Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. I thought about calling this my Dehydrator Edition, since I have been keeping it busy lately. We picked up some Jonathan apples at the farmer’s market, and I dried quite a few of those. Apples are so easy to dry, you just slice them and put them right on the dehydrator trays.
sliced Jonathan apples for dehydrating
The end result is 100% apple, and great for snacking. We use a lot of ours in hot and cold cereals too. We will no doubt pick up more local apples as the harvest season progresses. After drying I seal them up using the FoodSaver and then stick them in the freezer. They don’t need to be frozen of course, but I do find they keep longer that way.
dehydrated apples
I’ve also been drying a lot of peppers. I began with the jalapenos I smoked to turn into chipotles. I leave the peppers whole for the chipotles, and with the thick walls of the jalapeno peppers it means they take longer to dry. Last year I turned some into Chipotle Peppers in Adobo Sauce, so it’s nice to have them whole for that use. I will grind some of them up into powder too.
chipotles drying
Many of the paprika peppers are ripening about now, and I’ve been drying them too. I’m growing several new ones this year, including Leutschauer, PCR and Boldog. All have some degree of heat, with Leutschauer being medium hot and the other two having just a bit of heat.
Leutschauer Paprika peppers
The Leutschauer peppers have thin walls, and my one plant is vigorous and loaded with peppers.
Leutschauer pepper
PCR Paprika looks a bit like the Feher Ozon pepper, though perhaps a bit bigger. The plants are definitely bigger, though not as big as the Leutschauer pepper. These peppers have thick walls, and should make a lot of paprika for that reason alone.
PCR Paprika peppers
The Boldog pepper reminds me of the Dulce Rojo paprika peppers I’ve been growing for several years now. They are thin-walled and dry quickly.
Boldog Paprika pepper
I cut the paprika peppers in half and remove the seeds before drying. They all dried up nicely, and it looks like I should have plenty of them to make paprika with this year! The plants still have peppers on them, and more should ripen before our first frost. That’s the dried Leutschauer peppers in the below photo. I tasted one of the dried ones and they are spicy hot for sure.
dried Leutschauer Paprika peppers
And I was excited to cut the first of the fall broccoli last week. Actually it’s a brockali called Artwork, and though the main heads are small they are a sign of things to come since the side shoots will start developing now. The other fall broccoli plants are getting big, but there’s no sign of any more heads just yet.
broccoli Artwork
My last harvest today is not for eating, at least not this year. I saved seeds from the Champagne Cherry tomatoes, letting them ferment for a few days. After that I rinse them off and put them on a paper coffee filter to dry. They don’t stick to the filter paper, and are easy to scrape off and package up. These are a tasty little tomato, and I will try and remember to share some of these seeds and any other interesting ones I have saved later on this year.
tomato seeds drying on filter paper
Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to share, add your name and blog link to Mr Linky below. And be sure and check out what everyone is harvesting!
We acquired a free packet of brokali but never got round to sowing the seed.
Nice looking dehydrator! Yes those peppers do look like Feher Ozon. The Feher Ozon are quite thick-walled but I was surprised how little paprika I ended up with – guess I’m just not used to the massive reduction after dehydration!
Very similar stuff is happening here! I have dried some apples, and I have dried some chillis – though I have used the latter to make flakes, not powder. The dehydrator has been earning its keep. With my dried apples, as I prepared them, I put them in a bowl of water with a halved lemon to stop them going brown. The lemon juice gave the apples a little extra zing too!
Beautiful baskets of peppers, which I would guess to be your favorite crop, after asparagus of course! Nice that your fall broccoli is coming in. I love dried apples too.
Nice peppers. I should try a different paprika pepper that is a little bigger and thicker walled than the one I am growing. Drying apples is an interesting idea, just to use in granola. Fortunately I am half a mile from an orchard with controlled storage so I can get fresh apples year round.
I suppose that keeping the dried apples in the freezer keeps them from browning. I store most of my dried veggies in the fridge, it really does preserve their color and quality. The dehydrator is getting going around here too – tomatoes, zucchini, and roasted peppers so far.
Ditto on the dehydrator earning it’s keep – am I glad I finally got around to getting one! Those apple sliced look delicious; that is definitely one of the things I’m going to try this year…just have to get down to the orchard to pick some up.
Great looking paprika peppers. I hope you follow up later with a comparison of the different dried paprikas.
So many peppers. I live two blocks from the Pacific so humidity is generally too high for efficient drying (though I have done some in the oven). Last year, I dried some small peppers on a hot day in my car at work. Temps in the car were probably close to 110-120 degrees. They were ready to be stored by my lunch hour. No electricity used. I also dried some peppers another year in a low tech way used in parts of the world with no electricity. I laid the peppers on racks set in a tray. Then to intensify the heat I covered the trays with galvanized metal roofing material leftover from our house. Poised about an inch above the peppers, the veggies dried well. I left them out overnight lifted from the critters and the dew did not fall on the drying peppers because of the roofing. As I recall it took a couple of days to have them ready to store.
Nice pepper harvests! I’m impressed that you already have fall broccoli. My broccoli are still small seedlings at this point. I’ve never tried or grown a brockali, looks tasty.
@Dave,
What brand of dehydrator are you using?
It’s an Excalibur, and we love it! I wish we had the nine tray model instead of five trays, but that’s my only regret. It sees a lot of use here.
Yum, the apples look particularly good, I’d like to have a go at dehydrating sometime.
Hooray for the first broccoli too.
Your peppers and broccoli look great. I love that you’re drying your produce. Our sweet peppers and eggplant our setting loads more fruit, I’m half inclined to leave them for another month and see what they do.
I’d love to own a dehydrator one day but I’ll have to buy a bigger house before I buy any more kitchen gadgets! I would like to make my own smoked pepper flakes.
Nice harvests!