Mary Bell's Complete Dehydrator Cookbook

by Mary Bell

Far from being a fad, food dyhydrating is one of the most ancient, effective, and nutritous ways of preserving food. Now, at last, there is a book that teaches absolutely everything there is to know about using an electric food dyhydrator to dry foods at home -- and gives more than 100 foolproof recipes for scrumptious snacks and meals made from dried foods.

With this extraordinary book, you can learn how to cross junk food and expensive store-bought snacks off your family's shopping list -- and add to your cupboard homemade, preservative-free fruit leathers, candied apricots, beef (and fish) jerkies, "sun" dried tomotoes, corn chips, banana chips, and so much more!

Mary Bell gives specific techniques and instructions for preparing every kind of fruit (from apples to watermelon) and vegetable (from asparagus to zucchini). She also provides important shopping tips for buying an electric food dehydrator. The recipes for cooked meals (including mushroom soup, sloppy joes, pesto, and moist banana bread) will make this book a kitchen classic. And recipes for lightweight, filling trail snacks mean that the book will travel, too.

Additional chapters explain to how make herb seasonings, granolas, celery powder, cosmetics, dried fruit sugars, potpourri -- and even pet treats!

Food drying is an excellent way for gardeners to preserve their produce. It is a great way to make healthful snacks for the kids. It's perfect for the new wave of thrifty consumers who can't bear to spend dollars at health food stores for treats they cold make for pennies themselves. And food drying doesn't use chemicals or preservatives—so it's great for you and for the planet, too!

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

280 pages, Hardcover

First published May 23, 1994

Reviews

[Mischenko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mary Bell's Complete Dehydrator Cookbook is one of the only dehydrator books you'll need to get started dehydrating foods. It's jam-packed with recipes and instructions. Some of the book explains the history of drying foods, all about dehydrators, and the water content in specific foods. It's separated into two parts and is well organized.

This is a great starter book for beginners. I'd like to check out the revised book, but even though this one was published in 1994, it has the basic information needed and some great recipes including recipes that incorporate dried foods. I do wish the book contained photos.

4****

[Mary]

I've been on a long hunt for a healthy and easy way to incorporate vegetables into Bryce's snacks, esp on the go. Someone suggested gettng dried peas and green beans from the Wild Oats Market, saying that their child loves them as they're similar to a sweet chip. When I went to check it out they were $5 for a 2 cup package! I went home and priced out dehydrators online and that night purched one that should be arriving later this week. I can't wait to try this out!

[M · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were a few decent recipes and a ton of info on how to dry different foods. I mostly want to do herbs and simple things so this book was overkill for me.

[Nick Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ongoing read...

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good reference type book. If I had more time to get into it I'll probably check this back out of the library. Goes through techniques, tips for specific fruits and veggies and recipes.

[Esther · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very Useful Book on Dehydration! Out of all the books I read, this was by far the best one I saw on dehydrating fruits and veggies! Enjoy.

[Jacqueline M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This IS a comprehensive guide. Maybe far more comprehensive than I wanted or needed. Nearly half the book dedicated to how to choose a dehydrator, the basics of dehydrating, etc. This type of information is easily accessible online or quite frankly in the manual of your dehydrator. But to be fair this was probably not the case when this book was originally published so perhaps my real criticism there is that this is a bit dated. I will say that the chapter on backpacking foods was exactly the sort of thing I was looking for and that section gets five stars. The last third of the book again goes back to VERY basic information and tutorial on how to dry herbs and flowers. While some of the recipes looked interesting I'm not sure this is good for anyone who knows the basics of dehydration as a method of food preservation and is looking for more complicated ways to use their dried bounty.

[Scott Kahler · Rating 3 out of 5]

It had a few ideas and recipes that I used. Overall I have given up and using my dehydrator.

[Laura Ann Masura · Rating 3 out of 5]

good for how-to's but recipes are not so great.