Recipes for dehydrated natural produce

After the summer, when the forests and bushes were full of berries, it’s excellent to recap how we can get the most out of them and what we must do to preserve them during winter.

Dry place with even temperature, protected from light, such as a kitchen cupboard. The best storage container is a glass jar.

See the manual for tips per product group.

You can fit 4–5 kg of chopped mushrooms in an Orakas dehydrator. You can fit in about 20 litres of herbs, such as nettles, and, for example, about 7 litres of bilberries.

Orakas will never dry the products too much. For herbs, we recommend no more than 35 degrees, and for mushrooms under 40 degrees Celsius.

Dried products take up less storage space, because the volume is reduced by 80% and weight 90%. For example, one litre of funnel chanterelle (Craterellus tubaeformis) will weight just 30 g after drying.

The drying time depends of the product properties, such as thickness and relative humidity, conditions when it was picked, and the drying temperature. The temperature in Orakas can be adjusted from anything between room temperature to 50 degrees Celsius. 

Drying times:

• Tea ingredients and herbs 2–6 hours
• Mushrooms and root vegetables 3–8 hours
• Berries 10–15 hours (gooseberries should be cut in half before drying)
• Fish thinly sliced and filleted 6–7 hours
• Meat cut into thin slices 6–10 hours.

Orakas can be used to dry garden produce, wild plants, meat and fish. You can also use it to prepare picnic or hiking foods.