Last summer I took a food preservation class and ever since I’ve been pining over a dehydrator. My parents had a gigantic one when I was a kid, it was almost the size of a refrigerator, and I remember the smell of plums, apples and nectarines dehydrating during the summer months. When The Sisser asked me what I wanted for Christmas this year the first thing that came to mind was a dehydrator. I was so excited to wake up on Christmas morning and find the Nesco Professional Food Dehydrator under the Christmas Tree.
The minute I got home from my parent’s house I started playing with dehydrating dehydrating a bunch of herbs and making zucchini chips! I can’t wait for the summer to roll around so that I can dehydrate all of the fresh, local produce!
Last week I went to tea with a client and had the most delicious spice tea. I was determined to reproduce it at home (look for a post coming soon) but one of the tea ingredients is ginger. I would love to give my special blend out for gifts so fresh ginger won’t do and powdered ginger is too fine to put in a tea diffuser so I decided to dehydrate my own ginger for in the tea.
Dehydrating ginger wasn’t something that we discussed in the food preservation class, but with the basic skills I learned dehydrating the ginger came as second nature. It never would have been something that I considered doing a year ago before my class, so I decided to share this idea with you and to continue sharing kitchen basics in my new “Back To Basics” series.
How To Dehydrate Ginger
- 1 (or more) large knobs of ginger
- A dehydrator (I love this one)
- A knife
- A cutting board (I use the Preserve Eco-Friendly Cutting Board as the cutting board for my fruits and things like ginger)
- A peeler (The one in the picture is the Kitchen Aid Euro Classic Peeler)
Instructions:
What can you use dehydrated ginger for? Tea, steeping with hot water, honey and lemon when you have a cold, adding flavor to broth and soups, grinding up for baking… it can even be used in detox baths!
Please subscribe to my newsletter and/or check back next week when I teach you how to turn these delicious bits of curly goodness into a spiced tea, it would be perfect for a chai tea base!
Carly @ Dehydrator Living says
Dehydrators are so Awesome! The options are unlimited when it comes to making healthy food in them. I can’t get enough of kale chips, so I enjoy experimenting with all sorts of kale chips recipes. And the kids love them too. But I also enjoy other dehydrator recipes like pumpkin fruit leathers, spicy buffalo cauliflower popcorn, dried persimmons, mushrooms and the list can go on.
Pat says
I make pineapple chips that melt in your mouth. Very ripe fresh pineapple, cleaned and cored. Cut into chunks and run through a blender until it is like puree. Using teflon sheets or plastic wrap on your trays Pour the puree onto the trays. Shake it to thin it out to about 1/8th inch. Dehydrate 8 to 12 hours until it is crisp. Break into pieces and enjoy.
Wendy says
I just made some spiced tea which I drank a lot when I lived in East Africa and have brought the habit home to the UK – as I had no fresh ginger I had to use ground ginger – but while waiting for the spices to infuse I had exactly the same thought as you – “wouldn’t it be lovely to make spiced tea bags” so searched for dried ginger online – saw it was pretty expensive, and then your post about dehydrating! … I haven’t got a dehydrator yet but it is on my list of things I need for my kitchen! … Thank you for the information and lovely to meet a fellow spiced tea fan! 🙂
Dave says
No need to peel. Wash, run it through a mandolin, dry at 150 for 2 – 3 hours (check after 2), grind the dried ginger, then run it through a sieve (you know like a flour sifter), throw away the dried skin and big chunks..