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food preservation

How to make dried food powders?

Joseph Lofthouse

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posted 10 years ago

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I love to dehydrate things like vegetables and mushrooms. They'd be more convenient to me if I could turn them into powders so that I could easily add the powders to soups, or teas, or casseroles.

However, I run into a problem of not having the proper equipment to grind them...

I have a flour mill that does great with grains, but it doesn't work well with things like dried squash or dried garlic that have more sugar in them. It doesn't do well with anything that is very fibrous.

The meat grinder didn't work because it just augered more and more stuff into the barrel until it bent the blades.

The blender just tosses huge chunks of dried vegetable around and around.

The spice grinder blade broke rather than chop up chunks of dried garlic.

The holes in the coffe grinder are too small to handle chunks of dried squash, and it gets overloaded with more fibrous things like Turkey Tail mushrooms.

A mortor and Pestle, or a metate pretty much suck. They mostly just squish the squash chunks and flatten them out...

Is there a technique that I am missing? What would the proper equipment look like to make garlic powder out of dehydrated garlic? Or squash flour out of dehydrated squash?

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Dan Boone

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posted 10 years ago

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I am just starting to experiment with this, and if I have enough surplus garlic to play with this year, it will be the first such surplus for me.

But I did make about a quart of oyster mushroom powder last fall, starting with two full loads of mushrooms in my five-tray dehydrator. What worked for me was to dehydrate them until they were as dry and crunchy as possible (think potato chip, dry enough to snap) and then run them through a food processor, with the standard twin blade. There was some dust generated in my kitchen and the resulting mix was not evenly-sized, ranging from flour up to about half the size of a BB. That was fine for soups.

Here's hoping people will chime in with easier and better methods!

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Cynthia Quilici

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posted 10 years ago

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Maybe try to purée the vegetables before drying?

I don't have an electric dehydrator, but I see that they come with sheets to make fruit leather. It may be that the sugars you mentioned will never let things dry completely. I think industrial processers might use something like freeze-drying to get extra moisture out, they probably have super pulverizers, and then they use anti-caking ingredients. I don't think you can expect to get the same results they do, but you might be able to come closer...

Elisha Monger

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posted 10 years ago

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I wonder what a centrifuge juicer style grinding blade would do since it is designed to tear off small pieces with teeth. May still have fiber buildup issues and of course it is designed for wet rather than dry jobs so dust would go everywhere.

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Meryt Helmer

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posted 10 years ago

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i have seen recipes for things that are like fruit leathers but are all vegetables and things and are used to make soups. i think some things will just never dry enough to be powder. i bet you could dice things so they are pretty small and then dry them though. it would not be dust but it would rehydrate quickly as a seasoning.

Jessica Gorton

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Location: Central Maine - Zone 4b/5a

posted 10 years ago

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One thing I'd be concerned about would be the shelf life of powdered veggies. When you turn something into a powder, you are exposing way more of it to air, which will increase the rate at which you will lose nutrients etc. I find that for dried herbs, they stay far fresher if I leave them as whole as possible, then grind or crush them right before use.

Perhaps instead of powdering them ahead of time, you could make the soup with the chunks of veggies and then use a stick blender to puree the final product?

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Zenais Buck

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posted 10 years ago

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In my experience, the key is cutting them small before dehydrating, then fully dehydrating them so that they shatter when ground (like coffee beans). I have ground dried veg to near-powder in coffee grinders (reserved for spices), a small mini-food processor, and my larger food processor.

My favorite use for these is to make my own bullion powder: mix 1/2 cup powdered veg with 2 -4 Tbs arrowroot powder, 1 Tsp saltt, and several teaspoons dried herbs (parsley, dill, etc). Mix thoroughly and then mix in 2 Tbs natural oil (sesame, olive). Store in fridge for up to 6 months.

The oil coating keeps air off the veg so that flavor and nutrition are retained. This makes a GREAT soup base!

Bryant RedHawk

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posted 10 years ago

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I would suggest that you shred your veggies before drying, think very fine julienne cut.
Once these are thoroughly dried they can be powdered in a heavy duty, dual blade chopper.
Commercial companies use hammer mills for this process but those are way to expensive for most people to even consider.

once you have created the powder, filter it through the finest strainer you can (metal coffee filters, are some of the finest and costs is around ten dollars)

bottle them in glass containers that have tight lids with a seal.

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John Master

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posted 10 years ago

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cut small to dry and then you can put them through a ninja food processor/blender. I dry beef jerky in small squares and it turns the stuff into powder for making pemmican. it would handle veggies and garlic like no problem. I use it to make smoothies and it takes down frozen strawberries and other solid frozen stuff like crazy. The thing is made of plastic and looks chincy but it really does the trick and holds up well. Got about 4+ years out of my first one, this one is made even better than the last one and I haven't even had to sharpen the blade.

Timothy Norton

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posted 3 weeks ago

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Joseph,

Did you ever figure out a process that worked for you?

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Anne Miller

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posted 3 weeks ago

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I would also love to find out what is the best way to make the powders.

This is also a favorite thread:

https://permies.com/t/174057/Discovering-Joy-Powders

What is best a heavy duty coffee grinder, food processor or a blender?

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Leigh Tate

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posted 3 weeks ago

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I make fruit and vegetable powders from dried foods, but have only gotten good results with what I call a power blender. Mine is a Cleanblend brand blender, which is a budget version of the Vitamix blender. The difference between the power blender and standard kitchen blender is that the power blender is 3 horsepower. It's bigger, heavier (and more expensive) than a standard blender, but it really can powder dried fruits and veggies. The key is to make sure the food is completely dry.

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Matt McSpadden

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posted 3 weeks ago

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I make garlic powder. I peel the cloves, blend them into a paste, and then dry them low and slow. I break them into pieces that will fit in a big bowl, and then use a second bowl to break them into reasonable sized pieces. Coffee bean or slightly bigger, and I store those in a canning jar. I tried a coffee grinder from vevor. It worked well at first, but I tried to go too fast and jammed it up. The result was not exactly powder, but about the size of instant coffee grounds. I haven't had a chance to try it again. I also have used a cheap smoothie blender from walmart. It makes it into actual powder... but can make inconsistent sizes.

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Ac Baker

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posted 3 weeks ago

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I've read suggestions that the flavour of home-dried garlic powder starts to decline after 2 months, but larger pieces of home dried garlic can keep their flavour for up to a year.

In terms of what will store best, to retain most nutrition & flavour of the plants, I suspect that will vary a bit depending on your climate, storage conditions & drying method effectiveness?

My instinct is, there'll be a compromise between high surface area for drying, low surface area for durability in storage, and minimal processing for food structural integrity. The best way to crush most plant foods for best nutrition is with our teeth when we're eating, I believe ..

So smallish cubes that you can dry, and keep dry well, might give an optimum, which also go well rehydrated in food?

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Nancy Reading

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posted 3 weeks ago

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Matt McSpadden wrote:I make garlic powder. I peel the cloves, blend them into a paste, and then dry them low and slow.

I can imagine that drying after mashing will make powdering a lot easier?

Ac Baker wrote:My instinct is, there'll be a compromise between high surface area for drying, low surface area for durability in storage, and minimal processing for food structural integrity. The best way to crush most plant foods for best nutrition is with our teeth when we're eating, I believe .

A very good point about food nutrition durability. There is always a compromise.

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Matt McSpadden

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Nancy Reading wrote:

Matt McSpadden wrote:I make garlic powder. I peel the cloves, blend them into a paste, and then dry them low and slow.

I can imagine that drying after mashing will make powdering a lot easier?

Very much so. By using a food processor or some similar machine to blend it into a paste first you get the benefit of faster drying because you can spread it thinner than a clove. You also get more even drying.

Matt McSpadden

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Ac Baker wrote:I've read suggestions that the flavour of home-dried garlic powder starts to decline after 2 months, but larger pieces of home dried garlic can keep their flavour for up to a year.

This has not been the case with my garlic powder. I have had some batches that I made into a powder and a year later it was still far more potent than anything you can buy in the store. Maybe not quite as potent as when it was first made, but I would say probably 85% of the original flavor after a year as powder. I have another batch I kept as larger chunks and it is about a year old and when I process it into powder it still smells almost as strong as when I made it.

Ac Baker wrote:In terms of what will store best, to retain most nutrition & flavour of the plants, I suspect that will vary a bit depending on your climate, storage conditions & drying method effectiveness?

I completely agree. How you dry it and store it has a huge effect. I would also add that starting with quality products at the height of their growing season helps too.

Rebecca Norman

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posted 3 weeks ago

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I've ground various different dried fruits and vegetables in an Indian "Mixer-Grinder" which as far as I can tell is the same as what is called a blender (countertop blender) in the US. Indian ones usually have a choice of 3 different jars, all stainless steel, with slightly different blades. They are generally in the range of 1000 - 1400 W.

The key has always been to have the fruit or vegetable bone dry. If it's still got a little leatheryness to it, it won't grind to a powder, but if it's absolutely brittle dry, it will.

Powdered dried fruits like apricots and tomatoes run the risk of absorbing humidity from the air and then glomming into a big hard lump which is very hard to break up again.

Powdered apricots or apples can be sprinkled right onto buttered toast as an instant jam and are very delicious.

Powdered tomatoes are incredibly delicious, and form an instant puree or paste.

Powdered eggplant is sweet, unexpectedly so. But it's not super useful. I thought I'd use it to thicken things but somehow I never needed to.

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