Preserving MI Harvest - Dehydrating Produce and Herbs
Print
EmailFebruary 28, 2025
More Info
Discover how to dehydrate produce, herbs, and fruit leathers by learning about the different methods and resources for dehydrating.
The 2025 MI Ag Ideas to Grow With conference was held virtually, February 24 - March 7, 2024. This two-week program encompassed many aspects of the agricultural industry and offered a full array of educational sessions for farmers and homeowners interested in food production and other agricultural endeavors. More information can be found at: https://www.canr.msu.edu/miagideas/
Video Transcript
Welcome to MI Ag Ideas to Grow With. We want to start off this morning by thanking our sponsor AgriStrategies, LLC. We do thank them for their sponsorship for the MI Ag Ideas to Grow With Virtual Conference happening this week and also through next week. So please continue to check out the website more sessions that you could attend next week as well. All right. Well, this morning, the session we are going to be doing is called the Guide to dehydrating. I am Laurie Messing. I'm a food safety extension educator for MSU Extension. I welcome you again to MI Ag Ideas to Grow With and to our session this morning, part of our preserving my harvest sessions guide to dehydrating. Today we're going to review the process for preserving food by dehydration. The drying process dehydration removes moisture from food. Without moisture, the bacteria, yeast and molds cannot grow and spoil food. However, this process does not heat the food, so if there are pathogens present, they will not be killed. Dehydration also slows down the enzyme action, but it's not completely stopped. There are several other benefits to dehydrating produce and herbs. Some of those include the food becomes smaller and lighter than before it was dehydrated. It takes up less space in your pantry, or cupboard. There's no added sodium or sugar, so you can control those ingredients of salt and sugar, which many people preserve food for that reason to control the ingredients in the product. Now the optimum temperature for drying foods is 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Higher temperatures will cook the food instead of drying it. Drying at higher temperatures can also harden the food on the outside, but will remain moist on the inside. This is called case hardening. Case hardened food will eventually mold, so you will not end up with a good product. I do want to share with you, I will send you a follow up email later today after this session with a variety of resources. So don't feel like you have to take a lot of extra notes. There's a few fact sheets we'll send you, and the Colorado State University Extension programming has two really great fact sheets on drying fruits and drying vegetables and we'll go through and give you lots of recommendations how long the amount of hours, the amount of time it may take for each product. Again, I will send that to you via email after the session. If you do want to go ahead and put your email in the chat, if you would like to receive that, I can just make sure I've got everyone's email and we'll send that follow up information out this afternoon. When it comes to drying, there are several methods for drying foods. First, we have sun drying. Sun drying involves developing a solar dehydrator. The sun is the heat source for drying, the solar dehydrator uses either aluminum foil or glass to reflect that sun temperature and thereby increases the temperature 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, in high humid regions, though, like we have here in Michigan, it's hard to dry using the sun and the food can and often does mold. Sun drying is not a recommended method here in Michigan. Vine drying is another outside technique. This allows the food to dry on the vine. A variety of beans can be left on plants in the garden to dry until the seeds rattle inside the pods. With sun dried fruits and vine dried beans, it is necessary to kill insects and their eggs. There are two techniques that can do this for pasteurization. The freezer method involves putting the food in plastic bags and sealing them and then leaving the bags in your freezer below zero degrees for 48 hours or longer. Or the oven method includes putting the food in a single layer on a tray and then bake it in the oven at 160 degrees for at least 30 minutes. The third type of drying is food dehydrators, and this is a very popular method. There are small electrical appliances for drying food indoors. We will talk about a variety of these in just a moment. There is an electrical element that creates the heat and a fan which creates air movement. Dehydrators are designed to dry foods quickly at 140 degrees Fahrenheit, and we will talk about two different types of those shortly. We also have the method of oven drying. This is okay for the occasional meat jerkis, fruit leathers, or fruit chips and herbs, we'll discuss this later as well. Then lastly, room drying can be done inside using a well ventilated room. A good example might be an attic, a spare room, or a screened in porch. Things like herbs, hot peppers and nuts with shells can be room dried. Just to give you an idea of the different types, like we said, sun drying does not work well in Michigan, but the other four options may work for you. Let's start off with looking at some of our dehydrators. Electric dehydrators can vary in cost and style, there are two different types. The first one is a box style dehydrator. This has the fan blowing the air across the food from the back of the device. So you can see that in the photo on the bottom left. The other is a circular style. This has the fan on the top blowing downward. On the left there, you can see a portion of the example of the circular and we'll see again some more pictures. But just to give you an idea what the two options are, let's talk more about this box horizontal airflow dehydrator. The box style dehydrator has the heating element and fan located on the side or the back of the device. It's better to dry one food at a time with this model. Although this style does allow different types of food to be dried at the same time. That's because with this type, the air moves across the food. There's less of a chance of flavors mixing because there's equal heat distribution and the trays do not have to be rotated. Okay. So some of you might have this type of horizontal dehydrator or if you're looking to purchase one, those are some features related to this type of dehydrator. If you are aiming to do some tomatoes, chips on the bottom layer, peppers, different things, this one is better for using or for doing different types at the same time because again, with the way the heat and the fan blows there is less chance of those flavors mixing. The vertical air flow dehydrator, this more circular design has a vertical airflow. The fan and the heating element are located on top of the device with the dry air moving downward. Again, multiple layers inside this dehydrator with the dry air moving downward could mix flavors if you have different foods on each tray. Again, it's better to do one type of food at a time in this type of dehydrator. Let's talk about some things we can dehydrate, how we might go about doing that. Again, I'll send you some resources with all the ins and outs. Preparing fruits for drying, fruit is one item that is really easily dehydrated. To start, always select top quality fruits at the peak of flavor because drying will not improve the flavor. Remember with fruits, especially, dehydrating will concentrate that natural sugar content in fruit. You'll want to keep that in mind when you go to utilize that dehydrated product, it'll be a very concentrated flavor and can seem sugary when in actuality. It is the natural sugar, but it's been concentrated. You'll want to rinse the fruit, but don't soak it in water. Rinse to remove any dirt or pathogens. Remove the stems, pit seeds, whatever the case might be. With all dehydrating, you're going to want to slice into thin uniform pieces. The drying takes place faster and again at a pretty even rate. You don't want to have thicker slices and thinner slices. Everything won't dry at the same pace. One tip we always recommend when you are preparing fruits and veggies for drying is to use a mandolin. That way you can again have that uniformity, that consistency for slicing the pieces that you're going to dehydrate. Now, you do have the option with some fruits to leave them whole. Again, you can follow the specific directions for that. You also have the option to pre treat fruits using an ascorbic acid solution or a mixture which will prevent fruits from darkening. If you do any freezing, especially and even with canning, you have the option with those lighter skin fruits like peaches or pears or apples. You have the option to use a pretreating solution. To prevent darkening, that's optional definitely something you can think about and you can play around with. Let's see. So when you use that pre treating option for some fruits, it might actually help speed up the drying, dehydrating process. Again, you'll have to keep that in mind as well. You can see a picture on the screen there of one of the ascorbic acid type solutions you can purchase in stores. Normally where you get your preservation, your jars, your lids, that sort of thing, might not be as easy to find right now in stores here in Michigan, since we're not really in harvest and preservation season, but you could definitely find it online as well if you don't have it in a local store. Consider that many fruits can be dehydrated and this is just a small list. This is by no means all encompassing. I'm just checking the comments here. I don't want to miss any questions. So they have the secular one. Some fruits, dry really great. Apples, cherries, figs, peaches, pears are examples of things that do dry well, plums, pineapple, grapes, you can see the list on the screen. Now, there are a few fruits that may result in more of a poorer quality and are not recommended to be dried. Things like avocados and blackberries and cantaloupe, oranges, rhubarb, and watermelon. A lot of those have quite a high moisture content, and so that can make it challenging. And you'll find that you have a hard time getting them to that consistency we need for proper dehydration to prevent mold from occurring when we store them. There's many fruits you can dehydrate. Some may not turn out as well. You could certainly try it and see what happens, but again, you're going to find that some would requires so many extra hours in the dehydrator and still not get you the product consistency that you would like. There are many variables to consider when you are dehydrating produce. The relative humidity will affect how quickly produce will dry. The moisture in the produce like I was just talking about, the juiciness of the produce will affect the drying time. How thick you slice the produce will affect it as well. As I said, thin slices will dry quicker than chunks will. Um, the dehydrators vary in how and how well the air circulates around the produce. We do definitely recommend that you be familiar with the manufacturer's instructions or the type of dehydrator you are using. So make sure you are using it according to their instructions. Then don't overfill the dehydrator. That can reduce or even cut off the air circulation inside of it. Again, as we said, one type, it's probably better to only do one type of produce at a time with that horizontal I'm sorry, the circular dehydrator. If you decide to try and do more than one produce at a time on those different um, racks, then that may work better in the horizontal box dehydrator. Especially if you're mixing herbs and produce. Again, as you can imagine, you don't want those flavors mixing, as well as for example, apples and basil, apple slices and basil. They're not good drying companions because apples are juicier and they would take longer to dehydrate. Then again, you might have the mixing of the aromas and flavors as well. One thing to consider too is, we think about what we can do in our homes with a home dehydrator. Again, it's going to be different than what you can purchase in stores. So just keep that in mind, you know, I know you see things like pineapple chunks dried and you can purchase those commercially or lots of other products. But again, remember that, you know, commercially, those products are being done differently than what we're able to do in our homes with these home dehydrators. So we can't always get things exactly like we can from the store. Fruits such as grapes and prunes, small plums, cherries, figs, and firm berries like a blueberry, they have tough skin. To allow the moisture to evaporate, you actually need to what we call crack or check the skins before drying the whole fruits. This can be done by dipping the fruit in briskly boiling water for just 30-60 seconds and then dipping it in very cold water. Um, and then before putting them on the dehydrator tray, drain them on absorbent towels. So you're just kind of getting a little boost for those types of fruit to get the skins, cracked just a bit, so that way they dry better and the moisture will come out. Arrange the fruit on the drying trays, always single layer, and then dry until hard. With blueberries, they actually recommend poking holes in the skin as well because they do have a very tough skin. Again, I'll send you those fact sheets from Colorado, one of our partner Extension organizations, and they have all the directions you'll need. Apples are a really popular fruit preserved by dehydrating. If you wanted to preserve apples by dehydration, start by washing the apples, coring them, slicing them. You can choose to leave the skins on or off. Then again, use that mandolin to get them in a really nice thin even slices. Many people do pre treat the apples with an ascorbic acid solution to prevent browning. Go ahead and do that if you choose. Then if you slice the fruit about an eighth of an inch thick, they will take about 6 hours to dry depending on the dehydrator you're using. And then you can add cinnamon or cinnamon sugar to flavor your apple chips once they're dehydrated, they can be a great snack, as you can imagine. Another example here of dehydrating berries. We want to select firm and ripe berries and rinse them with water. You can leave whole or you can cut the berries in half. If you leave them whole, this is when you're going to want to do the cracking we just talked about. Dip them in boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds, and then remove and drain them well. Always arrange them in that single layer. Um, and then dry them until hard and the berries will rattle when shaken on the tray. Let me see if I see any questions coming up. Grapes were not on the list for cracking the skin. It certainly isn't going to hurt to do that, but that was not on the initial list. So when I send out the fact sheet from Colorado, you can take a peek at the recommendations for grapes. I don't unfortunately have all those memories off the top of my head, but they were not on that initial list, so Peaches, another tasty fruit to preserve using a hydrator might be peaches. Select firm ripe peaches, wash and peel them. Cut the peaches in half to remove the pit, and then you can cut them into quarters or slices if desired or as desired. Often with peaches, they are dipped in that ascorbic acid solution for 10 minutes and then drained and then arrange them in a single layer on the tray with the pit side up, where the pit was touching the skin, have that side go up. And then turn them over when the juice on the peaches visibly disappears. Dry them until leathery and somewhat pliable. These I don't have the amount of time listed here on this one, but they will take some time in the dehydrator. That's one thing to keep in mind. Dehydrating is a great method for preserving. The prep is usually not too long, but the drying time is going to take some time, so it's not going to happen super quick. After you dry fruits, the dried fruit needs to be completely cooled before packaging and you'll want to test for dryness to prevent microbial growth and any spoilage. The dried fruit should be leathery and pliable. To test for dryness, remove a few pieces, let them cool to room temperature. And then when the fruit is still warm or hot, fruits will appear more soft, moist, and pliable than they actually are. Squeeze a handful of the fruit. If no moisture is left on your hand and the pieces spring apart when released, they are dry. And then pack the cooled dried food into small amounts. Keep in mind, every time you open a package of dried fruit, the fruit is exposed to moisture in the air and may absorb some of it, which could speed up your spolage. Think about packing in maybe small amounts. You can pack your dried fruits in glass jars, preferably dark or in moisture and vapor resistant freezer containers, boxes or bags, and then label them and date them as we always recommend and be sure to tightly seal containers to prevent that reabsorption of moisture. Cool them and store them in a cool dry, dark area or in the refrigerator or freezer. If properly stored, dried fruits could keep well for six to 12 months. And if you see any signs of odor off odors or signs of mold, here we would definitely need to discard that as well. Yes, dried fruit can be frozen. Yeah. You can do that. Trying to keep up on the notes here while we're rolling along. Let's move into talking a little bit about vegetables. Very popular for dehydration are vegetables. Just a short list here. There's obviously other things you can dehydrate as well, but as you can see, quite a variety of vegetables are good candidates for dehydration. Like with fruit, there are some vegetables that are not recommended because they produce an undesirable product. Those that are not recommended include broccoli, cauliflower, celery, kale, radishes, just to name a few. Again, when I send you that fact sheet, those two fact sheets that one on fruits and one on veggies, they'll go through all kinds of fruits and veggies, pretty much anything you can think of and let you know if they are or are not recommended and give the instructions. But just to name a few there, that again won't give you the best product and, um, might not bother wasting your time doing those. When we prepare vegetables for drying, we also want to start with high quality vegetables and dry them right after harvesting them. The drying time will affect the tenderness of the product, so we want to speed up the drying process by using small uniformly cut pieces. Again, using the mandolin like we talked about. Vegetables are lower acid than fruits, dry vegetables until they are brittle or crisp. Some properly dried vegetables would actually shatter if you hit them with a hammer. Now one thing to know about drying vegetables is that blanching is necessary for most vegetables before you dry them. Onions though, and green peppers and mushrooms do not have to be blanched before drying, but the majority of the rest of them do. I'll give an example. Remember blanching means to put the product in boiling hot water for a short amount of time and then put it directly into ice cold water for that same amount of time. That is recommended with many vegetables before we dehydrate them. So as an example with asparagus, hopefully we're moving towards spring here. I guess we'll see in the next few weeks, but asparagus is one of our first products here in Michigan. Wash it thoroughly. They recommend to halve the spears if they're large. Blanch them for four to 5 minutes in boiling hot water and then directly into ice cold water for four to 5 minutes as well. Then you want to remove the moisture and pat dry. Then they would dry for anywhere 6-10 hours at 140 degrees in your dehydrator. Um, the consistency you're looking for should be leathery to brittle with those asparagus. So just one example of blanching the veggies and then dehydrating them. Okay. So with tomatoes, you could do tomato chips. They're sweet and tasty. Again, about an eighth inch thick is ideal for slicing, whether it's fruits or vegetables and always place in a single layer. Tomatoes will take some time at 140 degrees. It could range 6-18 hours. So sometimes people will start their dehydrator and let it go overnight. That could be an option. Or if you're home during the day, you could certainly do it. Starting in the morning and let it go all day until it's ready. with vegetables, we want to package them the same way as fruit. Keep in mind when you're using dried vegetables, one cup of dried vegetables, let's say you're going to put it into a soup. One cup of dried vegetables reconstitutes to about two cups. So just keep that in mind when you're packaging, if you're trying to package according to recipes that you might want to use the products for. To rehydrate and cook leafy or tender vegetables like a spinach, cabbage, tomatoes, things like that, cover them with hot water and simmer until they reach the desired tenderness. Now, vegetables like carrots or green beans or peas, corn, you'll start by covering them with cold water and soaking 30 to 90 minutes or cover with boiling water and soaked 20-60 minutes. After soaking those vegetables, then you're going to simmer them until they're tender. Remember, dehydrated vegetables and even fruits, they do have a different texture than fresh or frozen. Dehydrated vegetables, especially are great ingredients for soups or casseroles or sauces or stews. They work really well when it comes to utilizing them in that capacity. Again, we would store in a cool dry dark area, store in a moisture and vapor resistant containers. Containers are tightly closed. Again, the more you open those, the more chance that those dried vegetables will take on extra moisture and could lead to spoilage quicker than you might want. So keep that in mind when you're choosing your storage containers and when you're thinking about how much to put into each container as well. You can also use your dehydrator to make your own spices. Dehydrated chilies can easily be turned into pepper flakes. So you'd start by washing your chilies and pat them dry, slice them. Again, uniformly with a mandolin, preferably place them on your dehydrator tray and then dry until those chilies are easy to break. You can also use an oven to dry the chili peppers, set the oven to 200 degrees and check the chilies frequently for dryness. This might take anywhere 3-6 hours. After they're dehydrated, you can use a food processor to grind those dried chili peppers and make your own crush pepper flakes, or you could use a blender to turn them into a powder if you preserve. Prefer, I'm sorry, not preserve. You could also use this concept to make your own garlic powder. Start by peeling and chopping your garlic cloves. No other pre treatment is needed, but do keep in mind, you're going to have quite an odor while it's dehydrating. Garlic is estimated to dry in your dehydrator in about six to 8 hours, and then you can grind your dehydrated garlic and make your own garlic powder. That can be another way to utilize some of those products. Herbs are also easily dried and can be used year round. Things like sage and thyme and summer savory, dill and parsley are really easy to dry. Basil, tarragon, and mince may mold and discolor if they're not dried quickly. When we think about drying herbs, harvest your herb leaves or whole stems just before their flowers bloom. This ensures that the herbs will have reached full flavor. Gather herbs in the early morning so they don't wilt in the heat and dryness of the day. And then rinse the herbs in cool water, gently shake them to remove any excess moisture and discard any bruised or soiled leaves. Now with herbs, when they are crispy and dry, you know that they are at the right consistency and you can package them for storage, and you can grind them into a fine powder or you can leave them whole. With herbs, you can do them on a dehydrator. In a minute, we'll see how you can hang them to dry as well, the vine drying idea. Place the dried herbs into air tight containers again that are labeled and dated and then store them in a cool dry, dark place. See if any questions here quick. Someone's asking about drying the garlic in the oven. I'm sure you can. I don't have that temperature in front of me right at the moment, but on that fact sheet from Colorado State, it will definitely have that information as well. Maybe I can take a quick peek here at the end after presenting here and find that and I can show you as well. Let's see here. All right. Other tips with herbs, sturdier herbs like rosemary, sage, thyme, and parsley are actually easiest to dry without a dehydrator. Tie them into small bundles and just hang them to air dry and do that outdoors if possible. However, they will retain their color and flavor as well if they are dried indoors. So that's a great an easy way to dry. Those sturdier herbs. The herbs with more tender leaves or with seeds, place them inside a paper bag to dry, only do small bunches at a time and place holes in the sides of the bags. That's another tip there. Place where air currents will circulate through the bag. Any leaves and seeds that fall off will be caught in the bottom of the bag, so this can protect them as well. So it's another consideration for you. If you don't have a dehydrator, you can really easily, use that air drying technique for herbs. Oven drying is another method for dehydrating herbs, so this is great for things like mint or sage or bay leaf when you're drying the leaves separately. In areas of high humidity, this will work better than air drying the whole stems. Lay the leaves on a paper towel without allowing leaves to touch so you want them separated. Cover with another paper towel and another layer of leaves. Five layers may actually be done at one time and dry in a very cool oven. The oven light of an electric range or the pilot light of a gas range furnishes enough heat for overnight drying the leaves will also I'm sorry, the leaves will dry flat and retain a good color. That's another method you could utilize if you don't have a dehydrator as well. Now, in the dehydrator for our herbs, it is fast and easy because temperatures and air circulation can be controlled. You'd want to start by preheating the dehydrator to about 95 to 115 degrees. If you're in an area with higher humidity, you might need to go up to 125 degrees. Want to rinse your herbs under cool water first, running water, shake them to remove any excess moisture and then in a single layer on the dehydrator tray, place the herbs. Drying times for herbs vary from only one to 4 hours. You'll have to check them periodically. Herbs are dry when they crumble and the stems break when bent. You can again also check those fact sheets for more specific information on different types of products and recommendations for the time frame. But what you might want to do, again, is depending on the method you use, keep a little log yourself of how long things take um, knowing that it's not always going to be exactly the same because it'll depend on the thickness of the product, it'll depend on the quality of the product itself, the juiciness of fruits, things like that, that could vary from batch to batch. But if you plan to do a lot of dehydrating, it's probably not a bad idea to keep a little running log and help you have a better handle in your conditions and your humidity, how things dehydrate, how long they take. Now microwave drying is also a quick and easy method to dry small amounts of herbs. You can lay a single layer of herbs of the clean dry leaves of herbs between dry paper towels, excuse me, and place them in the microwave for one to 2 minutes on high power. The drying will vary with the moisture content and the wattage of your microwave. Let the leaves cool and if they're not brittle, reheat it for another 30 seconds, and then retest it again. Repeat as needed. The thicker leaved herbs may need to be air dried for several days before microwaving. Now, the microwave option is only for herbs. It is not recommended to do this for fruits and vegetables. Some examples when we talked about some of the equivalents, remember that a quarter teaspoon of powdered equals one teaspoon of dried and one teaspoon of dried equals two teaspoons of fresh. This is just an approximate guide when you're using dried or powdered herbs for substitutions in your recipes. Okay. Lastly, we want to just share another fun thing you could do and prepare in your dehydrator. You could make fruit leathers. Fruit roll up type things you might see in the grocery stores commercially made, you can use your dehydrator to make fruit leathers. Here's an example of an apple leather. There's many other types you could make with different types of fruits and even pumpkin. We'll send you this information as well. But start with high quality fruits and rinse them, then core and quarter the apples. Cook the apples until they're soft and then mix in a blender until smooth. What's nice about this is you can flavor it how you like. You could add honey, you could add cinnamon, you could add nutmeg. You could give it your own flavor profile. If you are using a light colored fruit like apples here, again, the recommendation with some ascorbic acid to prevent browning and darkening is recommended. That's a personal choice. This is just one example of leather. You could use pumpkins, strawberries, all kinds of other fruits as well. After you have your mixture all prepared, you're going to spoon that almost look like little pancakes, thin layers onto your drying trays and drying sheets, and they will take about six to 8 hours in the dehydrator at 140 degrees Fahrenheit. You can see how they look and going onto the dehydrator and how they come out, again, look like little mini little pancakes. Once they're dried and still warm, peel the leather off the plastic wrap. And then you can roll them up and they will keep for one month at room temperature, or you could freeze these fruit leather wraps up to one year. What a great way to use up some extra produce you might have, great fun snacks and lunch box and breakfast foods. Again, you can control the sugar, you can control the flavoring. So um, it definitely would be a great way to utilize some of that. We'll get to the rest of the questions here in just a minute. I just want to briefly remind and share with you if you're not familiar. When we do any of our home food preservation sessions through MSU Extension, one of the main things we always share and always highly encourage is only using research based recipes that are tested and we know are safe. I'll share these resources with you in the email as well. But we have the National Center for Home Food Preservation based out of the University of Georgia Eextension. We also recommend the USDA's guide to complete home canning, so easy to preserve. There's lots of dehydrating information in that book as well, I believe, the New Ball Blue Book, which was actually updated in 2024. About a year ago, it was released in I think it was March of 2024 or February. But we would highly recommend for any of your preservation, you use all these research based recipes and methods and I'll share those and all the links with you as well. I'll also share our Michigan Fresh fact sheets. We have one about dehydrating produce. We have one on herbs. Then as I mentioned, the Colorado State University Extension has two really great documents, one on drying herbs, I'm sorry, one on drying fruits and one on drying vegetables that walk you through all the time frames and the recommended. Again, they're recommended. Again, might take a little bit. They usually give a range, 4-6 hours, 6-8 hours. You'll see that a lot because it's not an exact science. We'll share that as well. All right, let me see what questions we have here. Some of them I answered, but I know there's a couple more out there. Do I have to sterilize the glass jars before storing? You know, it wouldn't hurt, definitely wouldn't hurt. I don't know that they necessarily require that, but it certainly wouldn't hurt to do that before you decide to store, especially if you plan to store it, you know, more than short term as well. It's a good question. Are all of these preserved items able to sell at Farmers Markets under Cottage food law? That's another great question. You are able to sell dehydrated fruits and vegetables as part of the cottage food law. You can also sell home canned jams and jellies that are made from fruit, only fruit jams and fruit jellies. Otherwise, everything else preserved. You can do freeze dried products as well, but any other canned or frozen items would have to be done with a commercial food license. So yes, to dehydrated fruits, yes, to dehydrated vegetables, yes, to fruit jams, yes to fruit jellies and yes, to freeze drying. Those are all acceptable under cottage food. And if you are interested, we do have cottage food sessions every month, once or twice a month. And we have a fact sheet as well that lists everything you can and cannot sell. If you'd like that information, Lucy, when I send the email out with these resources from this class, just go ahead and respond back to me and I can share that information with you as well. Good question. I dehydrated basil leaves last year and they didn't get crisp. What did I do wrong? I guess not knowing how you dehydrated them, were they done in the oven or the microwave or did you hang them? Normally, the thing that people make mistakes on the most is just not giving it enough time, they rush through and it's not completely dry when they decide, okay, I'm done and I'm going to store it. You really just have to take time and make sure it is very crisp and very brittle. Um otherwise, Virginia, feel free to email me I'm going to put a resource up on the screen too. You always called the hotline, but someone else is interested in cottage food. Maybe what I'll do is I will put the cottage food information in the email I send to all of you. That way, if anyone else is interested, you can take a peek at that as well. Let's see here. I have dehydrator that has a heating element and no fan it relies on convection. Is it safe? I've only used it for herbs. I guess is it an older unit, I'm wondering? Let's see. Adjustment and no fan. You don't know what temperature it's at or anything. It's at least 30-years-old. Yeah, that's hard to tell because dehydrators have come a long way. The newer ones that are out now do work a bit differently. As far as safety goes, if you're getting items in the products to that level of brittleness, dryness, leathery, pliable. You know, it should be okay, but I don't know my thought would be if you plan to do or wanting to do a lot more, excuse me, with dehydration, it might not be a bad idea to invest in one of the newer models or use one of the different methods if you're not feeling completely confident. Probably for herbs, it's fine. Those are pretty low key when it comes to dehydration, pretty easy. But yeah, I guess that would be my initial thought on that one. All right, what else did we have in? Let's see if we got everything else. Okay, a couple of questions in the chat. Talked about that. Do you need to list the pre treatment item on your ingredients label for cottage food? Not a bad idea. They do want you to include all the ingredients. So probably is a good idea that way in case someone who was purchasing from you, if they had any allergens or specific concerns. It's probably a good idea to do that, Colleen. You could check with your MDARD inspector, and I can share that phone number in the email as well for clarification, but not a bad idea. I do want all the ingredients. Does evaporating using a machine provide a longer shelf life than dehydrating? That's a really good question. I'm not sure on that. We don't have much information or share information on that method of evaporating. What I could do, I'm going to take your question and I'll share it with one of our specialists on campus and I will get an answer back to you on that one. I will get back to you with that one here in a day or two. How long do herbs retain their flavor once dried? Herbs can be used for, um, if they're properly stored and kept tightly sealed and they're not being opened constantly again where that moisture can come back in and potentially start to cause issue. Herbs can be utilized for a number of months. Um, and if you want to I'll check the fact sheet here in a minute for the exact amount of time, but I think they said anywhere 6-12 months. Can you use parchment paper instead of plastic wrap for fruit leathers? So I'm thinking you mean after they are done and you're rolling them. And yeah, that should be fine as well if you choose to use that. Again, depending on how long you plan to store them for, will they be eaten more quickly? You can think about what mechanism for storage. But plastic wrap was just one option. So yeah, you can do what you choose there for sure. All right on the screen, we've appreciated being part of Michigan or MI Ag Ideas to Grow With, but we do also offer preservation classes every Thursday online. Every week is a different topic. You can see yesterday we talked about preserving soups and chilies. Next week, we're doing one about maple syrup. We did one the other day through MI Ag Ideas to Grow With on maple syrup and honey, but next week we'll get into Maple Syrup again. Just for your information, you can scan that QR code and join us for any of these free classes and I'll share this information in the follow up too. And we have our food safety hotline, which is a way to reach out and ask questions or ask extension is a way to email questions if it's after in the evening or on the weekends and we aren't available. I'll share all these resources in the follow up with you as well. And please follow us on Facebook. If you'd like to stay up to date on everything, food safety with information and videos and upcoming classes and tips and food recalls, just a great way to stay current and what's going on and make sure we are all doing the best we can at keeping our food safe. Follow us at think food safety. So, again, thank you for joining this morning. Lots of great questions. I invite you and encourage you to join other classes we offer through our MSU Extension Food Safety team and follow our Facebook page, use our hotline, call with questions. We are happy to help in whatever capacity we can and hope to have you join us for additional programs in the future. And we will wrap up for this morning, so have a wonderful day.
