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

What you need:

• 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:

Step 1. Wash and then peel ginger.

Step 2. Slice ginger into thin pieces approximately 1/8″ thick.

 Step 3. Lay ginger out on your dehydrator tray. For smaller pieces set them on a tray with a “Clean A Screen Tray” on top so that the pieces don’t fall through as they dehydrate. I put that tray below the tray with the bigger pieces in case any of the larger pieces fell through when dehydrating. 

Step 4. Dehydrate at 135F for approximately 3-4 hours or until ginger is completely dried and snaps when bent.

Here is the finished ginger! Look how much the pieces shrunk! Store in an airtight container or ziplock bag to preserve natural oils and flavors. 

Isn’t it pretty! Such a great way to save the leftover bits of fresh ginger once you are done with a recipe! The great thing about dehydrated food is that it has such a long shelf life that as long as it is stored properly it will last a really long time. 

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!

Tell me… Do you have a dehydrator? What are some of your favorite things to dehydrate?