How to Dry Foods: The Most Complete Guide to Drying Foods at Home

by Deanna DeLong

When you dry food, you're saving energy, nutrients, money, and, best of all, taste. This step-by-step guide to drying all kinds of fruits, vegetables, and nuts is also the most comprehensive reference available for methods of drying and home dehydrating equipment. The only book needed to master this age-old culinary tradition, How to Dry Foods

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Reference, Nonfiction, Food, Gardening

224 pages, Paperback

First published August 18, 1992

Reviews

[Molly Engle · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good introduction for drying foods.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

How to Dry Foods by Deanna DeLong is part cookbook and part explanation of the whys and hows behind drying food. The author has spent over twenty years practicing, writing, and teaching about food dehydration, so she's able to answer all of the questions I've been storing up as I start to consider drying more of our winter stores.

I feel obliged to tell you the few flaws in the book, though:

* There are ads for a single brand of dehydrator scattered throughout. I actually wouldn't have minded seeing her reviews of several different brands, but this felt more like product placement.
* She's a big fan of using sulfur to treat your fruit before dehydrating it and barely touches on alternative methods of pretreating. Some folks recommend Making & Using Dried Foods by Phyllis Hobson as a more well-rounded alternative in that department, although I haven't read it yet.

That said, I'm a big fan of charts that sum up lots of information in a small space, and DeLong's charts are probably worth the entire price of the book. I actually bought an e-copy to have on hand as I experiment with drying this summer, and I tend to only buy a few books per year, so, yes, I recommend it.

[Micah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was probably more info. than I needed. I don't think I am going to go through the sulfuring process any time soon. But there is great info. on preserving all the fruit you just spent so much time to dry. And the fruit leather recepies are awesome.

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I need a dehydrator so I can use this again!

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Drying food is the best way to preserve food as it loses the least amount of nutrition. This is a very good reference and recipe book for how-to, what, and why. I'd like to own this.