I finally got to see the process of dehydrating food.

Over the weekend, S and I dehydrated apples and made some spicy beef jerky. It was pretty simple. The most complicated part was knowing the recipe for the beef jerky marinade.

For the apples:

First, you wash the apples and cut them into thin slices. Then you dip them in lemon juice and set them on the racks.

Apples before:

After about 8 hours of drying, the apples are ready. We left ours in a bit too long, since we ended up sleeping in the next day. Ours are quite crispy, but still good.

Apples after:

The beef jerky was a little more intensive. First, S whipped up the marinade. Then the meat had to soak overnight.

To me, the strangest part was that the marinade smelled like beef jerky before the meat was even added. I hadn’t realized how big a role the marinade played.

Beef before:

We dried our beef jerky for about 9 hours. It was very dry. S made a spicy marinade, so it’s crunchy and spicy. We ended up with a bowl of meat.

Beef jerky after: