Yesterday someone dropped by and brought along a couple of small baskets of mushrooms. He said they were being given away, and because the location they were given out was outdoors, they were going to spoil quickly.

I headed over and got lots of mushrooms in perfect condition, and decided to maximize the bounty by dehydrating them to use at a later time. However, a piece on my dehydrator burnt out a few months ago, so it’s now a bulky plastic box that isn’t of much use. I had been thinking of building a screen covered kind of box about the size of the dehydrator, that I could slide the dehydrator trays into and use outside. But that hasn’t happened so I had to improvise if I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity!

In any case, I live in a hot, dry climate, so doesn’t it seem like a waste to use a machine to mimic what nature is doing all day long for free?

I sliced up several of the baskets of mushrooms, then put them back in the baskets and set them out in the sun. Meanwhile, I thought about how to dry the rest of them. Maybe, I mused, I could thread the whole mushrooms with fine fishing line and string them up in the sun.

This morning I thought of an obvious solution. I set up a folding table in the sun, then put the cartons the baskets of mushrooms came in, upside down on top of the table. Then I put the mushrooms on top of the cartons (so there would be air flow underneath) in the original baskets they came in.

You can see the sliced mushrooms in the front are dehydrating very nicely (they had a head start over the whole mushrooms). I went out after a few hours to check on them, and realized if I put the cartons right side up and put all the whole mushrooms inside, they would dry even more quickly and it would eliminate the need to rotate them. This was a good option once they were dry to the touch.

I’m very optimistic about this! If this works well, it was quick and easy to set up and because it’s so hot, there’s not a single fly or insect anywhere near them! (I will cover them with a screen if I see any flies.) I’m hoping they’ll all being completely dried by the time the sun goes down tonight, and also hoping to experiment further with solar dehydration over the summer.

Edited to add: the sliced mushrooms were finished in a day; the whole mushrooms were almost finished in two days but I put them out for one more day to make sure there wasn’t any moisture that could lead to molding once I stored them. Here’s what it all looked like once it was done:

The sliced mushrooms are in the container on the front right; the other two containers are filled with whole dried mushrooms, which can be used whole or cut up when cooking. As you can see, they shrink down quite a bit and don’t take much space to store.

I did keep one case of mushrooms to use fresh for Shabbos! The last time I made marinated mushrooms they were a big hit.

Avivah