Food Safety With Food Dehydrators

This presentation centers around the handling, preparing, and processing of food in your food dehydrator where the key issue of food safety is emphasized. While there are some risks the steps discussed herein will minimize, or eliminate, those threats to the products coming from food dehydrators.

Keep it clean from start to finish is the theme. All of the products selected for drying contain some amount of moisture. Bacteria, mold, and yeast are ever present in the air, soil, and objects around us and thrive to produce spoilage in foods that remain moist without refrigeration or some sort of processing.

To begin the Keep It Clean theme, start with the equipment used for preparing and drying the food, be sure it is washed even after taken out of the cupboard. The use of gloves works fine as long as one remembers not to contaminate the gloves by answering the phone or opening the door, with them on, then returning to preparing food.

Fruits and vegetables can be scrubbed quite vigorously before slicing, grinding, or juicing. These products contain enzymes, that cause them to ripen. Drying slows the enzyme activity but on vegetables some activity may continue to work. Fruits can turn brown from oxidation during the drying process. Enzyme activity and oxidation can be curtailed by pre-treating the produce with heat or sulfur dioxide.

Special attention needs to paid for meats or fish. These items need to be washed thoroughly, taking whatever time is necessary to trim fat, gristle, and connective tissue away. Fat particularly can get rancid even after drying and lead to mold. Some authors on the subject advocate cooking fish, or shellfish before the drying process, it does add an extra step but remember one purpose for drying is to make food light weight allowing for a greater variety of menu in those back packs.

As mentioned in one of my previous articles, "Enhanced Performance From Your Food Dehydrator", uniformity in thickness when cutting meat for your food dehydrator is key to obtaining the results one would want from all food dehydrators. A food slicer makes uniform cuts perfect, but a good sharp knife with meat partially frozen can do a decent job.

Food grinders in preparing meat jerky, beef or wild game, has several advantages. The meat gets broken up with the grinder so that it can be placed in a jerky gun. The jerky gun can than makes uniform sized strips of jerky that will dry perfectly in the food dehydrator. Additionally, when using the food grinder to prepare jerky you can add ingredients to the meat whether it be your favorite spices, or seasoning, or even mixtures of different meats to enhance the flavor to your liking.

Temperatures of 145 degrees F for 45 minutes will effectively kill microorganisms. With meat this means the internal temperature of the meat must reach that temperature with the temperature being sustained for the period of time necessary to be effective.

Modern day food dehydrators with today's technology are capable of a wide variety of temperature control and will maintain effective kill temperatures throughout any drying cycle. However, it would only be prudent to cross check the temperature setting of your food dehydrator with another thermometer when you first make a purchase.

In summary, think, Keep It Clean, when you start preparing your products for your food dehydrator. You will enjoy your results, for good food nutrition, good food storage, and good taste. Do not rush the process, but make it a family event, one that the kids will remember for years to come.