 I heard something pretty neat yesterday in an Adrian Rogers sermon. I sure miss him. His “Adrianisms” are just priceless. The quote yesterday concerned those who are married and he referred particularly to us women. He said that “the woman’s job is to love her husband. It is God’s job to make him good.” Of course, that goes ditto for the husbands regarding wives, but I pondered on that for a moment and had to look at where I try to take on God’s job with Mr. Fix-It. We women are really good at trying to “fix” our husbands into the men that “we know they should be.” Yikes. Now don’t get me wrong…Mr. Fix-It is close to perfect – but I am the normal woman who can find that tiny loose thread in any sweater and unravel the whole thing trying to make it right. And so, the next time I decide that I need to tell Mr. Fix-It what he “needs to be doing” I think I’ll shut my trap. Perhaps my focus needs to be on what I need to be doing! He is awfully sweet and treats me like a queen. And speaking of sweet, I’ve been dehydrating sweet potatoes! Yep. This is the time of year when those tubers start going on sale and with our new organic grocery stores, I am hoping to cash in on some really nice ones. The sweet potato is one thing I hadn’t tried dehydrating, but last week I decided it was something I should try. What a success!! And when I served them for dinner the other night, Mr. Fix-It smacked his lips and commented on how good they were. “There were dehydrated,” I crowed. “I figured as much,” he said as he chomped on another mouthful. He has gotten used to my dehydration experiments and is pretty impressed with the results. It is just too neat to have jars of dehydrated sweet potatoes on hand to whip out and create a casserole or candied yams. I have always had such trouble with potatoes going bad in the bin and so this is a welcome discovery! So grab your taters and start slicing and here’s how to dry them and how to use them afterwards!  Wash and peel sweet potatoes  Slice the potatoes in slices about 1/8″ thick  Drop the slices into boiling water and boil for 2 minutes. Drain and drop into iced water with ice cubes and leave in the water until ice cubes melt. Drain the water.  Place blanched slices onto dehydrator racks without overlapping and dehydrate for at least 15 hours. You want them nice and dried.  Store potatoes in mason jars or ziploc freezer bags. You can vacuum seal the jars but it is not required. 1 cup of dehydrated slices per potato needed. Plan approximately 1/2 potato per person. Per 1 or 2 potatoes: 1/3 cup butter 1/2 cup packed brown sugar pinch of salt chopped pecans miniature marshmallows  Soak potatoes overnight in the refrigerator, covered in water in a bowl. The potatoes will soak up much of the water.  Pour contents of the bowl, water included, into boiling water and boil until slices are tender. Drain.  Layer the sweet potato slices in a casserole dish. I just used the equivalent of one potato in a small casserole for me and Mr. Fix-It. I miss making those big dinners when all the kids were home!!  Melt butter and brown sugar and salt together in a pan on medium heat  The mixture will make a smooth sauce  Pour the brown sugar sauce over the potatoes.  Sprinkle chopped pecans over the surface. Bake in a 350º oven for 30 minutes.  After 20 minutes of baking, sprinkle marshmallows over the top of the casserole and allow to brown for the last 10 minutes of baking.  Now THAT is some Southern yumminess!!  |
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Tags: candied yams, dehydrating, food storage, sweet potatoes
Well, there you go again, yamming it up! Beautiful job!
I yam what I yam!! 🙂
They look wonderful! Have you ever dried food in your oven? I don’t have a dehydrator and would like to try my oven. Thanks!
Brenda, I know people have done that, but the only thing I have tried in the oven is beef jerky. I like the dehydrator because it isn’t just heat, but also air. There is a fan that rotates air around the food and it dries it faster and more evenly than with just heat. I have dried apples in the back window of the car too! On our hot days, it doesn’t take long, but again, they don’t dry as pretty as they do in a dehydrator. If you are interested in one, you can go to Nesco.com and click on dehydrators. They are having a sale right now and there are many that are quite inexpensive!
I have been dehydrating things lately and I was wondering how to do this. Thanks for sharing and for the wonderful images and narration. I also really enjoyed your message before the recipe. It really spoke to me. Thank you.
Thank you Heidi. I think that you are going to love your dehydrated products. Sure saves a lot of freezer and frig space!!
Thank you for your help! I will be researching dehydrators.
Send me pictures of your success stories when you try dehydrating! 🙂
Hi…can you tell me why you choose to blanche the sweet potatoes? I have a brand new dehydrator and want to learn the techniques as soon as possible. Sound like you may know your way around this gizmo. Do you BLANCHE all foods? Could you expand on the whys and whens? I would be grateful.
Bunnie,
I blanche my veggies because it helps them keep their color and it makes for a less tough veggie. They seem to rehydrate better and more like original. I use the dehydrated, parboiled sweet potatoes for candied sweet pototoes or sweet potato pie, etc. Veggies like celery and other high water veggies don’t require blanching, but the denser veggies seem to do better when parboiled. If you are wanting sweet potatoes to munch on, however, then you need to cook them as slices until they are tender, sprinkle with sugar and then dehydrate. I drop the slices into salted boiling water and boil them until fork tender. Then I lift them out with a very large, round slotted spoon to keep them from breaking. Fully cooking them makes them great as snacks. If you are chewing on a dehydrated raw one, they are just like eating chewy, raw sweet potatoes.