
Opened cans
Wet foods are stored in refrigerators since they will spoil if they are kept out and exposed to atmosphere. But dehydrated foods don't get spoiled even if they are kept out. It is not necessary to keep them in a refrigerator. If the moisture content is more than 15%-30%, then bacteria starts growing.
In dehydrated vegetables, the moisture content is less than that. Unless the environment is humid, no concern is needed.
In high humidity and temperatures, care must be taken for storage. After the metal lid is removed with a can opener, a plastic lid is placed. Sometimes even if the lids are not air tight, the dry climate protects the dehydrated foods for sometime. It is suggested to keep the dehydrated foods in another can in case of a humid climate. Tupperware lids provide better protection than the plastic ones.
Low weight
It is observed that, dehydrated vegetables increase in weight on rehydration. Their weight is increased nearly 3 ¼ times to 6 times. This means that the dehydrated vegetables have very low weight.
Low volume
It is observed that the volume of food items on rehydration increases by 2 to 3.5 times. This shows that the volume of dehydrated vegetables is low.
Preparation technique/time: the time taken to prepare food with dehydrated items will not vary much from the time taken to prepare food with fresh foods. Sometimes dehydrated items take more time and sometimes dehydrated items take less time compared to the fresh ones.
Nutrition
Compared to the frozen and canned foods, dehydrated vegetables and foods retain more nutrients.
Waste
Before and after the dehydration process, food remains the same. There's nothing that is going to be wasted since all the unnecessary things will be trimmed before the dehydration process starts.
Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed this article. Keep visiting for more.
Reference
