dried cauliflower
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Describing the simple step-by-step process of drying cauliflower at home with a food dehydrator.
Food: Cauliflower
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Dehydrate Time: 15 hours
Total Time: 15 hours 20 minutes
In my food culture, we use dried cauliflower for cooking. I love dried cauliflower stir fried with pork.
drying cauliflower
cauliflower
Recently, cauliflower is in season which means it is really cheap, so I bought a lot of them at the market. Therefore, this time I decided to dry some cauliflower.
I used one whole cauliflower for this drying.
preparing cauliflower
To prepare the cauliflower for drying, I cut way the leaves and cut the rest into florets. Then, I washed the florets and drained them.
After that, the florets went on the drying trays, and the trays went on the dehydrator.
The prepping takes about 20 minutes—cutting cauliflower into florets takes longer than cutting fruit.
drying cauliflower
According to the manual, cauliflower should be steamed before dehydration, then dried at 50-55°C for 6-20 hours. However, I am using the dried cauliflower florets for cooking purposes, so I did not to steam them because they will be heated later anyways.
The dehydrator worked overnight and the trays are rearranged to ensure all florets are evenly dried. I dehydrated the cauliflower florets for about 15 hours. During dehydration, the kitchen is filled with the smell of cooking cauliflowers, but it is not a very strong scent.
dried cauliflower
After dehydration, the florets have shrunken significantly. I shocked to discover how much it shrank. It shrank even more than apples—something I thought for sure contained more water than cauliflower.
Before drying, I thought what I dried should be enough for me to cook a dish, but looking at the what came out the dehydrator, they are obviously not enough to cook even half a dish. After I bagged the dried florets, I could hardly believe the amount is comprised of one whole cauliflower.