BWCA Dehydrating squash? Boundary Waters BWCA Food and Recipes
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      Dehydrating squash?     

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marsonite
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02/15/2018 11:31PM   (Thread Older Than 3 Years)
Has anyone tried dehydrating squash? I was thinking of cooking it, mashing it, and dehydrating it.
 
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02/22/2018 12:57PM  
What kind of squash?

I've baked spaghetti squash and dehydrated it. It rehydrated into mush for me. I may try it again and under bake it this time to see if that helps.

I've baked other winter squashes (butternut and acorn), mashed and dehydrated them. They come back well and are great in soups or by themselves like sweet potatoes.

I've never tried summer squashes.
 
OldFingers57
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02/22/2018 08:05PM  
We’ve dehydrated summer squash several times. One way we do it is to slice thin and coat with garlic salt or some other seasoning to make chips out of. Otherwise we have sliced a bit thicker and cut in half or fourths to use in recipes. You can do acorn or butternut squash and Nash it up and make squash leather out of it.
 
inspector13
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02/23/2018 08:00AM  

I’ve never dehydrated winter squash, but preparing it as a leather sounds right. Every year I dehydrate lots of zucchini. Those are dehydrated fresh. I don’t really like the texture when it is re-hydrated, so I grind it into a powder to add to some of my BWCA pouch recipes.

 
OldFingers57
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02/23/2018 10:28AM  
It’s just like making pumpkin leather. Which pumpkin is a type of squash.
 
Chicagored
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02/25/2018 02:49PM  
this is a recipe I got from backpackingchef that I use for a sweet potato fruit leather. I usually just eat it as a leather, but it can also be reconstituted. I imagine that it would work just as well with squash. You could leave out the maple syrup and cinnamon, but I would not leave out the apple juice.

Ingredients:

1 large or 2 small Sweet Potatoes (approx. 13 ounces before peeling)
½ cup Apple Juice
1 Tbsp Real Maple Syrup
1 tsp Cinnamon (may include nutmeg)
Cook It

Peel sweet potatoes and cut into chunks.

Boil until soft, drain, and mash.

Stir in apple juice, maple syrup, and cinnamon. If you like nutmeg, you may replace half of the cinnamon with nutmeg.

Blend It

Run the mashed sweet potatoes through a blender until creamy. If your blender struggles with the mixture, add a few more spoonfuls of juice or water.

Dry It

Cover dehydrator trays with non-stick Excalibur Paraflexx® sheets, parchment paper, or the fruit leather inserts that came with your dehydrator.

Spread thinly and as evenly as possible on covered dehydrator trays. Shoot for an eighth inch thickness. The quantities in this recipe will cover one Excalibur Dehydrator tray.

Dehydrate at 135° for eight to ten hours. The sweet potatoes will form a sheet that may have cracks running through it.

Flip It

After about six hours of drying, peel the bark off the non-stick sheets and flip it over to expose the bottom side to more hot air for the remainder of the drying time. Place the bark directly on the mesh dehydrator trays without the non-stick sheets.

Depending on how long you dry it, the sweet potato sheet will either tear like fruit leather or break into bark. For snacking and short term use, you may prefer to dry it to the leather stage. If packing for a trip that will last more than a month, dry it longer to the snappy bark stage.

Yield:

One large or two small sweet potatoes (approx. 13 ounces before peeling) will yield approximately ¾ cup of bark and weigh 2½ ounces. Increase the ingredients proportionately for larger batches.



 
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